Local

Man accused of killing, dismembering Orlando woman takes plea deal

By Janine Reyes
By Janine Reyes
The man accused of killing a woman and disposing her dismembered body in Lake Underhill will spend the next 30 years in prison.
Rafael Gonzalez accepted a plea deal Friday in the death of Olivia Diggs.
Her body was found in the lake last year.
The victim’s family and friends said they had no idea for days that she had died.
Olivia Diggs’s brother, Tim Diggs, said their mother died the day after his sister.
For a week, the family had no idea why she wouldn’t answer the phone, or that it was her remains that were discovered dismembered in Lake Underhill.
“I lost my sister and my mom, back to back. I still go through it to this day, and that’s the hardest thing to recover from,” Tim Diggs said.
Read: Man's arrest connected to discovery of woman's dismembered body
He struggled on the stand Friday as he saw and spoke to Gonzalez for the first time.
Gonzalez admitted that he killed and dismembered Olivia Diggs, a mother of three, last year.
Her identity remained a mystery for days after she was discovered in the lake.
“He’s a monster and I’m never going to forgive him,” said friend Susan Friel.
Prior to her death, Olivia Diggs had suffered through homelessness and struggled to pull her life back together.
She got to the point where she had all three children in her custody when she died.
Read: ‘I don't know what I'm going to do without her,' friend says of mother found dismembered in Orlando
“She had just gotten them back together. She wanted to keep them as a family and he took that from her,” said Friel.
Olivia Diggs’s two youngest children have been adopted, and her oldest lives with family.
%INLINE%%INLINE%
“God have mercy on you, bro. You took her from her kids and her brother,” said Tim Diggs.
Tim Diggs said he would have liked to see Gonzalez serve a life sentence. That’s what Gonzalez would have faced had he gone to trial.

Cox Media Group

0

Most Read