The Best Friends, The Plan and The Laced Gatorade

writer and host of The Real Killer. You can follow Leah on Twitter at Leah Underscore Rothman Episode seventeen, The Case of the Best Friends, The Plan, and the Laced Gatorade. Christian Aguilera was quote every father's dream. He was a hard working student, affable, and had a tight knit group of friends. At the Dorill Academy and Leach Harter School in Miami, Florida, where Christian attended. People described him as shy at first, but behind that he was wickedly funny

and sarcastic. An animal lover and Kanye West fan, Christian was known for his easygoing and charismatic personality. It's no surprise he had supportive and loyal friends. Christian's closest friend was Pedro Bravo, The two young men met in eighth grade and bonded over their love of superheroes and action movies. Pedro was described as shy, hard working, and the kind of guy who wouldn't heard a fly. Also in their group was Erica Freeman, with her wide eyes and long

brown hair. Erica began dating Pedro their sophomore year, and the couple fell in love. The pair dated through the rest of high school, becoming the eight couple of their school, going on dates and celebrating anniversaries. However, in the summer of after graduation and with college approaching, Eric felt like it was time to be single, and so she broke

up with Pedro. In a few months, they would be headed to different places, Pedro to school in Miami to study engineering, and Erica to Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida, to study biology. Dating long distance just didn't seem realistic. Like Erica, Christian, Pedro's best friend, was also headed to Gainesville to attend his dream school, the University of Florida. Christian got a scholarship to major in biomedical engineering in Gainesville.

Erica and Christian ran into each other and felt an instant connection. While in high school, they've been in the same group. Their biggest connection was Erica's boyfriend and Christian's best friend, Pedro, but now in college they could really get to know each other. It was not long before the pair began and dating. Here's Jeff. Let's go back to Pedro for a second. He was always known as the class clown in school, so when Erica broke up with him, she was really surprised how emotional he was.

He cried and begged her to get back together. She didn't think he would take it as seriously as he did. And you know, while she felt bad, she was adamant. She wanted to be single going into college, and much to her surprise, it seemed that Pedro really thought they could be together. In reality, only two percent of high school couples actually go the distance, so the idea that somehow Pedro and Erica would be together forever just isn't realistic.

So Erica and Christian may have just been friends in high school, but she admitted that she always had a secret crush on him, but she thought, nah, it is never going to happen. Um, So when they did get together in college, she was ecstatic over the moon and I think very quickly felt like their soulmates. When they'd spend time together, she used to tell him the world could end right now, and if in your arms, I don't care, which is just like talk about love like

that's a that's an amazing sentiment. Wow, So it seems like she really felt hard for him quickly. Yeah, it seems like she maybe had some feelings prior to them getting together. She was totally excited when they did get together,

and then she was like living the dream with him. Yeah, And I think we can all relate to like that feeling of going to college and feeling like you're in a new place in your life and you feel a little more mature and a little more free, and you might look at someone in a different way or feel like you're liberated to connect with someone in a new way. And that's what sounds like happened with her and Christian totally.

They're not under their parents roofs, you know, they can have an adult kind of relationship and and and that just it's almost like a better foundation for a real war mature love exactly. It also might be a little awkward for them because Pedro was Christian's best friend, but I think when you're that age, you just don't really care. You want to do what you want to do, and if you have feelings for someone, everyone else is just

a little bit collateral damage. And Pedro wasn't in town, so you know what he didn't know wasn't necessarily going to hurt him. Well, Erica and Christian moved on. Patro was struggling to forget his high school sweetheart. He decided to take drastic measures to get Erica back, dropping out of school in Miami and transferring to her community college in Gainesville. Pedro began texting Erica with progressively frantic please. She felt uncomfortable, but didn't want to abandon Pedro in

