True Crime Vault: Doctor Deceit

From a low-tempo, robust garden, it is better to take a picture of it.

In addition to the quality and the low-tempo price, it is now all garden products in our daily and in the auction. A small price, big joy. Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where hard-stopping headlines come to life. Maria Cruz came to New York from the Philippines to fulfill her dreams, her ambition. Maria Cruz is kind of an example of the best possible immigrant success story.

The reason people come to America is because it is a tiny role in quite incredibly religious capital. She was so developed that when Maria first arrived in New York City, she lived in a dorm that was run by nuns. I made Maria after the 20 years ago because that's when I moved to the dorm. Maria is kind of quiet. She is very professional, go get her very ambitious. She has all this dream, you know, American dream. She got an MBA at Fordham. She got a job at Barclays.

She worked in an office on Park Avenue. How amazing is that?

She moved from a residential place for women to her own apartment in a high-rise on the west side. Maria wanted to make the most of her appearance. She took great care with her skin and got facials and used products to help her skin's health. And she was very much aware of how she dressed, how she carried herself, and how other people saw her. Who better to fit into that desire for Maria Cruz but Dean Fialo, who relished making people look and feel good? According to Dean, she had some scarring on the inside of her legs that she basically wanted to race with the laser.

“And that's what Dean says he traded her for.”

How many times did you see her? I would say somewhere between 10 or 15 times. You know, we spent many hours during the treatment, talking to each other. How did she strike you, initially? Quiet and shy, but I learned that she was a very smart, successful person. Maria Cruz, like so many other clients of Dean Fialo, acted on faith. He played the party, looked the party, acted the part.

They had no clue that he was not qualified to inject anybody with light okay, or use a laser wand. Did you ever tell her that these treatments are supposed to be accompanied by a medical doctor? No. She never asked. No. She trusted you? Yes. You're a doctor, so I can trust you.

You have to. Well, you have to be a good person.

“Why would you be practicing medicine without a license team?”

Imagine what Maria and other clients must have thought in October of 2002 when the news came out that Dean was not a doctor, but was practicing as if he was. You were all over the news at that point, so what happened to all your long-time patients? Were they not all simultaneously alerted that you were bad news? They were all alerted. Amazingly a few of them stayed with me.

Dean actually got out of all this with a pretty sweet deal. It's given to four-year sentence, but it was cut down to six months, because he agreed to alert authorities to other people who were doing the same type of things illegally that he was.

And part of the stipulations are regarding his plea agreement was that he had to close down his business and never do work with lasers again.

Dr. Frank Spinelli worked out of the same office building as file. To our surprise and shock, he showed up the next day. The patient started showing up. He had every intent of continuing to work. My boss had a threaten him by calling the police, but he thankfully went, Dean had hardly taken the laser out, of course. Finally, Dean is forced to shut down skinivations for good.

But now he's not just a man without a practice. He's a man with no source of income.

“That's what we're recording for, to buy food, and I have to borrow money from Greg Bach to buy food.”

This is the turning point for Dean, but it's also turning point in his relationship with Greg.

He's not a bad guy, he's just broken.

I was paying the mortgage, I was paying for all the home repairs. I paid up on the back mortgage. I paid up on the back utility bills. And so all told it was coming up to about like $85,000. Greg was paying for everything. Greg was chasing Dean around the house with a promissory note, and Dean wouldn't sign it.

“You owed Greg tens of thousands of dollars, isn't that point? Other people too?”

Yeah. People who love you, who help you. Yep.

What does that say about Dean Fialo?

That. I didn't face up to my responsibilities, that I used people, that I didn't care how I hurt them. He has gone to New York, made it. He was the center of nightlife. He had become this practitioner in the beauty industry. He had lots of friends, a beautiful mansion, and a handsome boyfriend, all of it crumbles right at his feet.

For Dean Fialo, this was Hellenard. It was a hell of his own building, but he's at a bad, bad, bad place. I've got to go in for the Dean's. We're around here.

“Despite his drug addiction, his debt, his criminal charges, his practice closing down.”

Dean Fialo is not going to stop. Now he's taking everything underground. And that means he has not seen the last of his clients, including Maria Cruz. On Palm Sunday, she had disappeared. I mean, I was very concerned that this was going to end badly.

