Patrick de la Cerda: A Crime That Shocked a Family

February 9, 2026

In this episode, Garrett and Payton explore the case of Patrick de la Cerda, a man living what seemed like a fairytale romance until his life was tragically cut short by a killer no one saw coming.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You’re listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast.
This is Murder With My Husband. I’m Payton Moreland.
And I’m Garrett Moreland.
He’s the husband.
And I’m the husband. Welcome back.

Another week, another episode. Here we are. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching on Netflix. We love you guys. That’s what I’ve got.

We’re excited because you might not be able to tell, but if you go watch one of our other episodes on Netflix and then rewatch this one, Payton and I spent hours and hours relighting and redoing our entire set.
Yeah, can’t you tell?
If you can’t tell, damn, that sucks. But if you can tell, thank you.

A lot of it is a bunch of little stuff. We added a lot more lights. We just wanted to upgrade things a little bit. We hopefully sound the same, because we still have our good mics and good audio. So we’re chilling, we’re ready to go, we’re excited to be here, and we’re excited that we were able to switch things around a little bit.

Don’t want to ramble too much or have too many announcements, but we dropped some new merch. I actually wore this, I think on one of my live streams that I do on my Instagram, and everyone was like, “Oh my gosh, where’s the merch?” So it is available now.

It is so cute. It’s kind of like a… what would you call that?
Varsity collection.
Yeah, I guess you could say. So go check it out, mwmhshop.com. We’ve got some new merch. Really cute, not gonna lie.

All right, Gar, do you have your 10 seconds?

For my 10 seconds this week, I will make it quick. I say that every week. I got a little sick. I was sick. Today’s the first day that I’m feeling better. I was sick for a week. Feeling good now. I’m healthy. No worries there.

Payton wants another dog. She’s been trying to convince me to get another dog. Literally today in the car, we went and got… we go to Dutch Bros every single day, as you guys know. We’re on the way back, and Payton’s like, “Hey, look at this.” I’m like, “What is it?” She’s like, “It’s a puppy.”

Bro, you put me on the spot. Like, you outed me. What do you have to say for yourself?
I have so much love to give.
Okay. That’s a good one.
That’s what I have to say.
I like that.

And there are so many pups that need homes.
They can all just come to mine.

Payton wants another puppy. We are holding off on having another puppy, so it’s not happening right now. Sorry, everybody. But that’s what I’ve got this week. Puppies and being sick.

So, on that note, let’s hop into today’s case.

Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com, newsjournalonline.com, caselaw.findlaw.com, thatslife.com, tillmanfuneralhome.com, crimeandcoffeecouple.wordpress, clickorlando.com, dailymail.com, cbs.com, and A Plan to Kill, Season 1, Episode 6.

You know, I think most people in this world deserve a second chance at happiness, an opportunity to leave the past behind and move forward with their lives, especially when it comes to love. Because sometimes we really just choose the wrong people. We ignore the red flags. We rush into things. But I believe each relationship, good or bad, teaches us something about ourselves. It’s a lesson in what we want and what we don’t want in the future.

So when someone is brave enough to walk away from a situation that doesn’t serve them, I have a lot of respect for that.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy to shut the door and never look back. Because for some of us, the past refuses to stay in the past. Instead, it haunts us. It torments us. And it will stop at nothing to get what it wants, even if it destroys us.

It’s 2018 in the small town of Deltona, Florida, a quiet suburban community between Orlando and Daytona Beach.

Now, for 25-year-old Patrick De La Cerda, this is home. A place where he’s ready to start the next chapter of his life, being that he’s in his mid-20s.

Patrick is pretty close with his family. So close, in fact, that he shares the same home and construction job with his dad, Max.
Patrick and his dad, Max, living together.

His family described Patrick as a go-getter, someone who lived every day to its absolute fullest. His mother, Patricia, also described him as a romantic, someone who always dreamed of meeting the perfect person, settling down, and starting a family of his own.

A dream that actually started to come to fruition a year before, back in June of 2017. That was when Patrick had met a 28-year-old bank teller named Jessica Devnani.

He met Jessica on a dating app called Plenty of Fish, and it only took a few dates for Patrick to fall head over heels for Jessica.

