GUILTY FL - Raquel Calderin, 42, Miami, 9 Sept 2012

South Florida man arrested in the murder of his vanished wife allegedly confessed to killing her, but didn’t say where her body is, Miami-Dade police said Monday.

Jesus Maqueira, 54, who was arrested Friday on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated stalking in the death of Raquel Maria Calderin, 42, is being held on no bond, online jail records said Monday night.

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An arrest affidavit said that when Maqueira was confronted by investigators about his inability to explain the evidence against him, he allegedly replied, “Look, I killed her, so take me to jail.”

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He laughed at investigators when they pressed him but refused to provide details, according to the affidavit.

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MIAMI -
Miami-Dade police were searching for a woman who was last seen on September 9.

Raquel Maria Calderin, 42, was last seen leaving her work.

Calderin is described as 5 feet 3 inches tall, 135 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen driving a black 2000 Ford Expedition with Florida tag X377BG.

Anyone with information on Calderin's whereabouts is asked to call police at 305-476-5423 or 305-418-7200.

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Police spoke with the couple’s three children as well. Investigators determined that at some point Maqueira tried to “coach” the children about the case, the affidavit said.

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In the end, Maqueira’s own father unwittingly gave investigators the tip they needed to find her skeletal remains in an Everglades canal.

The defendant’s elderly father — confronted with car toll records — finally confided last week to detectives that on the night Raquel Calderin vanished, he had picked up his son from a gas station at the corner of Tamiami Trail at Krome Avenue, according to evidence released in the case Thursday.

That crucial admission narrowed the geographic search area. Police divers Monday night found his wife’s SUV submerged in a nearby canal... Also found in the vehicle: a serrated butcher knife and clothes believed to be Calderin’s with possible rip marks, according to law enforcement sources.

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Three years ago, murder suspect Jesus Maqueira mocked Miami-Dade police detectives, saying “there was little they could to do him” unless they found the body of his estranged wife, who went missing in 2012.

They finally found her skeleton in the summer of 2014 in her SUV in a canal adjacent to the Everglades. And with a wealth of circumstantial evidence against him, Maqueira was convicted Monday of murdering Raquel Calderdin...

He will be sentenced on Aug. 19, but Florida law dictates an automatic punishment for the crime: life in prison.

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Even after the jury spoke and he listened to the mournful words of his grieving daughter, Jesus Maqueira bristled at his murder conviction.

“There is no proof I killed anybody,” Maqueira insisted in court Friday, waving his shackled hands, while lashing out at police, prosecutors and even his own children.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Richard Hersch was unmoved. “There was more than enough evidence to show you killed your wife and disposed of her body,” the judge replied.

And with that, the judge sentenced Maqueira to life in prison for the 2012 murder of his estranged wife, Raquel Calderin, whose skeletal remains were found two years later in a submerged SUV in a canal near the Everglades.

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