Former Queen of Beauty in Court of Murder

When a former beauty queen walks into the courtroom in Puerto Rico this week, she will end a long welcome of relatives of her former wealthy husband who was stabbed in the street.

Romance between Áurea Vázquez Rijos and Adam Joel Anhang was short - lived and incredible.

Now, almost 13 years after the murder of Anhang, an American federal court will eventually decide whether the former queen of beauty from Porto-Riko has killed her former Canadian husband, the online games tycoon, killed after just six months of marriage.

The trial, which begins on 21 August, takes place after an extraordinary legal battle, after Vazquez fought the extradition from Italy and Spain.

It was her late husband's father who used private detectives to track Vasquez down in Italy, after an innocent man was imprisoned for the murder and later released.

It took us five years and a lot of effort and energy to find her after the event just happened, she left”, said Abe Anhang from the BBC from his home in Winnipeg, Canada.

Anhang, 32-year-old with a multimillion-year estate in real estate and game software, was brutally beaten and killed a September night in 2005 on a street in the historic neighbourhood of the capital of Puerto Rican, San Juan.

At first glance, the attack appeared to be a bad-going robbery, in which Mrs. Vázquez Rijos was also injured by the male assailant.

But, according to prosecutors, Anhang was going to meet his wife at a restaurant in San Juan that evening to discuss the terms of their divorce when he was actually lured into a fatal trap.

Mrs. Vázquez Rijos, charged, knew that divorce would deprive her of access to most of her husband's property, which was estimated to be worth 24 million dollars because of a pre-marriage agreement they signed.

Two years later Jonathan Román Rivera, a kitchen worker from a nearby restaurant, was convicted of killing Anhang in an opportunist robbery.

This conviction was later abolished when a witness appeared telling a large US federal jury how he saw the killer strike Anhang with a cobblestone of the road and knife several times.

He then spoke to Mrs. Vázquez before striking her with moderate force, the witness added.

In 2008, a large federal jury indicted Mrs. Vázquez on two counts of murder orders, as the man suspected of being a street attacker admitted the murder.

In a statement read before a court in San Juan, Alex El Loco Pabón Colón said Mrs. Vázquez had agreed to pay him $3m when they discussed the murder of her husband in the nightclub and the Pink Skirt of Vazquez restaurant, a business bought for him as a marriage gift from Anhang.

“Áurea communicated with Alex to tell him to park his car on the street of San Justo. Alex would do what he had to do”, writes the signed confession.

But Mrs. Vázquez was no longer in US jurisdiction, having abandoned Puerto Rico several times in 2006, according to prosecutors. It chose to settle in Italy, a country whose laws were sometimes used by fugitives to make their extradition difficult.

Mrs. Vázquez met a taxi driver in Florence and they had two twin girls together before he read about her being wanted in Puerto Rico, the Corriere de la Serra newspaper. The couple split up and the Italian eventually won custody of the two girls.

Meanwhile, according to information provided for Abe Anhang by private detectives engaged in Italy, Mrs. Vazquez had contacted the Jewish community finish. It was embraced by the Hebrew community as a widow with two children”.

Mr. Anhang (the father) explains that the premarital agreement with his son and Mrs. Vázquez signed a pledge on her part to study and obtain Jewish faith within two years.

According to US prosecutors, Mrs. Vázquez was helped by her brother, Charbel Vázquez Rijos, her sister, Marcia and her mother, who provided false documents to successfully dig up the Jewish organisation quite Firenzebraica in Florence to prove in June 2012, that Áurea and her daughters were Jewish crowns, enabling her to move to Israel.

But according to Mr. Anhang (father), Mrs. Vázquez, has moved across Europe, using false <x0-word names and some identity cards”. His private detective team said they had traced their movements to Gibraltar, Spain, France and England.

According to prosecutors, in August 2012, Charbel Vázquez Rijos included Glatt Kostier Traveler Inc. In the Puerto Rico State Department, planning for his sister to be a means to earn money in Italy. But the travel company aimed at Jewish tourists was to prove Mrs. Vazquez's novel.

FBI and Spanish authorities launched an operation inviting Mrs. Vazquez to Madrid to work as a guide for a mobile tour group. She took the bait.

Arrested at Madrid Airport and imprisoned, Mrs. Vazquez launched a new fight against extradition to Spain's courts.

Mrs. Vázquez became pregnant behind bars and had a child. Spanish police sources have told the BBC that the child's father was a small Italian thief, serving time in Spain for a drug act.

She was allowed to marry her father to prison, asking a Madrid judge not to extradite her as the mother of a Spanish citizen.

Finally, she flew into the Atlantic on a private FBI plane in 2015, her baby several months, was taken from her arms and sent to social care after she entered Puerto Rico.

Further legal delays and then Hurricane Mary led to several delays in the trial, in which the brother, sister and partner of the latter will face charges at the US federal court in San Juan.

Prosecutors have signed an oath to Spanish authorities that they will not seek the death penalty in this case, a condition of the final extradition agreement.

Mr. Anhang (the father) is optimistic that justice will finally be done for his son, but he sees it ironic that his son's refusal to face the trial may end up being counted in favor of him.

“Áurea will likely receive the easiest sentence of all indictees because she fled and waited to be extradited from a country that set conditions for her transfer to the United States to face justice.

“Basically, it will be rewarded with the same punishment as if it had been captured and sentenced in Spain. At the same time, co-accused will receive longer sentences, despite much less involvement in this crime”.

The BBC contacted Mrs. Vazquez's lawyer, Lydia Lisaribar, but she declined to accept the invitation to comment on her client's defence strategy before the trial.