Shownotes Transcript
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Listener discretion is advised. She said, do you think that I will ever be able to forget the sound of someone trying to breathe? Welcome back. This is season 11, episode 270 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Well, I have nothing clever to say today.
Nothing to upset or piss off the audience of people that are always very eager to be offended by things. In this case, it was the attempted assassination of a former and future U.S. president. We all seem to have lost our fucking minds, so if you're calling for the death of another human being, please leave. We don't need to hear from you.
Toyota's legacy has been standing tall for generations, from pioneering hybrid technology to redefining the standards of safety and efficiency. With each innovation, a renewed commitment to progress, and with Toyota's legendary lineup of trucks in stock at your local Toyota dealer, you can experience the legacy for yourself so
So check out the ultra-rugged new Tacoma, built for off-road adventure or everyday practicality. Or test drive a heavy-duty half-ton Tundra, decked out with modern tech and comfort, with a haul-anything attitude. And both Tacoma and Tundra are available with the i-FORCE MAX hybrid powertrain, giving your truck more power than ever before. Quality. Reliability.
We are constantly being watched these days through various forms of technology that monitor the most mundane parts of our lives. Driving through morning traffic, buying a donut, that sort of thing.
Then there's the things we're willingly offering up ourselves. Like, for example, dancing on TikTok or posting pictures of our weekend on Instagram or tweeting about what an idiot Elizabeth Warren is. And yes, I did call it tweeting because I don't know what else to call it. But despite that...
Despite the big daddy state, the surveillance state from 1984 that we're all living in currently, people still do horrible things. Almost as if deterrents don't always work. It's like they don't even think about the fact that they're being watched 24-7. I mean, most of us probably don't think about that, so I guess it makes sense. Whether you go to the gas station or DM a friend on Instagram,
you are constantly being tracked. The government can find out exactly where you were at what time pretty much, unless you take precautions, unless you cover your tracks. Listen, I'm not going into a boomer state of the world, spraying you with the garden hose kind of thing. Just bear with me here. The point is that despite knowing all of this, criminals still think that they can get away with murder for some reason.
And sometimes they actually can. You would assume as a logical person that crime rates would be going down in such a surveillance state. But it's quite the opposite. The thing about footage is that we still don't get the full story. That's the problem with things like TikTok, where you have a 15 second condensed piece of information with no context. What happens when, let's say, surveillance video lacks sound?
It's easy to think we can get a full picture just from surveillance footage, but sometimes what's recorded can fit multiple stories at once. And the truth is always hidden much deeper and is often much harder to decipher. On October 5th, 2017, police were called to a quaint apartment in Plantation, Florida. Sergeant Chris Topher was one of them. - 27. - Right. - 41.
Plantation, Police Department, City of Plantation. How long have you worked there? Almost 24 years. Okay, and what's your current rank? Sergeant. Okay, and were you working there back in October 5th of 2017? Yes. And what were you doing for the police department back then? I was a road patrol officer, and on that day, this incident happened two weeks before I got promoted, so during this incident on that day, I was actually riding with then-Sergeant Ryan. She was training me.
The woman who was visibly upset was Isabella Tagliarini. Her dyed blonde hair hung over her face as she sobbed.
And what else did you notice as you kept going through the home? I noticed just doing the cursory walk through the house, I noticed that in one of the bedrooms, all the furniture appeared to be moved in the middle. There was also a very strong smell of household cleaning products, specifically Fabuloso, which has a very distinct scent to it.
Inside that bedroom was also on one of the walls freshly applied wet paint. I could tell that it was wet just due to the smell of paint in that specific room as well as the way that the light from the window was glistening on the sheen of the newly applied paint.
After walking through what felt like a renovated bathroom with one lone red party cup,
Sergeant Tofer made his way out to the backyard. Walking through the residence again, out towards the back patio, there was a wet mop that was on the ground leaning against the side of the house. Cement underneath it was wet, so that indicated to me that the mop had been wet or freshly used. More officers soon arrived on the scene.