In the weeks and months, after his arrest, Dean goes into a deep depression. The only career he's ever really had, certainly the only place he's ever made serious money, it is gone. The cold reality is that Dean is out of money. Greg has been sustaining him as much as possible, but it's getting ugly. There's only one thing for them to do, and that's to sell the beloved historical mansion.

I had some choice. I had to sell the house. I had lived in the house for 18 years, I loved the house. He would be despondent and feel defeated and depressed. He didn't have access to that state all. I felt that he was using whatever he could get, like whatever street drugs, whether it be cocaine.

He was unraveling.

“It's pretty clear that Dean thought the only way he could get out of this hole was to make money.”

The only way he knew how to make money was to go back into his procedures. Where did those treatments take place in this period? I had a friend apartment on 16th Street. And how would the word even get out to patients at this point? Phone contact, me reaching out, late people, though, if they wanted to continue treatment, I was available.

It's just so beyond the pale. This was a back alley laser procedure. I mean, it's just bad on top of bad on top of bad. It's April 13th, 2003. It is Palm Sunday.

And for Maria Cruz, that means attending mass at her church and her parents' same alcoholism. Maria would have been one of the people in the congregation listening to the reading of the Scriptures. I let the mass, you know, Maria would have approached the altar to receive communion. She didn't show up for work on Monday. Her co-workers were worried.

When she didn't show up the second day, the co-workers find an aunt who was the mercy contact number.

And New Jersey and the aunt called to her sons. They went to her apartment and saw Wall Street journals lying outside of her door. And that wasn't like Maria. The Wall Street Journal was the next thing to the Bible to Maria. And all her co-workers are very concerned.

On Tuesday, April 15th, Maria's uncle walks into the 13th precinct in Manhattan and files a missing person's report.

A thorough search was conducted at our apartment and the building where she lived in.

Her apartment was meticulous. There was no sign of foul play.

“Police are able to uncover more details of Maria's activities on that Palm Sunday.”

They even find surveillance video of Maria stopping by her office building to pick up some paper. We got the information back that her credit card had been used in the apartments store on the day. We suspected she had disappeared. She went to an ATM and withdrew money. And we were concerned that maybe she had been followed.

And a doctor while she was taking money to the ATM.

But we reviewed the ATM video and there was no indication of that. Reassembling flew over from the Philippines. They started putting up flyers in the neighborhood. One of Maria's uncles went up one street every day putting up 500 flyers. Every block got a flyer.

“Manhattan was prepared with those flyers about their missing loved one.”

The parishioners came forward and then said, "Father, what can we do to help?" So I said, "Let's disseminate the flyer all over the city." Everybody was upset as soon as we found out that she was missing. We don't everywhere. In the city, downtown, upside down, there's like forever searching for her.

At this point in the investigation, our frustration is mounting. We're helping for a break for some kind of call from the public or some kind of tip. Something that can point us in a direction that we haven't already looked in. Meanwhile, Dean Fialo is over in New Jersey still trying to sell his house. And he has, in fact, found a buyer.

“But there's a litany of repairs that have to be made in his friends of all come into help.”

When the real estate agent came and saw the house, she gave us 4 typed pages of stuff to be done. When you get ready to sell the house, they do an inspection and make a list of things that have been repaired. And there were some repairs that we've done to the sidewalk. Well, I ended up buying between 30, maybe 30, five bags of cement.

One day, right before the closing, Greg notices that Dean is out in the garage area of the mansion. And he's pouring a concrete slab and Greg's thinking, "What is that for?" She'd make a lot of sense to me, so I'd walk down to her parents and say, "What are you doing?" And he's just screaming at me. You know, to get out of the garage, leave 'em alone, get out of here, don't cut back.

Five months of pass since Maria's disappearance in the case has gone cold. But then, detectives finally get the break they're looking for. So we go to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to get a subpoena to access her email account. We were able to determine that she had made an appointment the day she was missing to see a doctor. In the vicinity of where she had last used her credit card and we know that doctor was identified as Dean Phil.

Obviously, police want to find Dean Phil, or the problem is he too has vanished.

Now they couldn't find Dean. He's got a date to appear in court in October. But Dean didn't show up for that court of cake. Didn't tell the Attorney didn't tell the prosecutor, didn't tell he by just unsure. We have a connection to Maria, who we know is Dean, but we can't find either of those people. Missing man?