his time of need. What Erica did not know was that Pedro had a master plan to get her back. He wrote in his journal about it, quote I will get out of Miami and into Gainesville by January and I will get her back. Quote no one will stop me. Oh my gosh, she wrote a lot more. He wrote about a plan to get rid of his acne, white and his teeth and only wear red shirts because, according

to him, they catch women's attention. More. His journal was also filled with intricate drawings of things like women's faces, lots of hearts, shattered hearts, hearts and pieces, hearts and bits, lots of broken hearts, and tons and tons of writings. He was getting more obsessed with the idea of getting

her back. Yeah, obsessed is an understatement. Despite his best laid plans, Pedro ended up hearing through the grapevine that Christian and Erica were dating, which was a big blow to him, obviously, so on September sevente he ended up confronting her. He pulled up a photo of her and Christian together and demanded answers. Erica didn't know what to do,

so she lied and denied everything. She told Pedro that she and Christian were just friends, and so, you know, lying never seems like a good idea, But I think we can all relate to feeling like you're under sure and someone's confronting you with something, and the easy thing to do is just to deny, deny, deny. Leah, what do you make of his plan? Like getting rid of your acne and whitening your teeth and just wearing a certain color. It all seems so misguided, it does. It

seems superficial. But maybe that's he was just clinging onto anything that could help. I did wonder why he was worried about attracting like women of the opposite sex as opposed to just Erica. Maybe there was a small part of him that was like, Okay, look, I need to get myself ready in case I can't get Erica back. And I do need to be out in the dating field,

you know, playing the field again. And I want to look good, have a bright smile and clear skin, and I and a red shirt's going to help me get a lady. I thought it was interesting that he wrote that way. It seemed mildly optimistic. And also when you're a teenager, you also just want those things in general. You want clear skin and you want wait teeth. Yeah, to me, it seems like he just googled best way to attract woman and it would say, you know, have

white teeth, have clear skin. I just googled what's the color that attracts woman the most, and red is at the top of the search. So he just probably did that and thought he's so naive that he thinks this is how the world works, that he wears a color. Eric will somehow fall back in love with him. It's sad really. Increasingly desperate, Pedro reached out to his former best friend Christian for answers. Pedro told Christian he was

depressed and needed help. Christian was apprehensive about meeting up with Pedro. He seemed rather unhinged, but ever the nice guy, Christian agreed. The pair decided to meet at a public place on the University of Florida campus. Here's the recording of Erica explaining Christian's frame of mind before the meeting. The audio was taken from Erica's testimony on the stand in one year later. He was unhappy about meeting a

police fedro. He was a little I mean, he didn't really want to want to um, But we weren't really that concerned it going to meet in a public place. You know, if anything was going to happen, it wasn't. He might try to punch him or something, and Christian wouldn't fight, you know, he was he's not much of a fighter, so you kind of just walk away. I'm sure he thought we're meeting in public, what could possibly

happen exactly. Maybe he'll punch me, maybe he'll like swear at me, or yell at me and they will cause a scene, but nothing more than that, especially since they're meeting in public. You would never think anything other than that, right, you think you're safe? Yeah? And I think at this point this just seems a little bit like a teenage

love triangle. Like I would imagine that Christian probably felt like none of this was that big of a deal at this point, and he might have something explaining to do, but he could probably work past it with someone who was once his best friend. Exactly, this was his friend. He knows how his friend reacts to things. I mean, his friend is going to be mad he's dating his ex girlfriend, but that's it that. I mean, he's seen

his friend over many years react to various things. And I didn't think that he was in any danger, right, Leah, do we know that anything more about Pedro's frame of mind at this point. Pedro was in a dark place. He seemed to know that Erica was lying. At this point, he wrote in his journal, I feel like someone stabbed me and I'm bleeding out and dying. I want her back, please, I'll give anything. He was not in a good place. Yeah, it's dark, but I also I mean to play Devil's advocate.