Isabella sat crying as the plantation police department invaded her home and started poking around. She was scared. Her roommate, Nicholas Wilcox, was missing. But Isabella knew exactly where he was, and she said she would show police. Here's Lieutenant Kucha. I was instructed to take...
And when you took her, did you take her in your vehicle? I did. And was she in the front or the back? She was in the back seat. Why is that? She was transported. Nobody rides in the front seat. Who was giving you directions? She was. And...
you remember if she said anything as you were getting close to well she did she actually made a specific statement i just read it out of my report she said this is the area i remember those cameras she pointed to the cameras yes at the public's isabella led the officers towards a big dumpster and did you approach that dumpster i did um what did you notice about it when you walked back there i noticed that there were um some
blue latex kind of medical gloves like the kind of a nurse or a doctor would wear. They were on the ground right in front of the dumpster. Then all the officers looked inside. I saw a tarp elongated probably around six feet or so in length. On each end of the tarp was a belt, like a dress belt, like the kind of a man would wear with a suit on both the top and the bottom of the tarp.
The contents of the tarp looked human, like someone had stuffed a limp body into a giant tube and tied it off with two belts. It was Nicholas Wilcox. Isabella Tagliarini confirmed it. Here is prosecutor Peter Sapak. My name is Peter Sapak. I've been working for the state attorney's office, 17th Judicial Circuit, for about 18 years. About seven of those have been in homicide and capital crimes.
Peter Sapaek was one of the detectives called after Nicholas Wilcox's body was found. The medical examiner, I don't have it in front of me, but if I remember, is blunt force trauma. He had a
Nicholas Wilcox had been beaten and stabbed.
then rolled into a tarp and chucked into a dumpster behind a Publix. Quite an unceremonious ending, if you ask me. The 39-year-old general contractor had been living a simple life devoid of crime. He was separated from the mother of his children, but spent plenty of time with his kids. He wasn't doing anything remarkable or unremarkable, as this is often the case for most victims.
But Isabella had not called the police to report Nicholas missing. This whole thing started to unravel when she got her ex-husband involved. You have to understand that Isabella called her ex-husband, Mr. Tagliarini, but she had no idea that Mr. Tagliarini would go out of his way and call the plantation police department. So when the police arrived, she's kind of caught off guard, right?
Isabella did not expect the police to come rolling into her apartment that day, smell the bleach and the fabuloso, and see the wet paint. She never expected the cleanup job to be spotted. As the police drove Isabella down to the police station to speak with her, she kept quiet. Well, for the most part. She said, "Do you think that I will ever be able to forget the sound of someone trying to breathe?"
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Isabella Tagliarini was a Brazilian immigrant who, like most women in her position, came to the United States for a better life.
Here's Prosecutor Sapak again. When she originally came here, it was with either a boyfriend or another ex-husband, and that relationship fell apart because there was domestic violence, so she was really left in this country by herself, and she met Mr. Taglierini and kind of developed from there on. So she did move here with another man at first. After Isabella divorced her first husband, Nicholas Taglierini, she met a man named Eric Robinson.
Eric was a bit older than Isabella. He was big and burly with a shaved head and kind of mean eyes. He'd been involved in some criminal activity but worked construction and spent most of his time at the gym. I'm gonna reiterate, he was a big dude. But he was known to be a gym rat, that's where they met. There might have been some incidents of steroid usage. So he was, you know, he was a bigger guy.
Isabella and Eric struck up a romance as soon as they moved in together in June of 2016. Due to her immigration status, Isabella relied on the men in her life for employment. She never really had a career of her own. She moved to America on the back of an old boyfriend and then when she married Nicholas Taglierini in Florida, he took care of her. Now that she had started things up with Eric, she relied on him in the same way.
She really never had a job of her own. She was always taken care of, whether it be her ex-husband, Mr. Tagliarini, or Eric Robinson, or Nicholas Wilcox. You know, she was always looking for somebody to take care of her, I believe. That was the dynamic, and it suited Eric nicely. You see, Eric was a controlling guy. I'm trying to paint you a picture of Eric that translates into words. Imagine an aging club bro.