Missing woman. And when detectives finally draw all the nexus between those two people, the revelation is mine. Lights and sirens. Lights and sirens. When Dean disappeared, everybody began to ask questions of one. This once handsome toast of the town now has the law chasing after him for practicing with our license.

And then there's that other matter of a missing client. We have a connection to Maria, who we know is Dean, but we can't find either of those people. The house, somebody who seemed like they had so much going for them. But everything goes so completely and totally wrong.

I'm going into the city and I'll see you later.

I never saw Dean again.

“This guy could be literally anywhere in the world.”

He's narcissistic, he likes to make a splash. Dean Fialo makes an impression. He said he was a doctor. Dean's whole adventure is just crazy. All I could think of is I have to find Dean Fialo.

He's just banned on top of bad on top of bad. Well, these are the pictures of me and Dean. This is at the verinarian. Now we actually look kind of happy, but you wouldn't be able to see the stress behind her eyes. Now that I look back at these images, I just can't help but be angry.

Dean Fialo had everything. Extraordinary good looks. He has money, stature.

“He's got love, he's got a beautiful mansion.”

And this man takes all of it and chucks it over a cliff. Every word Dean turned was bad. He broke it up with Greg, but in an nasty way, he owed him $85,000. Now everything's coming to a head. You know, Dean's legal problems from fortune scripts to being busted for practicing medicine without a license.

He wasn't a little destruction of the work that bothered me so much as my personal descent into hell. I was terrified of who I had become. So with no money and no business, Dean sets up in a legal practice out of a friend's 16th street apartment in downtown New York. Where one of his patients had happened to be Maria Cruz, the young banker who'd gone missing. Dean still is depressed, low-atharget, sweeping all the time, and Dean moves in with a neighbor.

It's really like a picture perfect suburb. Yes, it really is. And very quiet. And here's your old house. This is where I lived and that was going on.

On the first day, it became a nightmare.

He was the housemate for hell. I was a spoiled bride at times. I didn't want to do the things that I was supposed to do, because I was getting away with what I was doing. Dean eats all his food and starts wearing his clothes. And Mark's like, "Deep, dude, where are my clothes?" I even put a note on it, Dean did not wear my jeans, directly on top of them.

He had to move it to get the pair of jeans he had on. And so I was furious, and then all the liquor was gone, all the wine was gone, and the noise I had it. I had enough. Then he had a month to leave. He said, "I'm going into the city, and I'll see you later."

And I never saw Dean again.

Meanwhile, Maria's family is mired in this horrible mystery where is their daughter. As the investigation into the disappearance of Maria Cruz continues, investigators frustration is mounting. They ran out of clues, and they were hoping somebody would come in. The angry boy friend, the person who saw something, something's going to have to break for us to break the case. It's now September of 2003.

Summer has come and gone. Guess what else has come and gone? All of Dean by on those court dates. Dean did not make a court appearance to answer for the charges in practicing dial medical lessons. There's a warrant issued for Dean's arrest.

So I got a call for the bail bonds company, telling me that Dean did not show up for the sentencing. Now I'm responsible for the rest of that bail. And I was so infuriated by the way I'd been treated. And I was determined that I was not going to let him get away with it. I was going to hunt him down and hold him accountable for what he did to me.

“And now suddenly he's gone and everybody realized, "Oh, we just thought we hadn't seen him because his life is falling apart.”

No, there seems to be something else at work. But from moment nobody could figure out what that was."

And when you find out we're a Dean with, you go, of course. That's so Dean.

“The phone rings. They said, "Is this Dean Fialo?" I said, "Yes."”

And they said, "Well, this is blah, blah airlines and we're trying to fill up when you might be coming back." From Costa Rica. So now I know where he's at. It was the plan to hide out. I can't tell I was a plan. It was an escape.

See, you first went to San Jose, right?

Yeah, I landed there. He went to the underbelly. Let's get freaky. It was all night from Dean Singh and stripper. He was doing the same thing he did when he was younger in New York City. I went to a few bars down there, but I really felt uncomfortable.

“What am I doing here? I just didn't know what to do.”

So I looked for resort hotels. And wound up in the Guantacoste, absolutely beautiful on a mountain top, where I watched the sunrise and the sunset every day.

Then I went to the hotel and met somebody who was a manager there. He and his wife living in Esports.