I think anyone who's kept a journal can probably say that they've written what sounds crazy and dramatic in there. So how much can we really scrutinize someone's like private thoughts, No exactly, And I mean he probably, as we all do when we write our private thoughts, think no one's ever going to read them, so we are very honest, and those honest feelings necessarily mean that anything is going to come of them. It's just you know, these are my hurt feelings, these are my deep dark feelings, and

they're for me and me only. So yeah, I mean it's hard to read someone's journal and say like, oh well, if this then that right. I wonder though, what pedro support system was at this point. I mean, he clearly lost his best friend, Christian, and so if he didn't have anyone else to talk to and he was just alone in these thoughts, you could see how someone would spiral out of control. Yeah, And as we know, if one is in a dark place and left alone with

their thoughts, that doesn't always help. The spiral can be worse when you don't have anyone to talk to. Right, by all counts, he didn't really seem to have many friends. I mean, he wasn't. He went to Miami for college, originally stayed there a very short time, and then headed to Gainesville with the sole intention of winning back Erica, and so it seemed like he kind of just honed in on that probably and didn't have much else going

on in his life. On September, Christian met Pedro at The Hub, a popular gathering place for students on campus. Surveillance cameras were able to capture many of their movements that fateful day. The young men met at one thirty nine pm and had lunch. They then drove to best Buy, where Christian bought a Kanye West c D. At four eleven pm, Pedro's blue Chevy Blazer pulled into a Walmart parking lot. The car was there for more than two hours, and it wasn't until six PM that the car pulled

out of the lot. By this point, Erico was getting nervous. Christian usually texted her all the time, but today he'd been radio silent. At four fifteen am, there was still no word from Christian. Erica was officially freaked out, so she called Pedro. Pedro told her he had dropped Christian off and things were fine. By the next morning, Christian was still missing. Erica decided it was time to go to the police. At ninety four i am, she and Pedro went to the University of Florida campus police to

report Christian missing. Well. Being the last person to see Christian alive, Pedro had a lot to say to the police, and he ended up talking to them for eight hours. While he denied knowing anything, his story didn't add up rather quickly. At first, he told the cops that he and Christian fought and he ended up dropping him off in the woods near the Walmart they were last seen. Then he started saying that they picked up a hitchhiker in a bad part of town. He described this guy

as a fifth year old, bearded man. At one point, when he described the fight, he said that he punched Christian just once. Then just minutes later he told them he punched him multiple times. LEO, what else we're police doing to figure out what happened this fateful day? Well, police began tracking Pedro's movements that day. It turns out after he left the wall Mark parking lot at six pm, Pedro was off the grid for five hours before reappearing at McDonald's, where he bought a Big Mac and a

Dr Pepper. He had put his phone in airplane mode, which was very suspicious to police, and then at one thirty he went to get a car wash. At two fifty three am, according to building surveillance cameras, he returned back to his apartment and did a load of laundry. Now, I've never gone to the car wash at one thirty in the morning. I didn't even actually know they were open that late, so that I would think to police would be very suspicious. And then doing laundry at toft

it could wait till the next morning. Why are you doing your laundry in the middle of the night, and then of course having your phone off for five hours. People barely turn their phone off when they're actually flying. So yeah, I think all of this for police was

just highly, highly suspicious. I would say, I mean, college kids keep weird hours, so maybe you could explain going to the car wash or getting late man McDonald's, doing laundry in the middle of the night, But I think a college student is not putting their phone on airplane mode for five hours. That to me definitely seems suspicious. Police really quickly could track these men. In that final day. There are cameras everywhere, and for some reason this five hours,

they really just disappear. And that seems weird too, because where could Pedro and Christian have gone that they wouldn't be on camera. But what police thought was very suspicious was that during his interrogation, Pedro kept referring to Christian in the past tense and you know, having covered a lot of true crime, we know that is a very common tell when people do that, because at this point, Pedro should think Christian is still alive. He said he