In his 50s with bad tribal tattoos and a shimmering tan. Yeah, that kind of guy. The kind of guy who posts pictures on Facebook of himself wearing salmon pink pinstripe shirts with bejeweled patterns. Are you starting to get a vibe here? Isabella was under Eric's thumb and he took advantage of that. Plus, they weren't the most chill couple on earth.
According to neighbors, the two fought constantly, and sometimes their fighting spilled out onto the street for all to see. There's always issues here at this house. She ran over there a couple of times to escape, and she's always screaming stuff about what he's doing. The guy, Eric, he was a big guy. As if things weren't crazy enough, Eric and Isabella decided to invite their friend Nicholas Wilcox to move into their shitshow.
Maybe they thought that a third party would help keep the peace. Maybe they just needed the extra income. Either way, 39-year-old Nicholas moved in. Nicholas Wilcox, when did he move into that apartment? In the middle of June of 2017. Nicholas was a roommate, correct? He was a roommate. How many bedrooms in that apartment or that house? Three bedrooms.
A master bedroom, a bathroom inside, and then two other bedrooms and a bathroom. So Nicholas would have his own bedroom? Yes, of course. And did you share a bedroom with Eric? Yes, we did. Specifically in August of that year, were you sharing a bedroom with Eric? Yes, I was. Nicholas moved in and Isabella soon started working for him.
She had no job and he needed an extra set of hands. What did Nicholas Wilcox do for a living? He was a general contractor. Are you a general contractor? No, I'm not. How would you be working for him? He offered me the job in the beginning to tape and to clean the places where he was working. And the majority of the time, which county were you working? We were in West Palm Beach, so Palm Beach County.
Working together every day, Nicholas and Isabella developed a strong friendship. He often did work preparing houses for hurricanes, and as Hurricane Irma loomed in the distance, so did a spark between the two roommates. But then in June of 2017, a big fight between Isabella and Eric erupted in the home. He was arrested on domestic violence and strangulation charges, but let out two days later.
Isabella did not want to press charges. Here's prosecutor Sapak again. So many times you see this and I've had this in many homicides where the woman or a man is beaten and it happens over and over again and all you see is the victim show up to the state attorney's office and say they don't want to prosecute. It's a circle. And sometimes it ends up in murder. So Eric was released and things in the apartment only intensified between the three.
Though he had not made it known yet, Nicholas developed a crush on Isabella and would often get involved when she and Eric argued. Now, there was even a recording that we had, and on the recording, it's Isabella Tagriini recording a fight between Eric Robinson...
and Nicholas Wilcox and they're really getting into it and the reason for the fight is something to do with Isabella and at one point when Erik Robinson realizes that Isabella Tagherini is recording both of them he jumps on top of Isabella and you can hear her screaming tensions were high but Isabella and Erik stayed together and she went off to work every day with Nicholas what a strange arrangement
Then, in August of 2017, Eric was arrested for cocaine possession. This time, he would not be bailed out quite so quickly. Nicholas and Isabella continued living in the apartment together, despite Eric's absence. And I bet you can kind of guess what happens next. At any point, did you develop a relationship with Nicholas Wilcox? Yes. How long did it take? I think...
According to Isabella, it took a few weeks, but soon Nicholas was sleeping in her room. Their relationship had been growing for so long that it was only a matter of time before the spark would ignite, before the Barry White music would start playing.
Before love would be in the air. Or something. Anyway, with Eric stuck behind bars, Nicholas and Isabella were safe to embark on the honeymoon phase of their romance. It was like a fairy tale. That is, until the early morning hours of October 5th, 2017. Isabella and Nicholas were laying in bed sound asleep after another blissful night together. Of fucking and whatever else they were doing.
when Isabella was jolted awake at 2:30 in the morning. - Woke up with Eric holding my mouth and my neck, and then I opened my eyes. The television was still on, and the lights were on. - You saw Eric on top of you or was he on top of somebody else? - He was on top of me.