He got to the point where they said to me, "This is ridiculous. She's spending all this money here at this hotel. So I decided to go live with him." Did they know they were back story? No. In just a few short months, Dean Fialo has managed to create a planned life for himself in beautiful Costa Rica.

Meanwhile, up in New Jersey, brand new clues emerge that may just lead to revelations in the disappearance of Maria Cruz. I find a gym bag. I thought, "Well, this is really odd, so I open it." 2020 is partnering with Vibes Open Ear Wireless Headphones. That's Vy BZ.

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Results may vary, see Chime.com for details and applicable terms. [Music]

[Music] My intention was to enjoy Costa Rica. [Music]

“Great expression, a lot of you know the wonderful pure life for you enjoy the beauty of Costa Rica.”

So, did you lose yourself in that idea? Yeah, it was easy to lose it up, it was too easy. [Music] Dean fits right in in Costa Rica. [Music]

He's moved in with a local family from Esparza. [Music] But he cannot hide from the collateral damage of his past. [Music]

You know, Mark finally kicks Dean out.

He believes a bunch of stuff in Mark's garage. [Music] And I find a Jim Beg, a great big Jim Beg. And when I pulled it open, I found a woman's purse. I thought, well, this is really odd.

Why does Dean have a woman's purse? I opened the purse and I found Maria's wallet. Sir, driver's license. And all of her credit cards were... Maria is Maria Cruz.

Now, at this point, Mark Richie has no clue who she is or why her identification ends up in his garage. But he sees a phone book. He calls three numbers. Really doesn't get anywhere.

Then decides, well, I did what I could. [Music] Well, I thought maybe Dean was using somebody's credit cards to buy a drug. [Music]

And then I thought, well, maybe he's in credit card fraud. Before I put everything back in the bag. I said out loud, in the garage, I don't want to know. I really don't want to know. [Music]

Now it's the Christmas season. Great Bach is angry. Dean owed him $85,000. He decides he's going to call Brian forward the investigator from the attorney general's office and find out how can I get my money back.

“So he calls me up and he says, "Hey, did you take the food?”

I have some information you might be interested." I'm going to really long productive conversation. And at some point, Greg says it just doesn't make sense. This, you know, this probation is on. It's not that bad.

Why would he jump bail and just disappear? [Music] Brian forward. The investigator says, "Well, maybe it's because we just went and asked him about a missing person."

And Greg asks, "Why don't you go missing?" And he said, "Oh, it's back in April 2003." And Greg was like, "Hey, I'm going to play a ball."

That was the first year we could moment.

[Music] Greg decides to share a rather interesting story. It had to do with a phone call with a mutual friend of he and Dean's. [Music] Dean had called him under really dubious circumstances

that he had been treating a woman who went into anthropologic shock and he didn't know what to do. But I had understood that he had gotten her medical help and that she was fine. [Music]

A series of light bulbs began to appear over people's hands. Maybe she's got a hospital like maybe his response to buffer her and being missing. [Music] And then so in my mind,

I walked myself through every room of that house. Just trying to think. [Music] I had made and mentioned to Dean that, like, if you wanted to lose something forever,

like put it in the garage and you'll never find it.

[Music] The second year of the moment came when Greg was like, Dean was building something like a concrete block or a concrete slab out of the garage before they moved the house. And then it clicked about that concrete project.

And it was like, is that where she could be? [Music] We can only see the front of it here, but it goes back further. [Music] That's where he was pouring a slab, pouring a slab of concrete.

[Music]

“He was strangely guarded about his garage project though, right?”

Yeah. I was just curious as to what he was doing and what was taking so long. But one thing that I hadn't realized is that [Music]

Look a black carry on.

But then I do remember having seen it.

“Today, the cement project and then not seen it.”

And he started thinking and thinking and he put two and two together. [Music] My concerns are that my hypothesis might be right. [Music] Greg decides he has to sit down

and write a letter to detectives saying he just might know something about a missing person. [Music] I had composed a letter to Brian Ford that I might have pertinent information

as to whereabouts of this missing person. [Music] It was a very tenuous moment as I knew that like once I did this,

like there was no turning back.

I was really concerned about what I'd be putting into motion. [Music] Mr. Bach was very forthcoming with information. At this point, the breaking of investigation we were hoping for.