That’s kind of a smart name.
Plenty of Fish?
Yeah.
Is that the first time you thought that?
What do you mean?
Like when you’ve heard of Plenty of Fish.
No.
You’ve never heard of Plenty of Fish.
That’s why I said it.
Babe, I just turned 56.
Yeah.
Okay, guys, for those wondering, I’m not 56. I’m 30.
Okay, 31. Same thing. Chill.

But no, I never used a dating app because I met…
’Cause he had motion.
I had motion. Can a white boy get a little motion?

No, but I met you, and it was right around the time I feel like dating apps were becoming more popular.
I didn’t have a dating app either.
See? ’Cause you have motion.
No, I just, again, they weren’t that popular yet, I feel like.
That’s funny.

So it only took a few dates for Patrick to fall head over heels for Jessica, and honestly, she felt the same. She saw him as the full package. And even though the two lived about 30 miles away from one another, with Jessica in Orlando, their relationship escalated pretty quickly.

They started taking trips together and talking about a future with one another. Even Patrick’s dad, Max, who he lived with, could see that this was the person for Patrick. He had found the one in Jessica.

So in December of 2017, Patrick actually took the next step. He bought Jessica a ring and got down on one knee, and Jessica said yes.

Patrick told her, “Okay, this ring I’m proposing with is just a placeholder.” He wanted her to pick out something custom, something she really loved. But he still wanted to be able to propose and keep it a surprise.

This was basically just another gesture that showed how romantic and caring Patrick really was. He cared that the proposal was a surprise, and he also cared that she got a ring she loved.

And as they worked together to design this ring, the two had already started coming up with plans for their wedding. They were considering two different places: either West Palm Beach, Florida, where they planned to eventually move, or France, where Patrick’s mother, Patricia, was from.

By the end of February, Jessica’s custom engagement ring was finished and was supposed to be on the way any day now. She couldn’t wait to try it on for the very first time.

At that point, Patrick and Jessica seemed more in love than ever.

On the night of February 26th, 2018, Patrick left Jessica a voicemail. He said, “I love you. Goodnight. Sweet dreams. In the morning, I’ll call you. I’ll send you a text when I wake up a little later, all right? Love you. Goodnight. Bye.”

It was a voicemail that would be played over and over by Jessica in the years to come, because it was actually the last one Patrick would ever leave her.

On the morning of February 27th, Patrick was home alone while his father was out on a construction job about 70 miles away. That morning, he texted Jessica as always, told her he loved her, wished her a good day at work, and again promised to call her a little later, like he always did.

But shortly after 7:38 a.m., Max, his father, tries to call Patrick. He had just gotten a call that someone was there to deliver a package for him and it needed to be signed for. Now, Max thought it was probably the engagement ring that Patrick and Jessica were waiting on.

See, Max and Patrick’s property was behind a big gated fence. So Max had a sign on the gate that said to text or call if something needed to be delivered. None of this was unusual.

What was strange was the fact that Patrick wasn’t answering his calls or texts after Max said, “Hey, there’s someone there with a delivery,” especially because he knew Patrick had been anxiously waiting for this ring to come.

Instead, hours went by with no word from Patrick.

So Max calls Jessica to see if she’s heard from him, and she says, “No. Actually, I’ve been a bit worried too.” She hasn’t spoken to Patrick since that morning.

That’s when she decides, okay, I’m going to leave work early. I’m going to go check on Patrick, because now his dad is saying he’s not answering. At this point, she’s kind of feeling like something might be wrong.

So around 11:00 a.m., she makes the 30-mile drive from Orlando to Deltona.

Meanwhile, back at Patrick’s property, a neighbor is actually calling 911. She had stopped by the home and noticed that the front door was wide open. She also noticed that Patrick De La Cerda was bleeding right inside the entrance of his home.

And when the operator asks her if she wants to perform CPR, the caller says no. She says it’s because it’s pretty obvious that Patrick is already dead.

Where is your emergency?
He’s been shot and killed.
When did that happen?
I don’t know.
You don’t want to try CPR, correct?
No. No, he’s dead. He’s cold.

Jessica actually gets there a few minutes after this 911 call is placed. And before police can even arrive, she walks up and sees her fiancé lying there in a pool of his own blood. His body is already cold to the touch.

Minutes later, sheriff’s deputies arrive on the scene, and they determine that Patrick had been shot four times through the head, chest, and hip.
Geez, dude.

It’s pretty obvious just by looking at him that the weapon of choice was a high-powered rifle.
Okay.

