For twenty years, the family of Jessica Good lived without answers, knowing only that the 24-year-old woman’s life had been brutally cut short. On August 30, 2001, her body was found floating in the waters of Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida. She had been stabbed to death. The investigation into her murder would stretch across two decades and two continents, ultimately revealing her death to be the final act of a serial killer.
Jessica was last seen by her boyfriend, who told police she
was leaving to meet a man she called a "regular." This small detail would become a critical piece of a much larger puzzle. Investigators with the Miami Police Department worked the case, but years passed without a significant break. All the while, detectives in neighboring Broward County were investigating two eerily similar homicides from the year 2000. In June of that year, the body of Kimberly Dietz-Livesey was found stuffed into a suitcase in Cooper City. Weeks later, Sia Demas was found dead inside a duffel bag along a road in Dania Beach.
All three women—Kimberly, Sia, and Jessica—had struggled with drug addiction and had been involved in prostitution, a vulnerability their killer exploited. The cases shared similar patterns, but for years, the identity of the man responsible remained a mystery. DNA evidence collected from all three crime scenes pointed to a single unknown culprit, and fingerprints from two of the scenes were a match, but they didn't hit on any known offenders in government databases.
A major breakthrough came in 2011, a full decade after Jessica’s murder. Forensic technology had advanced, and detectives were able to link the DNA from Jessica's case in Miami to the DNA profile from the two Broward County murders. Investigators now knew for certain they were hunting for one man. Suspicion had fallen on a Brazilian national named Roberto Wagner Fernandes shortly after Jessica's death. Fernandes, who had been living in Miami, abruptly fled the country for his native Brazil just days after her body was discovered, before he could be questioned.
With this renewed focus on Fernandes, detectives uncovered a crucial link. Fingerprints taken from him years earlier in Brazil, following the death of his wife, matched the prints found at the crime scenes in South Florida. In Brazil, Fernandes had been acquitted of his wife's murder on a claim of self-defense, but her family reportedly suspected otherwise. This history, combined with the DNA and fingerprint matches, solidified him as the primary suspect.
The pursuit of justice, however, hit another wall. When American investigators traveled to Brazil to seek DNA evidence from Fernandes, they learned he had reportedly died in a plane crash in 2005 while fleeing from Brazil to Paraguay. There was speculation he had gone on the run because his late wife's family may have hired assassins to kill him in retaliation. Unwilling to let the case die with him, and needing to be certain he hadn't faked his death, detectives from the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Miami Police Department began a complex international effort.
Working with the Brazilian National Police, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the FBI, investigators spent years navigating the legal systems of two countries. Finally, in late 2020, they received permission to exhume Fernandes's remains. DNA samples taken from the body were a perfect match to the profile collected from the crime scenes of Jessica Good, Kimberly Dietz-Livesey, and Sia Demas. After two decades of relentless work, the cases were officially closed. "This suspect Roberto Fernandes was indeed responsible for the brutal murder of all three of these women," Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony announced. Though the man responsible for her death died before he could ever face a jury, the tireless work of law enforcement brought a measure of closure, finally answering the question of who killed Jessica Good.