In the faint glow of the television still on and flickering in the corner of the room, Isabella saw Eric's angry face, and he climbed on top of her, crushing her body down with all of his might. And like I said, big dude. Well, at that moment, Eric made a question, not asking if I'm going to live or die, and also...
telling me to be quiet, continue holding. I couldn't turn my head to any side and I could hear Nicholas Wilcox struggling to breathe. - What do you mean by that? - It was a noise that will never leave my mind. Forever horrible, all persons struggling. I couldn't see him, but he was struggling
terrible noise like a noise like this. In my mind I saw that Nick was scared or I didn't know he was hurt. Then Eric walked me out of the bed until around the bed I couldn't see Nick.
At a glimpse of my eyes, I saw some things on his face that looked like blood. Eric threw the comforter over Isabella's head and covered her mouth. Then he marched her into the living room and shoved her down onto the floor. He sat me down and he was telling me that he was still not sure if he was going to kill me too. Asking, you know,
Eric grabbed a crowbar and stormed back into the bedroom towards his former roommate and friend, Nicholas. He had a big piece of metal, dark metal, like a
I didn't know the name before, but it was a big metal and he was, he was doing like hitting him several times and saying, "Die, motherfucker. Die, motherfucker." And that's what he was doing until the noise disappeared. - How did you react? - I couldn't look. I was so afraid, so scared because I knew I was gonna be the next.
Isabella sat in the hallway trembling as she listened to Eric pummel Nicholas over and over with a metal rod until the gurgling stopped. Blood had sprayed all over the bedroom. Isabella was shrieking and Nicholas was dead. Eric then comes back out into the living room and starts talking to Isabella. He told me, "Where's your medications?"
for anxiety and depression. I said, "It's inside the bedroom in the same drawer." So he told me, he gave me to take four bars and then have some vodka so I could calm down and probably he could take control of my actions after that.
Eric gave Isabella her cocktail of vodka and Xanax, then wasted no time getting to work cleaning up the mess. Now, let's be clear, four bars of Xanax, in case you don't know, is quite a bit. About as much as some people take before calling into our voicemail hotline, 954-889-6854. So, she must have been completely out of it. Eric was...
Eric asked me if there was, where were there was black bags or something else. And somehow he came up with a tarp, silver tarp. Where did he get the silver tarp? I believe it was in the house because that was Nicholas' job. He was putting tarps in the roofs.
on the roof of the house because there was a hurricane. Isabella trembled as she watched Eric wrap Nicholas in a tarp. He wrapped it like a burrito and he put two belts, one around the neck and one around the feet. I remember one of the belts Eric mentioned in
Eric took both her and Nicholas's phones and told her not to bother trying to call for help. Eric dragged Nicholas out of the bedroom and shoved him into the back of his work truck.
The sun was beginning to come up and Isabella's reality was closing in on her. Eric said she was next if she did anything, called anyone, or tried to run. He threatened to have her kids back in Brazil murdered. He had connections, he said. Why wouldn't Isabella believe him? Eric was supposed to be locked up in jail for a long time for drug charges. Then, boom, all of a sudden he shows up in her bedroom and kills her boyfriend.
Thank you, American criminal justice system. Build back better my ass. I was so scared, so afraid, and I didn't trust the police at that time. Because that's the thing. And why Isabella Teglierini was on the witness stand, and why she had been arrested herself. Eric left. He wrapped up Nicholas and left Isabella all alone in the apartment with her phone. For hours.
She could have called the cops. She could have run outside and screamed for any one of the neighbors who knew how dangerous Eric was. But she didn't. Instead, she did what Eric told her to do. She started cleaning the apartment. As Isabella floated around the murder scene in a traumatic daze, she sobbed and wondered how Eric had known what was going on between her and Nicholas. Was this all planned?
Why had he showed up at the apartment at 2:30 in the morning? Eric returned to the apartment an hour later and made more demands of Isabella. He asked me to wear some lingerie, be sexy. He wanted to have sex with me. I did to survive. This was right after he came back, correct? Right after he came back.
After the two had sex, in quotes, Eric and Isabella loaded up his car and set off to get more cleaning supplies. Being fresh out of jail, Eric had to check in with his probation officer sometime later as well. But still, the question remained. How did Eric find out about Nicholas and Isabella? Prosecutor Sapak had an idea, and it all came down to a silly little love contract.