dropped him off. The question was though, for police, when they looked at the two men, it seemed unlikely that Pedro could have killed Christian. Christian was eight and just taller than Pedro. It seemed like if they did actually get in the physical fight, Christian would have probably won. We're going to take a break. We'll be back in just a moment. The first thing you should do if police want to talk to you is call a lawyer. But these are practical children. I mean, they're just entering

adulthood and they don't know any better. And so he's sitting there telling different stories and there's inconsistencies. I mean, Pedro at this point is in way over in his head over these eight hours. You'd also think that you'd call your parents and say, come here, I need you. Maybe thought he was smarter than the investigators interviewing him, and that he, you know, was slick enough that he

could give answers that could get him out. But as the hours are ticking by during this interview, he would think, oh, gosh, I'm still here. They're still asking questions, They're trying to hone in on things I might be in trouble here. Yeah, I was surprised that he didn't ask for a lawyer or his parents. I feel like when you're that age,

there's two types of people. There's the ones that, like me, would call their mom and dad immediately, and then I think there's the other type of people who there's like a hue Bress that you think you're untouchable, and there's a cockiness to you that you think you can say and do anything. And it seems like Pedro would fall

into that latter category. Friends and family began searching the Gainesville area in hopes of finding Christian While Love once felt it was tragically unlikely that Christian was still alive, they were determined to find him or his body. Meanwhile, eight days after Christian disappeared, police had enough to arrest Pedro. He was charged with napping and first degree murder. Twenty two days later, two hunters found Christians sixty miles from campus.

His body had been bound with duct tape, and he was found face down in a murky swamp. Two years later, the trial began. Christians autopsy showed that the young man was drugged and suffocated. Prosecutors were sure that Pedro did it, but they had yet to prove how. They started by using Pedro's journals as evidence. In one entry, he wrote, when I fell. I fell hard. Now I can't pick myself up. I feel weak. I want her back. I do anything, Yeah, I mean it seems like the desperation

was at an all time high at that point. Sometime after that, Pedro went to Low's and bought pesticide, gatorade, and a shovel. He then also went to Walmart and bought Nike weel, duct tape, and a knife. He also had some pretty damning Google searches. He searched what is chloroform? How do sleeping pills kill you can, rubbing alcohol knock someone out. And then he was also trying to find some info on unsolved murders. Yeah, the police found a lot of damning events that um, he was at the

very least plotting something. And while that all looks pretty bad, that technically is all circumstantial evidence. But police also had some pretty hard physical evidence against Pedro. They found blood in Pedro's car and on his shoe. They also ended up finding christians backpack balled up in the back of Pedro's closet. They went as far as to match soil that they found in Pedro's car to the swamp or Christians bo he was ultimately found. And remember how Christian

was tied up with duct tape. They ended up looking at the rip of duct tape on Christian's arms and matching it with a tear of duct tape that they found on Pedro's car, meaning allegedly he used the same role of duct tape to tie up his ex best friend that he then used to tape something together on his car. It's a plethora of things that he did wrong and that police caught him on. I mean, it's just sloppy like he It's like he wasn't even trying to cover up this crime. It's so incredible that they

could match the tears in the duct tape completely. And it's so true about the Google searches. I mean, my Google searches as a true crime producer are not good. Now, They're pretty bad. You can imagine the kind of searches we all have. And so it's true that is circumstantial evidence. But then when you couple that with the physical evidence, it seemed like police had a pretty strong case against Pedro now, and I go back to like what I was thinking earlier about at that age, you just kind

of think you're untouchable. And it seems to me like Pedro really did think he was, because he did all these things and with no attempt to cover them up. I mean, he kept his backpack. Why would you do that? And then he had the audacity to go and march himself into a police station and sit down for eight hours, lying straight to CoP's faces. I mean, it's just he

