Kriti Mehrotra
CBS’s ’48 Hours’ has been a part of the network’s slate since early 1988, having been revamped quite a few times to stay modern and up to date. Currently chronicling mostly true-crimes cases that touch on all aspects of the human experience, it investigates real-life dramas while documenting every phase of it so as to give us a conclusion with utmost certainty. The fact that the series has managed to go on for 33 seasons until now makes it evident that it has never failed. And, of course, its episode, ‘Bruce Beresford-Redman: The Verdict,’ detailing the murder of Mónica Burgos, is no different. Want to know more about this particular case? Read on to find out!
How Did Mónica Burgos Die?
Back in early 2010, Mónica Burgos, along with her husband Bruce Beresford-Redman and their two children, Alec and Camilla, was in Cancun, in the luxury Moon Palace Spa and Golf Resort, for a vacation to celebrate her 42nd birthday. On the day that Mónica went missing, Bruce said that she was supposed to be spending the day alone, shopping and visiting spas, preparing for her upcoming big day. He admitted that when she didn’t return at nightfall, he wasn’t too worried, assuming that just she’d gone out into town to see the night-life. However, when she failed to make an appearance the next morning as well, he reported her missing.
For the next three days, the police searched the hotel and the nearby areas for Mónica. But it was only on April 8, 2010, on what was supposed to be her birthday, that they discovered her naked boy lying in a sewer near the resort. She had been bludgeoned, strangled, and her body had been dumped into the gutter to rot. Her autopsy, conducted by Mexican professionals, ruled her cause of death to be by asphyxiation; deficiency of oxygen due to, but not limited to, airway obstruction. Her manner of death, on the other hand, because of the way her body was found, along with the several bruises that lay on her, was determined to be a homicide.
Who Killed Mónica Burgos?
Just a few hours after Mónica’s body was recovered, her husband, American TV producer Bruce Beresford-Redman, was taken into custody and questioned by the investigators as a person of interest. He was let go after a while, but his passport was detained as he was asked to not leave the country. As investigations began, the officers on the case found that Bruce had recently indulged in an extramarital affair that Mónica had found out about, prompting her to ask for a divorce just shortly before their vacation. What’s more, are the witness statements that make it clear that the couple had been fighting quite a lot in the resort.
While one witness came forward to say they had seen Bruce almost physically attacked Mónica, only refraining when he saw there were people nearby, English tourists in the room next to the couple’s reported hearing a woman’s screams, cries for help, and loud bangs from behind their closed doors on the day Mónica supposedly disappeared. The tourists had complained about it to the concierge, who rang up the room and was told by Bruce that there was nothing to worry about as it was just a small marital rift. But when investigators canvassed the same resort room, they discovered traces of blood.
On top of all this, Mónica’s friends and family members stated that Bruce’s claims about Mónica taking the day for herself was very unlike her, indicating that she neither liked long shopping or spa trips nor did she prefer to spend prolonged periods of time away from her children. More damning is the fact that her phone was left behind in her resort room. And as if all this wasn’t enough, Bruce showed his guilty conscience when he illegally left Mexico by crossing the border using his driver’s license as identification and taking a train back to Los Angeles. In the end, though, Bruce Beresford-Redman was extradited to Mexico, where he faced trial and was convicted of murdering Mónica Burgos.
Read More: Where Is Bruce Beresford-Redman Now?