They could also tell because the killer had left behind two unique shell casings that are used in semi-automatic weapons. But the attacker had seemingly collected the other four casings, since we know six shots were fired in total.

It appeared as though Patrick had almost been ambushed, answering the door only to find his killer standing there on the other side.

Now, luckily, Max and Patrick did have security cameras set up around their house.
I want to see the cameras.

But when police went into the home to try and locate the footage, they find that Patrick’s computer and the hard drive from the home security system are missing.

What’s odd is that there’s nothing else that appears to be missing from the home. So if this wasn’t a robbery, this was definitely a planned-out, orchestrated attack.

Which obviously means now it was time to look at suspects, and there seemed to be one right from the start.

Patrick and Max had another neighbor who was an Army veteran supposedly suffering from dementia. Turns out, Patrick and this neighbor had exchanged some words in the past.
Oh, man.

And on one particular evening, things escalated. The neighbor went inside, grabbed his gun, and started firing toward Patrick’s house. Thankfully, no one was injured, but Patrick called police, who then sent an entire SWAT team to deal with it. The man was tackled and taken into custody.

So police look into this report and they’re obviously like, hey, he has a neighbor feud. This is a potential suspect. Maybe he felt like he hadn’t settled the score against Patrick.

But there was one big problem: the neighbor was currently in jail.
That’s a pretty good alibi, honestly.

So they quickly scratch him off the list.

This is when his father, Max, tells police there might be another person of interest. During his interview, he mentions the call he’d gotten earlier from the delivery driver, and the fact that Patrick was shot seemingly right as he opened the front door.

Well, that doesn’t look good for whoever dropped off that package.

And Max also remembers that the delivery driver had asked for Patrick by name. So Max had said, “Okay, let me call my son and I’ll call you right back. What’s your number?”

But the delivery driver refused to leave any details with Max, which is why he thought this was a bit strange. He’s like, “What if this wasn’t actually a delivery driver?”

Meanwhile, a distraught Jessica is also brought down to the station and is speaking with police. When asked if she thought or knew of any enemies Patrick might have had, she says there is one person who might have wanted to hurt him: her ex-boyfriend of eight years, a 50-year-old man named Greg Bender.
Okay.

She said that Greg was, even to this day, still in love with her and was not happy about her whirlwind romance with Patrick.
Oh my gosh, dude.

In fact, she hadn’t heard from Greg in months, but he had actually called her that morning. Not once, but twice. Jessica refused to answer because she’s like, “Why is my ex-boyfriend calling me?” But now, with everything that’s happened, she’s thinking, maybe those calls weren’t a coincidence.

So let’s talk about Greg, the ex-boyfriend.

I feel like I’m not gonna like Greg.

He and Jessica had met on a dating app back in 2009, when Greg was 42 and Jessica was 21. Greg was a successful hedge fund manager. He lived in a big house in a fancy neighborhood right outside of Orlando. He was the kind of guy who loved fast cars, guns, and living an expensive, luxurious lifestyle.

Basically, he was the polar opposite of Patrick.

But Jessica and Greg went on to have this pretty long relationship. Six years in, Greg actually proposed to her. And while Jessica said yes, she probably had some doubts about the marriage. They weren’t exactly a healthy couple. In fact, things had been pretty toxic and on and off for those six years.

Greg apparently showed his true colors early on. When Jessica told him about someone else she had been seeing, Greg began stalking the other guy, found out where he lived, and said if he ever came near Jessica again, he would tie him up and make him regret it.

Greg’s jealousy was a constant problem in the relationship. But Jessica admitted she was a bit naive when she said yes to his proposal. She was in love with him, and at the time she wasn’t interested in being with anyone else.

At least, that was how she felt until 2016.

That year, Greg was hospitalized after undergoing a medical procedure, and Jessica showed up to offer her support. But when she got to the room, there was another woman sitting by Greg’s bedside.
Okay.

Confused, Jessica explains to this random woman that she was his fiancée. Like, “My ring.” To which the other woman responded, “I’m his wife.”
No.

That’s when Jessica realized Greg had been living a double life their entire engagement.

How does that happen? How do people pull that off?
Because I’ve heard of cases, too, where people have full-on kids and families in other countries, and they don’t know about each other. And they somehow have a full-blown relationship with somebody else.
Yeah.
Like, how? I just don’t understand how.