We were thinking that he gets out of Broward County Jail. His ex-girlfriend, Ms. Kensick, picks him up.
They go back to her location. Sometime that night when he gets out, he goes back to the location of the homicide. We know that because Ms. Kensack testified that she drove him there so he can pick up his Cadillac. We believe that he went in the house prior to the homicide, saw this note on the wall, took it to his ex-girlfriend Ms. Kensack's home, and
And the following night or the night afterwards, he borrowed, well, he stole her car to go to the location and bludgeon Nicholas. The love note in question was a single sheet of paper signed by Isabella and Nicholas with their blood. Cute. Remember how I said they entered into the honeymoon phase fast? Yeah, well, these two were completely in love like two stupid teenagers.
One night after a couple of cocktails, they drew up a little romantic deed. It was almost like a childish contract that they wrote together that, you know, that Nicholas Wilcox will marry Isabella Tagrini and be faithful to her at all times. And then it was signed, and I believe it was also not signed with blood, but there was fingerprints laced with blood, and both their fingerprints were on the note.
And her story was that she left that note on the bedroom wall. And then after the homicide, it miraculously appears with Eric Robinson's property at his other girlfriend's place.
So how it got there, we don't know, but we're assuming that he read this and obviously got upset. And it's a knife that cuts both ways. It shows us that Eric Robinson obviously read it because it's with his property and it's supposed to be on the wall in the bedroom of the homicide location. And it wasn't, obviously. But at the same time, it doesn't paint Isabella in the greatest of ways, I guess. Yeah.
because, like I said, it's a little childish. After Eric returned from dropping off his ex-girlfriend's car, he had to dispose of Nicholas's body, which was still at the house in his work truck.
There was a lot of driving back and forth during the whole crime, and Isabella was not the most credible witness being on four bars of Xanax and completely traumatized. The truck is actually backed up to the backyard of this residence, and there's a neighbor, Ms. Ginsberg, that sees somebody that looks like Eric Robinson backing up the victim's truck to the back door of the homicide room.
and putting something heavy inside the truck, that being, you know, the tarp that the body was wrapped in. And then the truck speeds off. Isabella and Eric took off in Nicholas's truck with his body in the back. They had no idea where they were going to dump it. From there, you know, they go to the Everglades, but there's too many people there, according to Miss Tagherini. They show up at the dump, and they don't end up
dumping the body at this place because again, there's people watching. Eric was brazen. Judging by his actions that day, Prosecutor Sapek believes
He thought he'd never get caught. You know, the fact that he's driving around Broward County with the body in the truck, in the victim's truck, you know, he's going to a dump and there's very good video at this dump. It's beyond HD. You can hear all the conversation. You know, the worst place to dispose of the body, especially in Broward County, is a dump because their surveillance is top-notch.
He's not kidding. The dump footage is clear as day. And you can watch it all on YouTube. There's a number of stops, and in today's day and age, you record it everywhere. There's nowhere you can go where there's no cameras or, you know, cell phone technology can also pick you up. If you have a cell phone on you, you're constantly giving the police information. After an unsuccessful trip to the dump,
Eric had to meet his probation officer, so he took Isabella to the courthouse, which happened to be down the street from a Publix. Meanwhile, don't forget the body is still in the car as they're driving. While Eric is at the courthouse, Isabella is left at the Publix to wander and wait for him to return. Of course, like Prosecutor Sapak said, her entire trip to the Publix is filmed.
Isabella strolls around the store pushing a grocery cart and examining items like a typical housewife. Just imagine pushing your own cart past her at that moment. And remember, there's a body in the parking lot in her car. Then she's seen using her phone and Eric walks into the store and finds her. I was afraid and I had to make him very sure that I was going to find him.
The footage is damning. Isabella had multiple opportunities to get help. She was alone in Publix for over half an hour. And right across the street is the courthouse, filled with cops. Yet she does nothing but embrace Eric and follow his lead, like a good little accomplice.