clearly wasn't thinking straight, right. It is kind of amazing that Erica, like she said, you're going to police with me, and he goes he doesn't even say I can't, I don't feel well, or like come up with some excuse. He goes, and it is it's that like I'm invincible and I'll be able to talk my way out of this. Speaking of Erica, Poor Erica, she must feel so bad about this, which is just tragic. Yeah. I don't even know how you handle the guilt. And it is absolutely

not her fault. She couldn't control Pedro. She had no idea what Pedro was gonna do. She's not responsible for Pedro's actions, but I'm sure she felt awful. I mean, I think the only thing that probably helped her was knowing that she could testify against Pedro and help ultimately put him away hopefully. Yeah. Scary to think she was going to have to face him in the courtroom though. But perhaps the most compelling evidence against Pedro was his

former cellmate. He was a man named Michael Angelo. Michael had bumked with Pedro for two and a half years and had gained his trust. According to Michael, Pedro not only admitted to killing Christian to him, but also spilled every Corey detail. Here's a portion of Michael's testimony. I think originally said that he was gonna try to poison him with a mixture of sleeping pills and pest aside and mixed with soda or something like I had, I

guess soda. And his backup plan was to have a knife, you know, to cut his throat in case it didn't work, you know, after he got back in the driver's seat and he was you know, I guess, riding around to dispose of the body that it was making it sound like. And then that's the reason that he held onto the driving strap while he was riding around because it freaked him out. As we know, Michael Angelo really helped the prosecution in their case against Pedro and what he thought

was pretty damning according to him. When Pedro and Michael first met in jail, Pedro allegedly wanted to use Michael for his gang contacts on the outside. Pedro's plan was to get a gang member to start killing people in a similar fashion to Christian so that the public would think there was a serial killer on the loose. Um Instead of doing that, which thank god he didn't, Michael decided to become a jailhous informant for a more leading in sentence, and Pedro ended up being very forthcoming with

his cellmate. He told Michael that the day of the murder, he drugged Christian with the laced gatorade that he had bought at Loews. He then put a thick moving strap around his neck and braced himself around the driver's seat and pulled. Christian struggled but was too groggy from the drugs to fully fight back, and according to Pedro, it took thirteen minutes to kill his former best friend. Do we know anything about Patriot's defense to all this, as

you know, the prosecution is laying all this out. Yeah, So when Pedro took the stand, first of all, there was an audible gasp in the courtroom. He said that he loved Erica and he wanted to get her back, and he was going to get her back. But he admitted that when he found out that Erica and Christian were dating, he snapped, totally snapped. Um. He then stuck to the story that the last time he saw a Christian they got into a physical fight, but that he left him on the side of the road and never

saw him again. He said that dishovel and the drug he said, those were actually to kill himself. But yeah, and he told yours that he was going to dig his own grave um. On the stand, his behavior was very strange. He was conversational and jovial. At times he was smiling and laughing, just trying to imagine what Christian's parents were thinking while he was on the stand. His testimony just must have been so hard to hear her Christians family and friends. Let's stop here for another break.

I want to go back to the murder taking place in the Walmart parking lot, because as we know, they pulled into the parking lot at for eleven PM and then pulled out at so that means somewhere in that a little or to our window is when Pedro actually killed Christian. Which is just so haunting to think that, you know, you can see the car on surveillance and sometime in that time period someone's getting murdered. It's just hard to wrap your head around. Let's just think about

how long thirteen minutes actually is. It's not a quick gunshot. That is a very very long murder. Yeah, you really, you really have to want to do it. Do we know if it happened at the beginning of those two hours in the parking lot or towards the end. Well, we know that he gave him that laced gatorade, so I would imagine he gave him the gateorade when they pulled in and then waited a little bit. How long does Nike will take to kick in forty minutes, thirty minutes?