And here’s the thing. It’s like the projection of him being super jealous and overly protective of his 21-year-old girlfriend when he has a whole wife.

So she realizes in that moment, oh my gosh, our relationship was a lie.

But when Greg recovered and left the hospital a few days later, he called Jessica begging her to fix things. He’s like, “Listen. Yes, I’m married, but it wasn’t serious. It was just a business arrangement.” He claimed he only married the other woman so her son could go to the good schools in the district he lived in.

I don’t know whether Jessica believed this or not, but she gave Greg an ultimatum after that. She said, “You have until the end of the year to leave and divorce your wife, or I’m leaving.”

But 2016 comes and goes, and Greg doesn’t make any moves to get divorced. So in 2017, she gives the ring back to Greg and says, “That’s it. I’m done.”

But Greg doesn’t let her walk out of his life that easily, as we probably guessed. He says things like, “You can’t do this to me. I’m not gonna let you go.”

No matter how much she tries to ignore him, he keeps pursuing her. It gets to the point where she actually has to block his number and his accounts on several apps. Then she creates new profiles just to hide from him. All of this only pushes Jessica further away from the long-term relationship she’d been in.

By February 2017, she’s back on dating websites, where she connects with 24-year-old Patrick De La Cerda that June.

And that’s when things start to get pretty ugly.

Obviously, she’s happy to have met Patrick. But Greg comes across Patrick’s Facebook page when he and Jessica start dating, and he sees that this guy on Facebook is dating his ex-girlfriend.

The ego on this guy is mind-blowing, because…
So he turns to his wife and is like…
Yeah.
That’s what I’m saying. “My girlfriend.”
To have a full-blown wife…
Yeah.
…and kids, and then be dating somebody else, but then being mad because your ex-girl… Yeah. That’s insane.

Isn’t cheating on you, by the way. She left you.
Yeah.
And is in a new relationship.

So he sees the two of them together on Facebook and starts sending Patrick threatening messages, saying things like, “I know where you live. I’m going to harm you.”

Then Greg says things to Jessica like, “I’m gonna hire a hitman,” or, “I’ll just do the job myself,” in regards to hurting Patrick.

In fact, it was threats like this that actually made Patrick install those security cameras around his and his dad’s home in the first place.

There was even a point where Jessica felt compelled to meet up with Greg in person to try to sever ties, to make him understand. To talk him down off the ledge, like, “You can’t keep threatening my new boyfriend. You’ve got to let this go.” She felt that if she gave him what he wanted, maybe met up with him, maybe he’d back off. That maybe he wouldn’t actually hurt anyone.

This is sad.
This is horrible.

What Jessica didn’t realize was that at this point, Greg had actually hired a private investigator to follow her. When she would meet up with him, he secretly filmed them and then sent that footage to Patrick, saying, “Oh, she’s going on dates with me. She’s meeting up with me. She’s doing this behind your back. You should break up with her.”

And I’m not gonna lie, it did work a little. Patrick was like, “Jessica, why are you even meeting up with him?” They did fight about it. But she explains. She’s like, “I’m trying to get him off our backs. I’m trying to let him down gently. I’m trying to sever this slowly so that he’ll just leave us alone.”

Patrick forgives her. He understands.

Greg doesn’t give up, though. The threats continued, some of which were left on voicemails.

“I’m making a phone call. I’m giving instructions, and I’m gonna have my plan put into action.”

Greg said things like, “I’m giving instructions. I’m going to put my plan in action,” seemingly about hiring a hitman.

That’s when Jessica and Patrick actually decide to go to court for a restraining order. Both of them filed for protection against Greg, her much older ex-boyfriend. But only Jessica was granted that protection. Patrick’s order was denied.

Which is terrifying, because Jessica later said in interviews that she was never afraid of Greg hurting her. She was always terrified of what he might do to the next people she got involved with.

You know, it’s really sad because there really isn’t much you can do about it. Even if the restraining order was granted, it’s not like there’s a bubble around you that stops someone from coming near you. Most of the time, if that person still wants to hurt you, they probably will.

Now, part of this restraining order actually required Greg to turn over his large gun collection.
Oh, okay.
Like, “You have to get rid of your guns.” This was in December of 2017.

He never does.

Just like Garrett said, they don’t always obey it.