And even though she embraces him at the supermarket, that can be explained as, you know, someone being in fear. You have to realize she's from Brazil. All her family is in Brazil. And the people that she knows here is really her ex-husband, Mr. Tagliarini, Nicholas Wilcox, who's dead now, and Eric Robinson, who murdered him. So she really has no place to go. So her story starts making a lot more sense when you put it in context, you know.
Isabella and Eric ended up throwing Nicholas' body in the dumpster behind the Publix. Ironically, that was the place with fewer people around. Then they went home and began their cleanup job. They got rid of all of the evidence, scrubbing every drop of blood from the scene and painting the bedroom. But still...
It wasn't enough. Yeah, the mattress was disposed of at a different dump site, not too far away from the homicide location. It was ripped up and police were able to discover that as well because of Isabella Tagherini and they were able to match the DNA to that of the deceased Mr. Wilcox. When the police arrived on scene, there was obviously no mattress. The place really reeked of bleach and
And they also use, what's it called? Fabuloso is the cleaner. I would know. I grew up in Little Havana and still have traumatic memories. It stinks. You have to understand that unless you do a very good job and you're someone like Dexter, you're never going to get rid of blood evidence as much as you want to try. After they cleaned everything up, Eric left Isabella alone in the house.
And that is when she finally cracked and called her ex-husband, Mr. Tagliarini, and told him what happened. He then immediately called the cops. When the police arrived, she's kind of caught off guard, and Mr. Robinson's not in the area. But when the police were there, they knew what kind of vehicle he drove, and they saw the vehicle driving past. When they saw the vehicle driving past the homicide location, they did what's called a felling stop,
Eric may be brazen, but he wasn't dumb. He refused to talk to cops. You should too. But Eric was still arrested for the murder of Nicholas Wilcox and taken to jail. Isabella was also arrested for her part in the cover-up, but her family would soon bond her out and she'd be on an ankle monitor until the trial. Isabella would appear to be the victim in all of this.
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Isabella Tagliarini had been in bed with her new boyfriend and roommate Nicholas Wilcox when her old boyfriend, Eric Robinson, caught her cheating on him.
Eric had been released early from prison, unfortunately, and came home to find a love note from Nicholas to Isabella. He became so enraged he bludgeoned Nicholas to death with a crowbar in his sleep and made Isabella help him cover up the murder. This sick love triangle had ended in murder and now Isabella would have to face her part in the horrific crime.
Eric Robinson didn't say a word to the police and lawyered up with a strong female litigator who was determined to make the jury see all the faults in Isabella's story and character. Her defense was that Isabella actually murdered Nicholas herself and called Eric to help her finish the crime. What happened in this case...
is that Isabella Tagliarini killed her boyfriend, Nicholas Wilcox, and blamed it on her ex-boyfriend, Eric Robinson. You will hear that Eric Robinson was arrested by the Plantation Police Department immediately based on what Isabella Tagliarini told them. The police rushed to judgment. They thought what they had at first was someone being honest and straightforward,
Turns out, Ms. Tagliarini's stories and statements and details kept changing. Well, they really tried to blame everything on Isabella because of the inconsistencies in her statement and obviously the number of times that she could have called the police but refused to do it. And I believe that they also tried to blame her immigration status.
that she wanted a green card and Eric Robinson was not the person that was going to give it to her. So, you know, she kind of got Eric Robinson involved in this. Their story was that she committed this heinous act, called Eric Robinson to help her dispose of the body. And that's kind of their story because if you think about it, if you paint the picture that way, our evidence is
also fits that scenario because a lot of the evidence that we had was subsequent to the actual homicide, post homicide, you know, the cleanup, driving around with the body. These are all things that happened after the homicide. So if you blame it on another person and say, listen, that person called Eric Robinson to help and clean up the crime scene, all the evidence that we had and we presented fits that scenario as well.
Ms. Taglierini gives five different statements under oath to the police. Finally, on October 14th, they confront her with all of the inconsistencies because as they start pulling surveillance and doing things, they start to realize how what she had told them was not necessarily true. For example, I'll give you one example. The evidence will show that she told the police that...