But we know that he then pulled out of that parking lot and drove somewhere to that swamp to hide the body. So he's driving with his dead best friend in the front seat. I mean, no, it's awful, you know, and thinking about his diary is and what his frame of mind was. It wasn't just a teenage boy lamenting

over heartbreak. This is a very disturbed young man who was spiraling out of control over his love of this girl, and without help or someone to talk to, he really just thought this was his way out, and this is what he had to do. It's just really disturbing. What's interesting is that on the stand, Pedro said he snapped. But when I think of snapped, I think of then

crime of passion. It happens in the moment. This is a lot of planning that went into executing this murder, and and something else that's you know, stuck with me in terms of, you know, an explanation of the shovel. He said he was going to dig his own grave, so he might have dug a hole. If this were true, he would have dug a hole, but he couldn't have covered it. Yeah, I mean it definitely makes no sense.

That's an interesting point about the premeditation. Who I didn't think about that, but like he had weeks to think about this. I mean, he went to Gainesville with a plan, and his whole explanation makes no sense because he's saying he snapped, snapped and did what though he's saying all he did was maybe punch him a couple of times and then left him and didn't kill him. So he's kind of contradicting himself once again, like he did in the interrogation room, now he's doing it on the stand.

I can't believe that his lawyer didn't think of a better defense. I mean, this is a pretty weak defense, I think, yeah, very weak considering all the evidence against him. I mean, it was a completely avoidable situation. Absolutely didn't have to happen. I'm not a psychologist. I was not inside Petro's brain. Although his journal gave us some insight into what he was thinking. And you know, like you said, Jeff,

he's troubled. He obviously was very troubled. It's too bad that he wasn't able to get any help before I got to this point. It's just a very, very sad case and one that absolutely did not have to happen. After nine days of testimony and over one thousand pieces of evidence, a jury of eight women and four men took just three hours to find Pedro Bravo guilty of murder. He made a final statement maintaining his innocence and continuing to deny murdering Christian. The judge sentence him to life

in prison with no parole. During Arika and Christians brief but significant romance, Christian was romantic and passionate. He always made her feel special, and Erica dreamt of one day marrying him. It was a dream that would never become a reality. Leah, what can you tell us about your podcast The Real Killer? So I'm sure you have experienced a case that you cannot walk away from. And I told a version of the story of The Real Killer in for TV and since then I've just been like,

I'm not done. I need to go deeper. I need to kind of forget what I think I know about the case and just start from square one. And that's what I did. It's about a horrific murder that happened

in St. Louis. A single mom was murdered. Her two little girls, who were four and seven, were viciously, viciously attacked Joan tap the mom, she dies, The two little girls survived barely, and the seven year old becomes police's only real eyewitness, and a month later, she ends up pointing the finger at one of her mom's ex boyfriends. Two trials later, he's convicted and sent to prison, and that's supposed to be the end of it, but it

was kind of just the beginning. And in that seven year old who's now in her early forties, were cants and says he didn't do it. So we reinvestigate the case. We talked to those at the center of it, and we asked who is the real killer? And what we find is shocking. All episodes are out now, all eleven episodes, and I still feel like I want to go back and do more. It might be one of those stories that I've just never going to be able to shake. It's kind of shocking to see how it all plays

out in this case. Yeah, you do such a good job of the complex nature of the crime and tracking it over all these years. Yeah, it's really interesting and like just the human experience of it all and like

how it affected all these people. You see an article or you listen to a single episode of Crazy and Love and you kind of forget that, like these are real people, and like there's years and years of trauma that it happens because of it, And so I think in The Real Killer you're really able to explore a lot of that over the course of the eleven episodes.

So great job, thank you. That's the one thing I really really wanted to do was to make sure that everyone who listens gets a sense of who these people are. You know, it's not just like the label of victim or the label of accused killer, but who are these people? What did they go through? It's a case that spans almost forty years. Well, thanks for being on today's podcast. You offered some of that insight into this very sad

and tragic case. Thank you very much. Shameless Plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review to view our recent documentary Murdered Missing in Montana. You'll find it streaming now on Peacock. Follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy and Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Bob. Crazy and Love is a

production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,