“This we hoped was going to lead us to solve the mystery”

as to what happened to Maria. [Music] Twenty minutes outside of Manhattan on a beautiful tree-lined street in Newark, New Jersey. [Music]

Police have their eyes on a certain mansion when belonging to Dean, Firelobe. When Greg told us about the cement block and all that, we wanted to go on out there. And we desperately would like to see what's in that garage

and get ahold of Dean. [Music]

They show up at the house and show the poor new owners.

Hey, here's the search warrant. By the way, we're going to dig up a concrete slab in your garage. [Music] [Music] It was a big house.

A couple of stories. Big fences around it. Guess house in the back. It looked like an estate. Before they started the Jackhammer, I said,

"Look, I have the film list." So I turned the film on, and I started to go ahead. At that point in emergency service, a Jackhammer shovels. Jackhammer threw the cement floor and the cement foundation

that he was building. Once they broke the concrete, the smell of decomposition was very strong. [Music] You could see that they knew they had something

and as they pulled apart the rubble and shoveled out the debris. One of the police officers reaches in, pulls out the suitcase, covered in dust, open the suitcase, and we found what were human remains.

We begin with the woman's body found in a basement. Police made the discovery in Newark, and they say the remains may be linked to a bank worker who disappeared from Manhattan nearly a year ago. At some point, you had to figure out what to do with her body.

Yeah, without thinking, I put Maria in the suitcase and put her in my car and took her to my house. Weeks passed. Weeks passed. She just sat in my garage. I was getting ready to close on the cell house.

And in the garage, there was a slab that'd be repaired. And the idea came to me to, to make the Maria part of that slab.

“It's like just can't believe I did it, but that's what I did.”

It was like really, really shocking. I was trying to convince myself that I'd been wrong and for it to come to such a dark and sinister conclusion. It was just like devastated. The decomposing body discovered in a home in Newark

is indeed that of Maria Cruz, a New York woman who had been missing for nearly a year. When I found out a lot of things hit me all at once, the extra cement I bought and how deep I was. The woman's purse.

And when I looked at the handle of that luggage, I said you sound of a bitch. It was the exact piece of luggage that I moved. I unknowingly moved that body. Maria's family flew in.

They had a memorial service. Where's the justice of God? How come this terrible thing happens to a good person? It was a test of faith for the family of Maria. The funeral was very sad.

One of the saddest funeral that I ever attended. It was painful and it brought with that pain. A sense of relief. Now they knew they could bring her remains back to the Philippines.

Ding situation goes from being a year ago he was Dr. Quack

to now suddenly he's the prime suspect in a murder case. My phone rings and it's the city desk editor and he's like "Genie Mac, Genie Mac, lights and sirens, lights and sirens. Your guy, Dean Fialo killed Maria Cruz. I stopped for a beat and I thought, "How would Dean Fialo know Maria Cruz

and how would this all come together?" At this point, all we know is that Dean has disappeared. We don't know if he's a yorker. We don't know if he's a Miami. This guy could be literally anywhere in the world.

This story has exploded and all I could think of is I have to find Dean Fialo. Genie Mac and Tosh has some good law enforcement contacts and she learns through one of them who did a passport search that Dean has fled to Costa Rica at the New York Post.

It was why are you standing here and why aren't you on a plate? [music] I wonder what Dean Fialo was thinking when he first touched down here in San Jose 20 years ago. He couldn't have picked a more beautiful country to escape too.

[music] We flew down to San Jose to meet up with Genie Mac and Tosh, retracing her hunt for Dean Fialo to see what we could learn about his time on the run. [music]

Does it look like it did 18 years ago when your first set put it? It looks what crowded that I remember. You know, it's a lot easier. It's more people. I have no plan.

It's just this big adrenaline rush. It's the thrill of the chase. It's big.

It's a country I've never been to.

“And so the only thing I could think to do”

immediately was go to the US Embassy. [music] I just walked over to this guard station, and I said, "Hi, we'd like to see someone about a future day from the United States,

this man, Dean Fialo. He's wanted in New York for murder." They knew nothing. They said, "Look, we don't have any correspondence any phone calls, anything from New York

to go look for this guy." So we can't look for him until we have a warrant. Back in New York, the wheels of justice are grinding slowly.

Police are still trying to determine cause of death.

Gene Macintosh is staying ahead of the police

because she's in Costa Rica boots on the ground doing her own investigation. [music] We just went from place to place, showing the picture.