Immediately after leaving the house, that her and Eric Robinson with the body, with Mr. Wilcox's body in the bed of the Ford F-150, and I know I'm throwing a lot of details out to you and this will all kind of come together as you start hearing the others, that they took that vehicle to the courthouse with the body in it and that she waited, had no phone, he had taken her phone,
What comes out in the next week or so after the lead detective pulls the footage from the Publix right down the street is that, no, they were not in the F-150. In fact, Isabella Tagliarini was actually driving Eric Robinson's Cadillac to Publix. And the surveillance shows that Miss Tagliarini has her phone the entire time and her purse
and that when Mr. Robinson comes to meet up with her at the public so they can leave, they're hugging, they're kissing, they're holding hands. Despite her bad behavior and the small details changing in her story, Prosecutor Sapak said that what actually mattered about Isabella's testimony
never changed. The root of her testimony never changed. It was always, you know, it was always that story, the truth of what happened. Minor things might have changed. She might have said that they drove a different vehicle when they came to Publix. When we look at the surveillance, you know, it wasn't the truck, it was the Cadillac. And she was driving when she said that Eric Robinson was driving. So small things that maybe she didn't remember, but, you know, the general aspect of her testimony was
Never changed from day one. And you know, you have to understand, they don't have to prove anything. The state is the one that's bringing the charges, so we have to prove up the charges. The state had to prove that Eric did this without a confession or the murder weapon. The crowbar was never found. Their strategy had to be airtight, which is why they decided against first-degree murder. In Florida, you know, we have various types of homicides. You have first-degree premeditated murder.
The law doesn't necessarily fix the amount of time that must pass between the origination of the thought and the execution of the homicide. You know, it can take a second just by pulling a trigger. Then you have also felony murder, which is also first degree homicide, which means that somebody is killed within the
perpetration of an enumerated felony such as burglary such as robbery such as you know robbing a bank things like this if somebody dies that's also first-degree murder okay and then you have murder in a second degree and that is hey we don't know what happened inside the apartment necessarily because we don't have any witnesses other than Isabella tagarini but it is it is murder with a depraved mind which means that there was some sort of rage
on the part of Eric Robinson, that seemed to fit our storyline a lot more because essentially we didn't have to prove motive. We didn't have to prove premeditation.
The sentence for second-degree murder is life. The sentence for first-degree murder is life as well. So it enabled us to explain the story with what he had and the evidence that we had without having the need to prove an extra element, that being the premeditation part of it. Eric's defense lawyer argued that Isabella killed Nicholas herself
and then had Eric handle the cleanup. But prosecutor Sapak found that far-fetched for many reasons. And you have to understand also her physical abilities. You know, she's a small person. You can see that, you know, when she takes a stand. But to dispose of a body...
you know, wrap them up in a tarp to even move a mattress. These are all things that you need some amount of strength for. And if you look at Errol Robinson, you could see that he's capable of it. And I don't believe that she'd be able to commit this murder on her own and dispose of the body and so forth. But there were many weird things that Isabella did that really trashed her credibility. For one, she tried to go on the Dr. Phil show.
to talk about the murder. Yeah. Yeah. Here's Eric's defense lawyer discussing this with the judge during the trial.
Okay. Okay, while this case was pending? Yes. It wasn't before the incident? No. Okay.
I mean, what can I say? I'm kind of with Eric's defense lawyer on this one. Therapy from Dr. Phil? This is America.
There are thousands of hotlines in every state that offer free trauma counseling and assistance for those in need of it. But I guess some people really like trashy daytime television. Here's the judge's response. What is the relevance of that? I mean, let me put it this way. If you ask her about it, and it opens up the door to the why. Addressing with you the why. So...
I think it's totally irrelevant, but if I do allow you to ask it, that means the state gets to ask, you know, why did you do it? Because obviously you're bringing it out because you think that there's some sort of negative connotation to that. I think it's fair to say that for somebody who was so traumatized by an incident, I think it's just a story. Well, there are different...