But after Jessica got the restraining order, things did start to quiet down a little bit. The voicemails stopped. The Facebook threats came to an end. It seemed like maybe Greg had finally come to terms with reality.

So two months go by with radio silence from Greg. That was until February 27th, 2018, when she saw Greg Bender’s name come up on her phone that day. And then her fiancé ends up murdered in his doorway. She realizes something is seriously wrong.

Now, hearing all of this, police are like, okay, forget the neighbor guy who’s in jail. We have obviously found our primary suspect. This is Suspect 101. But they need more evidence.

So they ask Jessica, “Would you be willing to help us out? Call Greg and see if you can get him to confess.” And she agrees. She tries.

With officers listening in, Greg tells her he saw the news about Patrick’s death and he’s so sorry for her loss. But Jessica puts him on the spot. She tells him, “I know you did this. You told me so many times you were going to hire a hitman. You told me you were going to kill Patrick.” She asks him point-blank, “Did you shoot him?”

On the phone call, Greg denies it. Says, “Absolutely not. I’m your friend. I would not do that.”

But obviously, Jessica is like, okay, you’re lying.

Realizing the call is going nowhere, police try another tactic. They can’t arrest Greg just based on his history of threats. But they can arrest him for violating his restraining order against Jessica, since he did call her twice earlier that day, which he’s not allowed to do.

So they track Greg down and get him into custody. But they can’t keep him for long if he’s not going to confess. He’s working on making bail. They’re going to have to move quickly if they want to file charges for murder, which either means extracting a confession or finding more evidence that he is the one who killed Patrick.

Unfortunately for Greg Bender, he’s made more than one enemy. And when he gets arrested, all of these enemies are willing to speak out.

That night, while Greg was behind bars, detectives received a phone call from none other than Greg Bender’s now-estranged wife. This is the same wife he told Jessica he was married to as a “business arrangement” after they met in the hospital.

Her name is Daymara Sanchez, and she has something she wants to share with police after finding out her husband had been arrested.
Okay.

She’s pretty nervous and clearly terrified. So police tell her, “Let’s just meet secretly.” They pick a secluded parking spot and set a time for the following day, February 28th.

Here’s what she tells them during this meetup.

In December of 2017, she and Greg finally decided to get divorced. She was packing her things to move out of the house they shared when she stumbled across something: a blue spiral notebook that, according to her, belonged to Greg.

She opened it. And inside, she found what looked like an elaborate plan for a murder.
That’s insane.

So she grabs the spiral notebook she found while packing up. She marches right up to Greg and confronts him about it. She’s like, “What is this? This is weird. What is this in this notebook that’s yours?”

He admits it’s his and that he wrote it, but says it was just a fantasy. It was fiction. He wasn’t actually planning to murder anyone.

Now she’s on her way out the door, so she’s like, “You know what? Whatever.”
Yeah.
“You’re weird. I’m getting out of here.” And she just lets it go because she wanted to be done.
I don’t blame her.
What else is she gonna do?

That was until she saw the news about Patrick.

She knew about his connection to Jessica, and the plan in the spiral notebook she had found and read sounded almost identical to the crime that had been committed against Patrick.

So that’s when she goes to police. And this actually gives them enough to get a search warrant for Greg’s house. They’re like, “If he was planning this murder in his house, we can now search his house.” They move fast on that.

While Greg is still behind bars for violating his restraining order, police execute the warrant on his home.
Which is good, because then he can’t go clean anything up.
He can’t move things.
Right. It’s a great time.

Detectives feel like this is probably a shot in the dark. I mean, what are the odds that this guy just left evidence lying around his house incriminating him?

But the second they get inside and look through his home office, what do they find?
His spiral blue notebook.
The notebook. Just like his estranged wife had described.

And in those pages were specific details, not only about a random murder, but about Patrick’s house. Like the fact that he had a dog named Optimus who was, quote, “slow and old,” written in the notebook. And that there was mulch in Patrick’s yard, which he noted he could use for cover.

These are obviously things Greg would only know if he had been stalking Patrick and literally planning out this murder.

The difference was, Greg wrote about how he planned to tell Patrick he was just going to rob him, and then his plan was to inject him with a mixture of heroin and fentanyl to make it look like he’d overdosed. And if that didn’t work, he was just going to suffocate Patrick to death.