We showed it in the public square. We showed it at restaurants. We showed it at bars. We got lucky. We found this internet cafe.

He was recognized immediately. They even said, "Oh, he's in here a couple times a week." I felt like we were really hot on his trail. We went out at night because I knew he

like clubs and cave bars, and we started going to those. We walk in the door with the picture. The woman says, "Hi!"

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. She's seen him and he's been there. It's very distinctly.

“I think that Dean would be incapable of going”

into somewhere and just saying, "I'm just going to sit here quietly in the corner. He's narcissistic. He likes to make a splash." Dean Phil makes it a crab.

Dean Phil makes an impression. Yeah. Dean's whole adventure and what he's doing is just crazy in juxtaposition too.

There's a dead woman under the concrete in his house. I will come back for the whole town in the evenings and I was trying to make a grid to just kind of centralize where he might be.

People had seen Dean, but no one had seen Dean today or yesterday. It was maybe last week. I thought, "I wonder if he's left." And that's about the time that I started to hear

that it'd take an off west to this town called Samar. Could you feel the net start to tighten? That that point it was. I was fleeing.

And what better place for a showdown with police than the pool bar

“was there a sense that you were just going to go out with a bag?”

It's the middle of the night

Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge.

“A search gets underway for the missing driver.”

19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point nobody knows. Old friendships.

Buried cash. And a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm Juju Chang. From 2020 and ABC audio.

Listen now to Bridge of Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place. The Testaments.

A new Hulu original series from the executive producers of the handmade stale. It's easier to accept a story than believe that the people around you are monsters. The battle isn't over.

You're come to time. You have to take action.

“When you have to choose your own destiny.”

What's the new Hulu original series? The Testaments. April 8th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for Bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Dean has been living pretty comfortably in Costa Rica for several months. But now there's this news of the discovery of Maria's body and it's hitting the Costa Rican headlines. And Dean is really feeling the heat. One day I went to check my email

and for some reason I clicked on the news. I remember seeing Maria's photo. The same one that was on those missing postures. Yeah. The same panic and fear that I felt

when I realized that Maria passed away. That returned. I just react and grab stuff and fly. The Dean filed a trail continues to a beat resort that's less than 100 miles away.

But several hours drive because the roads are so wide. We're going to try and go to that beat resort. See, anybody can tell us more about why Dean would have chosen such a public place to hold on. You covered the reception.

Take me back to the first time you met her.

I see the one guy is coming. He says you had room available. I don't care. They have money. I won the best.

He didn't care how much he caught how much he took. Dean saw the guy yesterday or the guy just crazy. I say what are you doing in the United States? He says the doctor. He said he was a doctor.

My name is Philippe. My family has owned this property for the last 30 years. We're at Villa number one. This is where Dean was staying when he stayed with us. He wanted to have the most secluded villa in the complex.

He was just in his element. Having a great time. Spending tons of money. He was known to be a big tipper. Everything.

He didn't. Well, $100. That's the problem. $100. $100.

Yes. $100. He spends a lot of time sleeping. Spend a lot of time drinking. And I'm going way out of limb here.

Chasing a couple of boys. I mean, this was not a guy who was overwhelmed with grief or worry. This was Dean Vialo at the beach. What did you serve him? Melal?

Coconut cream? And vodka. You've been drinking. Many drinks.

“I believe that he knew as a rest was imminent.”

Because he decided to come and enjoy the most of life at the time. It is a measure of Dean's areas. That while as a fugitive, he didn't even travel under another name. He was Dean Vialo at this beach resort. You were spending a lot of money.

You bought the best room in the whole hotel. Was there a sense that you were just going to go out with a bang? Yeah. Well, I was on a suicide mission. I was just doing things to just enjoy the last moments.

And it was hedonism. Periodonism. We found out about Dean through the local newspaper. Our onsite manager called us in the morning instead. Look at a picture.

The guy is saying here in one of our units. He had committed murder. I believe my father called one of his friend, the lawyer, been shencing.

They decided to come down and talk to Dean first.

I told him you are going to be arrested in the need of few hours or a day or two.

Yeah. Exactly.

Did he see nervous at all?

No, no, no. He was very calm. He just got up there in the pool or the beef hotel. And he was drinking it. And what happens next?

Almost like an hour or two hours later, the immigration police came up.