Still, Isabella decided to testify against Eric because, well, just because. She was promised nothing.
And that says something about her character that perhaps negates this weird Dr. Phil stuff. So prior to her testimony, we never promised her anything. And that's, you know, the reason for that is so we can ask her on the stand. And it's true. Have you been offered anything? You played open to a judge. You don't know what you're going to get. And here are the possible penalties. And you're here testifying because, you know, you want to. And it's of your own free will. And that's essentially what you did. Yeah.
The prosecution's whole case rested on Isabella's story. That was all they had, along with the video footage, which actually made her look worse and helped the defense. Despite all this, the jury came back in favor of Isabella. They believed her, you know? I mean, for some reason, there's a propaganda campaign that says that women aren't believed when they say something, and I'm not sure what the fuck these people are talking about.
Modern day Western culture bends over backwards to believe women, whether they lie or not. But regardless, Eric wouldn't be so lucky. He would be locked away for life. Prosecutor Sapak and his team were happy with this verdict. But the question remained, why did Eric think he would get away with this? As Sapak said, "We leave a digital footprint everywhere we go today. Everybody knows this.
Isn't that right, Siri? I really think that he thought he could control Isabella. I think that he was such a domineering personality in that relationship that there was no doubt in his mind that she would ever flip on him. You have to realize that without Isabella's testimony, you know, from the beginning, it'd be very hard for the police to go in the right places to look for, that being the dump area.
that being the various locations that she told us about. Eventually, I believe they might be able to get there through cell phone technology, but without her immediate intervention and her ability to tell the story and exactly where they went, that enabled the police to go to these locations and get this surveillance footage, which might have been deleted by the time they would have gotten there.
The true hero of this story is Isabella's ex-husband. Because without his 911 call, who knows how long it would have been before anyone noticed Nicholas Wilcox was gone. Eric sent out text messages from his cell phone to friends and family, trying to explain his absence. And he worked for himself with Isabella. All of Nicholas's family was in New York except for his father, who attended trial every day.
In a very real sense, Eric and Isabella could have gotten away with this if that 911 call had never been placed. But they didn't. And now Eric Robinson will spend the rest of his life behind bars until he dies. Good. There is no parole in Florida. When you go away, when you're sentenced to life in Florida, the only way that you're getting out is in a casket. Murder is crazy.
Murder is crazy and murders do a lot of things that don't make sense. And that's why they get caught sometimes. Eric Robinson was a controlling man who thought he could get away with murder. After all, every time he was put in jail for hurting Isabella, he refused to press charges and he'd be released again. It's not shocking that this relationship ended in homicide. This is a recognizable pattern.
that often ends in bad things including homicide. It was volatile and crazy from the start. As for Nicholas Wilcox, he just got caught up in a love triangle. Isabella was an attractive, exotic woman. And I'm sure she had a damsel in distress type mentality that appealed to him. Maybe if that stupid love contract hadn't been posted on the wall, none of this would have ever happened.
She could have kept lying, gotten away with the affair. It really doesn't matter though, because Eric Robinson found out and he lost it and decided to take matters into his own hands. What is the moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen? Well, there's a few. The first one is that Three's Company was a great show in the 80s, but it doesn't work in real life, despite what these fucking TikTok millennials will try to sell to you.
Love is messy and there's no room for a cuck chair. Look, at the end of the day, what happened here is that the world is full of dangerous, scary, crazy people. Eric Robinson was one of them. And he proved it that night when he murdered Nicholas Wilcox for sleeping with his girlfriend. There's probably another lesson here somewhere in this one. It might have to do with the fact that we're constantly being monitored.
Even if we're not committing a crime, even if we're not Eric Robinson, even if we're just good tax-paying civilians trying to do the right thing, we're still being monitored every second of every day by Big Brother. Because we value our safety above our freedom, unfortunately. Don't believe me? Hey Siri! Stay safe, sassholes.
Well, that's going to do it for another one. Go check out our Summer of Sword and Scale hats at swordscale.com. We got a new one with the Don't Talk to Cops design. You might like it. Stay safe.
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