Today we bring you the sordid story of Lydia Echevarria, a famous – and INFAMOUS – Puerto Rican actress who murdered her equally famous and beloved husband, entertainer Luis Vigoreaux, because he was divorcing her to marry someone else. As usual we’ll do this in a timeline fashion.
Lydia Echevarria Rodriguez was born on October 14, 1931 in Caguas, Puerto Rico (about 20 miles south of San Juan). As of this writing, she is still with us, 91 years old. Her dad was a musician, and a lot of her family went into entertainment. From a young age, Lydia showed a talent for acting, languages, and quickly memorizing lines. She performed in school plays, took drama classes, and spent a summer at a theater program at the University of Puerto Rico. At some point during her teen years, Lydia was sent to Lodi, New Jersey, to study at the Immaculate Conception Convent. She was the first Puerto Rican to be admitted – everyone there, all the students and teaching nuns – were Polish. Though she had no intention of becoming a nun, she enjoyed it and learned Polish, Latin, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Lydia then moved for a bit to New York but then back to PR to finish high school. During this time, she got work doing radionovelas, which are like soap operas on the radio. She also began dating a man 11 years older than her, Fernando Luis Cruz. Upon graduation she enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico. However, she did not enroll in any acting classes. She thought she would make no money acting, so she went the safe route and became a teacher. She graduated, got a job at an elementary school, and married Fernando. ln 1952, Lydia gave birth to their first child, a son named Luis Alberto Cruz Echevarria. She then quit teaching.
However, she never really quit doing radio shows and performing in plays. She had made a lot of friends and connections in the industry, one of them being someone every Hispanic knows – Walter Mercado. So you get an idea of the circles she ran around in. In 1950, Puerto Rico started broadcasting telenovelas, Spanish soap operas that are – not intentionally - comedic gold, and Lydia got drawn into the TV scene immediately. She also did shows that were SUPPOSED to be funny lol. IMDB lists Lydia’s first credit in 1957. She would be around 26 years old then.
At some point in the mid-to late-1950s, Lydia met the famous Puerto Rican entertainer Luis Vigoreaux. More on him in a second. They were both married, and Luis and his wife had 3 sons. The two couples became friends. But there was something between Luis and Lydia, and they both got divorced, intending to be together. I believe Lydia got divorced in 1956 but Luis’s divorce came later (in fact, Luis’ youngest son was born in January of 1956).
Before we continue, a little about Luis Vigoreaux. The younger generations – or those of us born and raised outside the island – may not know who he was. But back in the day he was a HUGE star, considered a pioneer in Puerto Rican television history. He was born in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, which is on the east coast, in 1928. He had 7 siblings. His dad was a sugarcane worker, and died when Luis was young, leaving the family to fend for themselves. They moved to San Juan and as a teen Luis found work at a radio station. He got a ton of experience, especially when most of the on-air talent got drafted into World War II. He would stay in the industry. He became a radio and tv show host, a comedian, and a producer. He did commercials too, and for 30 years was the spokesperson for Sello Rojo rice. It’s still around. You can get it on amazon, Walmart and other online retailers too. In the mid-1950s, he and a fellow comedian toured around the US, bringing comedy theater performances to Latin American communities. When TV came around, he made the transition and was wildly successful hosting variety shows, game shows, doing some acting, a little of everything in the world of show biz entertainment. At the time of his murder, he was doing some tv work, acting, and hosting a radio show. He was a big deal!
But back to the beginning.
February 10, 1960: Both now divorced from their respective spouses, Lydia and Luis are free to marry each other. In no time at all they establish themselves as an entertainment power couple, with comparisons to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The show “La Hora Cero,” which they cohosted, cemented this status. Their notable guests included Marco Antonio Muñiz, Celia Cruz, and our very own distant cousin Jose Feliciano (I intend to prove this someday).
1964: Lydia and Luis welcome their first daughter, Glendaly (who, sadly, would commit suicide in 2008).
1965: Lydia and Luis welcome their second daughter, Vanessa.
The 1960s and 1970s appeared to be full of success and marital bliss. They were Puerto Rico’s most famous couple, doing everything in entertainment, even traveling to New York every year to host the Puerto Rican Day parade. They also opened their own production company, CVC.
In 1973, the couple met a young actress/model named Nidia Castillo, who was cast on their show, “Pa’rriba, papi, pa’rriba” (“Up, daddy up” - I have no idea what that show was about). Anyway, the family befriended her; she would even stay over their house from time to time. Their young daughters Glendaly and Vanessa took a liking to her, as did Lydia, who was normally the jealous type. Eventually Luis started to catch feelings for her. Uh oh. She was about half his age.
Allow me to point out Lydia and Nydia. Okay. I wonder if he accidentally mixed up their names when he was with them.
By the end of the 1970s, everything started crumbling, personally and professionally. The 1980’s brought about the end of their reign. Their production company went into bankruptcy. Lydia quit the weekly show they hosted together (although she still continued to act in romance dramas/telenovelas.). At the same time, she found out about her husband and Nydia, who he wanted to marry. They separated in 1981 and he filed for divorce. She did not take this well.
January 17, 1983, Luis and Lydia met with their attorneys to finalize their divorce, but he never made it back home. On the morning of January 18, 1983, Vigoreaux didn't show up to work at the radio station where he was a host, which worried his coworkers because he’d never missed a show. His Mercedes was later found in a remote area in San Juan…with a burned body in the trunk. The medical examiner later confirmed it was Vigoreaux. He had a fractured skull and numerous stab wounds in his heart, kidney and lungs.
