Woman’s torso washed up on a Florida beach in ’80s. The hunt for her killer continues

Body parts kept washing up on the shoreline near the Rickenbacker Causeway.

First, a woman’s torso was found. Then her head, leg and left arm.

This was 1980s Miami. Mutilated bodies and parts were distinctive identifiers of the Cocaine Cowboy era. It was a violent time in the Magic City, and the gruesome discovery may have resembled yet another drug deal gone bad.

But things turned out differently. Investigators would come to learn decades later that a man murdered his wife in front of their young daughters — before making two of them help get rid of the body. Adding to the trauma: the daughters, then ages 7 and 4, say they also watched him kill their younger sister a short time later.

Now, this cold case, buried deep in Miami’s past, has resurfaced as one of the living daughters pursues a long-standing quest to track down her fugitive father, Jorge Walter Núñez Paz, after police ran out of leads.

At the Miami-Dade Police Department’s headquarters in Doral, Gloria Hampton, 43, who was 4 at the time of the murders, told reporters Tuesday that she wants to see her dad in a courtroom facing a judge for dismembering her mother, 36-year-old Nilsa Padilla, and slaughtering her 3-year-old baby sister, Alicia Guzmán Padilla.

“I’m hoping that he is alive, that we can find him and bring him to justice,” said Hampton.

Dismembered body parts in Biscayne Bay

The story behind one of Miami’s most abhorrent murders started with a man spotting a green plastic garbage bag near Hobie Island Beach Park off the Rickenbacker Causeway on April 4, 1985.

Inside, Miami-Dade police, then called Metro-Dade, found the decomposing torso of a woman, wrapped in a J.P. Stevens fitted yellow twin bed sheet with a pattern of butterflies and green flowers, according to a story in the Herald’s archives. Her head, arms and legs were missing.

Over the next five days, a man’s head and right leg were recovered in the same area, along with the woman’s thigh, head, legs and left arm. Fishermen had discovered the man’s headless, naked torso floating in Biscayne Bay close to Virginia Key’s Seaquarium. Investigators, while trying to identify the corpses, nicknamed them “Tommy and Theresa Torso.”

As the years and decades passed, their bodies remained nameless. To this day, the man’s remains have not been identified and no one has been charged for his murder.

‘I just needed someone to listen’

It was not until July 2010 that — after reconnecting with her mother’s side of the family — Hampton called Miami-Dade Police Department’s Cold Case Unit to report that her father had killed her mother in the Key Biscayne area. Hampton said she got the impression that officers thought she wasn’t telling the truth.

“I felt it in my heart they didn’t believe me,” she said. “I just needed someone to listen.”

Hampton said she saw Núñez Paz beat her mother with a bag that had beer bottles inside.

“I remember this army green-colored duffle bag that he was trying to stuff her body into,” Hampton said. “And I remember digging and helping him dig.”

Hampton said she remembers her father trying to fit her mother’s body into the hole they had dug before dumping it into the bay in 1985.

As the investigation ensued in 2011, Hampton and her half-sister detailed to police how they watched Núñez Paz kill their youngest sister, Alicia, over an uneaten cereal bowl shortly after their mother’s death. He subsequently discarded the little girl’s body in a dumpster, Hampton said.

But by the time a judge issued an arrest warrant against Núñez Paz in June 2012 for the murder of Padilla, he had already been deported to Perú in 2004, according to police.

Nearly half a century after the brutal slayings, police are asking the public to provide any information on Núñez Paz’s whereabouts — admitting to the possibility that the murder suspect could be dead. If he were still alive, police say he would be 75.

Pattern of sexual abuse?

While giving statements to investigators in 2011, Hampton and her half-sister, the 7 year old, recounted how Núñez Paz sexually abused them throughout their childhood. The half-sister told the police that she had informed her mother about the abuse sometime before she was killed and that she recalled her mother being very upset.

But it was the testimony from one of her half-sister’s friends that put Núñez Paz in handcuffs. The girl told her parents that Núñez Paz sexually abused her at their Florida Keys home in March 1989. Soon after, Hampton said Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies began investigating.

Núñez Paz pleaded guilty later that year to a count of sexual battery and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, followed by five years of probation. At that point, Padilla’s body had not been identified; nobody had reported her nor her little girl Alicia missing.

Hampton, then 9 years old, says she informed a Florida Department of Children & Families worker about the sexual abuse her and her half-sister were subjected to at the hands of Núñez Paz — in addition to witnessing the slayings of their loved ones. Hampton and her half-sister eventually entered the foster care system.

“They knew everything that had happened,” she underscored.

However, Miami-Dade Police Detective Jonathan Grossman contends the Department of Children and Families did not find any record documenting what Hampton said she told the worker.

Where is Núñez Paz?

After matching Hampton and her mother’s DNA, a warrant was issued for Núñez Paz’s arrest in 2012. Nine years later, it was amended to include the murder of 3-year-old Alicia and sexual abuse.

Núñez Paz faces two counts of second-degree murder for the killings of his wife and daughter. He’s also charged with seven counts of capital sexual battery for the alleged abuse of his daughter and stepdaughter.

For at least 25 years, Núñez Paz has gone by aliases Jorge Walter Núñez and Raphael Guzman. He last resurfaced in 2020 on the outskirts of Lima, Perú, where he’s believed to still reside. Additionally, investigators noted Núñez Paz has connections in Miami, the Florida Keys, New Jersey and the Boston area.

A reward of up to $5,000 is offered for tips leading to his arrest.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Hampton reiterated that she’s looking forward to the day when police call her with the news that her abusive father has been captured.

“Why should he walk free?” Hampton questioned. “What gives him that right? Why can’t he pay for what he did?”

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Núñez Paz or has information on the murders is asked to call Detective Jonathan Grossman of the Miami-Dade Police Department Homicide Bureau at (305) 471-2400. To submit an anonymous tip and potentially receive a reward, tipsters are encouraged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477) or 1-866-471-8477, or visit crimestoppers305.com .