“What's the first visible sign to you that the jigsaw?”

Seeing police in black jackets. Working around hotel. After four months of living on the run, a day of reckoning has arrived. Dean Biolo is arrested by Costa Rican immigration police

for overstaying his visa. In Costa Rica, they don't do what we do in New York. They don't do a per block. I said, "Look, since we couldn't see him arrested, could we have a per block?"

When they brought him back to San Jose, sure not. There was their per block with all the Costa Rican guys walking him into the jail. I was overwhelmed by the amount of attention. It was light cameras and the flashes going off.

That was the surprise. I really was like, "I'm unsure of what was going to happen next." We walked into the jail. And it was like really a creepy spot. The floor was just dirt.

“I said, "Wow, what kind of a jail is this?"”

I said, "You know why you're in here, right?" He said, "You can't talk to you, but you know what we're bringing it back for." He goes, "Yeah, I do." Are you the lady with the Maria Cruz step?

New York City detectives want Dean Fialo back in their custody fast. But it's not going to be so simple. What's the next thing? Because Dean Fialo has another trick of his slave.

We are in a small town about two hours from the Capital City San Jose called Asparza. It was here that Fialo lived for about three months with that couple he met earlier in his travels. They were living in a house that was really rundown. And so I found a nice place.

And I'm convinced I'm to move and pay the rent. After Dean's arrest, he spent months fighting extradition. But it was his time spent with that couple that gave his new immigration attorney an idea. The attorney I was working with went to them and asked them, "Would you consider adopting me?"

And they said, "Sure." Didn't that not strike you as absurd? Yeah, I thought there's not going to work. And they were younger than I am. But you know, at this point we were desperate.

On its face, it seems to be a brilliant idea because there's a loophole in the extradition policies that if you're a citizen of Costa Rica, you cannot be extradited. So why not let Dean get adopted? There's nothing in the law that says the cannot be done.

But I said, "Okay, let's give it a try." Hail Mary. Hail Mary Pass. So Dean's attorney fought for months trying to get the adoption approved.

But ultimately, because the couple was younger than middle aged Dean,

a judge ruled against it. And then after it was turned down, I think two, three days later, they walked me up at five o'clock in the morning and said, "Get trust for going."

Art detectives work closely with Costa Rica to get through the extradition process that eventually fly back to New York. I didn't know what was ahead, but there was also some sort of relief

“that, um, okay, finally, the truth is out.”

When I realized that they were going to charge you with a form of murder, the gravity of the situation took hold. In October of 2006, nearly three years after Maria died, Dean Fialo stands before a Manhattan Supreme Court judge and admits that Maria had come to see him

on that faithful day for a procedure.

Dean Fialo sat down with me to reveal for the first time

what he says were the full details of what really happened to Maria at tragic late afternoon on 16th Street. When he says she came to him, seeking laser treatment for scarring on her thighs. I know I was drug and high during her final treatment.

If he was in a lot of discomfort, and I was a long treatment, I might use too many files of light a can,

There's no logic to it. There's no justification. I knew it was wrong. And deep down inside,

“I was afraid that something was going to go wrong.”

What was the first sign of trouble being?

Labored breathing. She was conscious. Yep. But I didn't recognize that she was unburdened going into shock. Dean told me her labored breathing continued for about 10 minutes

before things took a terrible turn. She stopped breathing. I was working on the area, and I looked up, there were bubbles,

emerging from our mouth. Did you call for help? I delayed calling for help. I tried CPR, couldn't get her to start breathing again.

Had you been trained in what to do if a patient goes into shock? A proper train? No. Dean takes the time to call another doctor,

someone he knows to say this is what's happened, what should I do? An actual doctor who says, "How about calling 911? How about taking you to the hospital?"

But he did need it. People can understand panic. Ravages of addiction.

“Very hard to understand how you could not react.”

By calling 911, we're trying whatever you could to get this young lady saved. I can't understand either. I can't. I can't give you a logical explanation

because there is an explanation. What was Maria's posture at that point? She was completely remembered at that point. I put my head on her chest, and I checked to see whether she was breathing,

and she had no vital signs. Did you check for a pulse? No, I did not. Do you even know how to do that? No.

Dean then described what he says he decided to do with Maria's body after he believed she was dead. Cover up again immediately. This is this Harry Potter. As to how it was an automated reaction.