During the funeral, Lydia was hysterical, definitely portraying the grieving widow. She then immediately threw herself back into showbiz and was working more and harder than ever, appearing on two TV shows and taking the stage as the lead in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. People found it odd that she was able to move along so quickly but she would just say that her work was always her escape, and she needed to escape more than ever.
At the end of January 1983, she was questioned by police for about 2 hours, during which she admitted to knowing about her late husband’s affair with Nydia, but she said she loved him in spite of all the pain he caused her and she essentially just let it go. Without any evidence, they could neither detain her nor charge her of any crimes.
Sept 2 1984, a man named Edgardo Vasquez Reyes came forward to police saying he received $50k from Lydia to kill Luis. Edgardo says he gave $6,000 each to Pablo Guadalupe Arquino and his sons Jorge and Ruben in order to carry out the hit. Cops knew the Guadalupe family well, as Pablo and his sons had previously been charged with murdering a prominent lawyer, and their younger brother Juan Carlos had also confessed to killing someone else.
In addition to arresting these 4 men, the police had one more arrest warrant up their sleeves. Then Secretary of Justice, Nelson Martínez Acosta, personally arrested Lydia at the home of one of her relatives, where she had been staying. The media was waiting for her, cameras filming her being led to the police car. Journalists chased the police motorcade through the city, making Lydia’s one of the most memorable and famous arrests in PR history. People gathered outside of the police station where she was being held, shouting “Murderer!” while supporters called for her release. Bail was set at $600k and she was sent home to await trial.
In November 1984, Lydia was formally charged with first degree murder, conspiracy, kidnapping and violations of the Arms Law. She pleaded not guilty. However, before the trial was over, witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had lied, resulting in the exoneration of Lydia, Reyes and the Guadalupe men.
But it’s not over yet. The case was later reopened with investigators believing she was guilty. It was on record that Luis wanted a divorce, and Lydia made their problems very public in the months leading to their separation and his eventual murder. She even accused him of trying to run her over with his Mercedes! On the flip side, it’s said that she once put a gun in his face and said she’d rather see him dead than married to Nydia, who confirmed this story to be true. Police later recovered a gun matching the description given by Nidia of the gun used to threaten Luis in lydia’s house, and she had no idea how it got there.
We just want to point out that this was around the same time that escaped convict, serial murderer/kidnapper/rapist Toño Bicicleta was on the loose (we covered him in Episode 3). Law enforcement on the island was seen as kind of a joke, so they were under a lot of pressure to catch him, as well as the murderer who killed one of the most beloved entertainers on the island. So they offered a $40,000 reward for any information leading to the capture of the murderer. This was a huge sum at that time, in Puerto Rico. This got the attention of the real perpetrators.
Back to the case. Witnesses began to come forward with info about the murder, which leads us to one Francisco “Papo” Newman, a male model/drug addict. Newman confessed to police that Lydia hired him to have her husband and Nidia killed. It took him 6 months, but he found the guy to do the job, David Lopez-Watts, aka El Dominicano. Lydia paid them each $2500 to beat/kill Luis. According to Newman, Lydia gave him the details of their meeting with their lawyers on the 17th so that they could wait for him to come out and carry out the deed. After Luis left, the two men followed him and when he stopped at a red light, Newman forced himself into the passenger’s side of his car using a spare key that Lydia had given him and forced him to drive to a secluded area in South San Juan. Lopez-Watts, who was following them, attacked Luis with an ice pick and threw him in the trunk. They were going to head to a gas station to pick up gasoline to torch the car but Lydia had asked Newman to take Luis’ briefcase, which he’d forgotten because duh…so he opened the trunk back up and luis was still alive! He grabbed Newman’s arm, and Newman instinctively grabbed a tire iron and knocked him out. They then went to the gas station, filled up a gas can, came back and set the Mercedes on fire with a still living Luis in the trunk. After this confession, Lydia was once again charged.
The trial began jan 21, 1986 and was a media circus. The jury had to be sequestered because of this.
On May 1st 1986, after just 8 hours of deliberation, the jury found Lydia guilty of ordering the kidnapping and murder of her husband Luis Vigoreaux. She was sentenced to serve 208 years and was sent to a women’s prison in Vega Alta. However, she would just serve 13 years, as in 1999 Governor Rossello commuted her sentence and released her to house arrest, supposedly because she had some health issues. She started acting again in 2001 so it couldn’t have been that bad.
David López-Watts refused to accept the offer of immunity. He was acquitted of first-degree murder but convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping and was sentenced to 114 years, but only served 15.
Papo Newman got immunity for testifying and never spent a single day in jail, even though he struck the match that lit up Luis Vigoreaux’s car and ultimately caused his death. He lived out his life as a free man. In November 2019, the 71-year-old’s badly decomposed body was found in his apartment in Paris Barrio, San Juan. He died of natural causes (other sources say he was found in Mayaguez).
SOURCES:
https://murderpedia.org/female.E/e/echevarria-lydia.htm
https://apnews.com/article/d9d18b3f12396642ada89644c74de009
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/12/us/puerto-rican-star-is-held-in-murder.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Vigoreaux#
https://prpop.org/biografias/lydia-echevarria/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1822814/
https://elnacional.com.do/asesinato-en-pr-de-luis-vigoreaux/
https://www.academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Papo_Newman
https://radiopublic.com/al-momento-de-GmMzzb/s1!31976
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Vigoreaux#Murder_and_aftermath
https://www.evidencelockerpodcast.com/episodes/142-luis-vigoreaux-burnt-alive-puerto-rico
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/12/us/puerto-rican-star-is-held-in-murder.html