Imagine just listing all this out.
I was gonna say, who writes this down? Like, what? Nobody.
Is he afraid he’s gonna forget it?
Nobody writes it down. It’s only insane people that write this down, because no normal person would be writing this down.
He just pulls out his handy-dandy notebook and is like, “Was it fentanyl or was it…”
Yeah. “Wait, what am I doing again?”
Crazy.
It’s gross. It’s weird.

Now obviously, it seems like Greg pivoted. He got to the property and pretended to act like a delivery man to lure Patrick into a vulnerable position. When Patrick opened the door to sign for the package, Greg shot him, hoping the crime would just seem random.

Still, it was clear that Greg had thought this crime out, because among those pages were notes like, “Dispose of clothes, plate, tracker, gloves. Put duct tape on the bottom of a second pair of shoes so there are no tread prints. Wait for confirmation that he is alone. Turn off cell phones.”

As for additional evidence, detectives also discovered a hand-drawn map sitting on top of a garage bin that showed the exact location of Patrick’s house.

This is crazy.
This is like…
A couple of things. This is really well thought out, in a bad way.

I’m like, are you trying to get caught? You’re literally leaving a blueprint. This is worse than having a Home Depot receipt. If you think about it, if he burned the notebook?
Maybe he thought he would be able to.
There’s no evidence after that.
This all happened so fast, so maybe he thought he’d be able to get rid of it. I mean, it was sitting on the garbage bin, so maybe he was planning on throwing it away.

But also, it’s 2017 and we know you’ve been stalking this guy. Why do you have a map that has the exact location of Patrick’s house?
Yeah.
You’re overboard. You know where he lives. It’s almost begging to get caught.

When they run this map for prints later, the only ones on it are Greg’s.

To me, this is open and shut, 100%.

On top of that, they find a gun safe inside his walk-in closet, and it has the same ammunition that was used to kill Patrick. While they don’t find the murder weapon itself, they do find a bunch of other guns, which are still in violation of his restraining order.

Jessica can confirm that she remembered him owning an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle when they were still together. This is the same type of gun that would later end her future fiancé’s life.
That’s so sad.

A gun that detectives are sure is now at the bottom of a lake somewhere.

Meanwhile, down at the station, 50-year-old Greg Bender is paying his bail for the restraining order violation. He is released. They’re trying to move fast, but he still manages to get out. He heads home.

When he gets there, he finds police at his house, literally executing a search warrant. Before he can even step inside, they’re like, “Turn around. You’re back under arrest.” They place him back in handcuffs and send him back to county jail, this time for first-degree murder charges.

Here’s the problem, though. They have no eyewitnesses. They have no DNA at the crime scene. They have no confession. They have a lot of probable cause and a lot of circumstantial evidence. They just don’t have anything directly tying him to Patrick’s front porch at the exact moment of the murder.

No, that makes sense. I’m just trying to think.
Yeah, I mean, I guess everything is circumstantial. But it does feel conviction-worthy.
No, 100%. It just sucks when it’s all circumstantial.

But prosecutors are like, let’s just keep building. Let’s make this an airtight case.

They find a couple more things of note. One of Greg’s neighbors had a security camera, and they find footage showing Greg leaving his house in his car around 6:13 a.m. on the morning of February 27th.

That’s roughly an hour before Max got the call that a delivery person was waiting at the gate, trying to get Patrick to come to the door and sign for a package. Which we can now infer was the killer.

There’s also information on a burner phone that Greg had in his possession. The data from that phone shows it only ever called two numbers: Greg’s own personal phone and Max, Patrick’s dad.

Confirming, with actual evidence, that he was the “delivery person” who called just moments before Patrick opened the door and was killed.

Now, data on the burner phone also showed it sat at Greg’s house for weeks leading up to the murder. Premeditation. And it only left once to travel to Patrick’s property the day he was killed, meaning it was likely bought with the sole intention of being used for the murder plan. He didn’t want to call Max on his own phone.

Prosecutors also ran some bullet casings that were found in Greg’s desk drawer. They discovered they were an exact match with the two that were left behind at the crime scene.
Interesting. Okay.

Unfortunately, it would be about three years before any of this could be presented in a courtroom.