Without thinking, I put Maria in the suitcase and put her in my car and took her to my house.

“But obviously this requires the liberation.”

I don't think it was thinking about it. It was just a reaction. The rest of yours are on my display on the sofa. The Maria's body stayed in my car. I was here for two days.

I didn't know what to do. Soon there would be missing persons posters and in all out effort by her family or colleagues to find her. I didn't see any posters. I did get some voice messages.

Her sister called and left a message on my voice mail.

You never returned those calls?

No. What was it like to hear? The voice of Maria's desperate sister on the phone. Powerful. Happily horrible.

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For bundle subscribers. Terms apply for the TV 14L. On December 4th 2006, Dean was originally charged with murder

and he was able to bargain and plead that down to one count of first-degree assault

and practicing medicine without a license. The judge calling Dean's action senseless and depraved. He was sentenced to 20 years behind bars. You walk in through the gates of Atticom to begin a long prison sentence. What's going through your mind now?

Off your uncertainty. I had no strategy there. Other than to work on my education. To do something with my time there. So I read.

I read very easily. At this point, are you out of the grips of addiction and thinking differently, thinking clearly? Well, the sobriety and the lucidity allowed me to figure out,

What he did do was take all that time and use it to his advantage.

He became a Quaker.

“Learned a lot about criminal justice reform.”

He began writing very intensive pieces, regarding criminal justice. You really threw yourself into the writing. It gave me purpose. There was a hope that I could make sense of what I had been through.

After all these years, the prison has Dean Fialo really changed. I started to think about it, and I realized that I haven't truly expressed my sorrow and my regrets.

You know, for what I've done. Not only to Maria, but to her family also.

Dean Fialo, now, finally, has something to say

to Maria Cruz's family. After serving 18 years behind bars, Dean was finally parole just this January. His life is a bit more humble now. He's working as a maintenance man at a grocery store.

Dean, what's the life like for you now,

“but you're out of prison and settling back into the free world?”

You know what I love is the simplicity. Doing very simple things. I'm going to the gym, coming back to my apartment, putting on YouTube, and cooking. I think part of my mission now is to talk about,

okay, what happened, what led to it, and what I'm doing now to recover

and re-enter society as a law-abying citizen.

What about people like Greg Bach, and other friends, do you have plans to account to them? I am not refusing to account to anybody. It's unfortunately because of the magnitude of what I've done. It's a big task.

Long list. Yeah, long list. But I have a lot of work ahead, and I'm not going to shy away from doing that work. I've heard Dean, as it's pressing,

remorse, but my immediate response is to just like, don't believe anything he has to say. He's been released, and there's this understanding that he has paid his debt to society, but he hasn't paid his debt to me.

Is he back to his old tricks? Saying something one thing and doing something else? Because I wouldn't believe the man if he was sitting at this table. Maria Cruz's family can only be the ones to know

if they would forgive him or not. What was unforgivable was his whole behavior and for doing the public. Do you wonder am I still the man that did that thing? I don't think that I am the same person.

I don't believe it. But I have fooled myself many times, and I have fooled other people. That worries me. I believe people can be rehabilitated.

Dean deserves a chance now. He's out of jail, and he has a life to live.

“What he does with that life is up to him.”

Dean and I had several conversations about his journey, where he's been, what he did, and what he hopes to achieve. One of the things that he said he wanted to share a statement of apology to Maria's family. Words cannot express the depth of my sorrow and remorse,

for causing the death of Maria Cruz. Not a day pass as I do not think of Maria, or think of her family, and why I acted like such a coward. I used more than the usual or recommended amount

of light again for the pain. She had a reaction, went into shock, and stopped breathing. I did not get her the medical help that she needed, and she deserved. I panicked, and I covered up her death.

I hope that I am no longer the person who took such a risk with Maria's life. I get inspiration from Maria. She was forgiving and supportive. And I like to think that she was helping me

to transform and atone for what I did, for what I did to her family, and helping me to become a better person one day at a time. When we shared Dean's statement with Maria's family, her sister responded,

we have wanted to know what really happened on that fateful day for such a long time. This has shed light. I ended up crying so hard while reading this. The pain doesn't really go away.

Thanks so much for watching.

“I've reviewed you from all of us here at 2020 at ABC News.”

Good night.

And you can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020

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