Crazy. I mean, this used to bother me a lot, and it still does for the families and the victims involved because they have to wait so long to get justice. But the only upside is that usually that person is in prison during this time.
And…
Usually the reason it’s taking so long is because they’re building an airtight case.
It’s not always just…
They’re trying to wait.
Yes. You have the few who are trying to stall on purpose.
Trying to just get appeals.
But a lot of the time, there are reasons behind it.

So as Patrick’s friends and family waited for that time to come, Jessica’s 30th birthday happened. And on that day, Patrick’s parents actually gave her a birthday present she would never forget: the real engagement ring that Patrick had never gotten to give her, the one that was supposed to be delivered.

A ring she was actually wearing when it came time for Greg Bender’s trial in May of 2021, which is devastating and also just…
That’s so heartbreaking.
…heart-wrenching.

Jessica is the star witness at trial and, unfortunately, a pawn in the defense’s arguments.

While Jessica told the jury about Greg’s history of control, jealousy, and threats, the defense used those secretly recorded meet-ups as a way to try to discredit her. They pointed to how she agreed to meet up willingly with Greg after she was already with Patrick, how she was “leading Greg on,” letting him rub her leg, hold her hand, kiss her head.

This is something I hate about the defense side of cases like this. They just make people look so bad, and especially when they make a victim look bad.
And they can’t defend themselves. It’s messed up.

Also, what is a girl supposed to do with an obsessed ex-boyfriend? If she’s genuinely trying to get him to stop, is she gonna say, “Ew, no, don’t kiss me”? No. That’s going to piss him off.
She’s trying to get him to just…
She’s legitimately scared.
Yes.
And guess what? She was scared for a valid reason because he literally killed her fiancé.

She’s using any way she can think of, like, “What can I do psychologically to get into this guy’s head and get him to leave us alone?”

She argued that she found all of this unusual because it wasn’t his typical behavior when they were together. And it wasn’t until later that she realized he was actually touching her and doing all of this for the hidden cameras he planned to share with Patrick.

Jessica told the jury that she met up with Greg to subdue the situation, hoping it would eliminate some of the threats the couple was receiving.

At one point, the defense even tried to point to Max, Patrick’s father, as a suspect.
Oh, give me a break.

This is what they say the motive is. Oh, well, he was actually in love with his son’s fiancée.

Now imagine hearing that. This is something both he and Jessica insist was absolutely not true. It’s disgusting.

The evidence brought forth by the prosecution far outweighed any hearsay mentioned by the defense. Between the bullet casings, the threatening voicemails, the restraining order, and the detailed murder plan in his little handy-dandy notebook, there was little room for doubt.

After four days of testimony, the jury left to deliberate. When they came back, they announced that Greg Bender was guilty of first-degree murder.
Yeah. Good.

In Florida, that automatically meant a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

But there’s one thing Patrick’s family and Jessica are left wondering: if Patrick had been granted a restraining order against Greg, would he still be alive today? Or would the outcome have honestly been the same?

Just my opinion weighing in, I don’t know. I think he probably would have been dead anyway.
He seemed pretty set on killing him.
I mean…
And it’s horrible. It’s so sad.

Greg still had his gun collection, even though he was supposed to hand it over as part of the restraining order. We know that was never strictly enforced. No one showed up at his house saying, “Hey, give us the guns.”

And because of that, one of those exact weapons was used to take Patrick’s life and Jessica’s future with him.

Which is why Jessica looked at Greg during her sentencing hearing when she gave her impact statement. She said, “We were gonna have the fairytale dream and live happily ever after, but this dream never became a reality because it was taken away by this man sitting in the courtroom today.”

And that is the murder of Patrick De La Cerda.

Just senseless. I mean, I hope he rots in prison. I hope he hates his life. That’s about all I’ve got.

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

My heart always goes out to the victim and their families. It’s also horrible because there is so much nuance and complexity to Jessica surviving, but her ex-boyfriend being the one who murdered her fiancé.

Then you add on top of that the fact that they were in their fairytale stage of the relationship. They hadn’t known each other that long. They had just gotten engaged. This is the most devastating heartbreak a woman can feel.
Yeah.

My heart just goes out to Jessica, her family, Patrick’s family, and everyone who was dragged through the mud at trial. I hope they know there are tons of people listening to this right now who back them, love them, and want justice for Patrick.

And at least we got some of that with Greg being put away in prison.

All right, you guys. That is our episode for today, and we will see you next time with another one.
I love it.
And I hate it.
Goodbye.

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