Married 48-year-old man who killed a 23-year-old woman and their unborn son weeks before her due date just because he was mad she “played him,” was sentenced
Florida – In a horrific case in Florida that prosecutors described as “heinous” and “coldly premeditated,” a 48-year-old man, identified as J. Soto-Escalera, has now been sentenced to death for the brutal 2018 murders of 23-year-old T. Wise and her unborn son. The case, which had been moving through the courts for seven years, came to a close with a judge affirming the jury’s recommendation for capital punishment.
Soto-Escalera was convicted last month of two counts of first-degree murder for killing 8-months-pregnant Wise and their unborn baby. Wise’s body was found face down in a ditch along a remote Florida road on August 24, 2018, showing signs of blunt force trauma and multiple stab wounds. According to the medical examiner, either injury would have been fatal.
At the time of the murder, Soto-Escalera was married to another woman, and the affair with Wise had been kept secret. Prosecutors argued that the killing stemmed from his rage after learning Wise had used the $500 he gave her “to get rid of the baby” on someone else instead. Witnesses said she threatened to tell his wife if he didn’t give her money. Wise had confided to a friend that she could get “anything she wanted” if she used Soto-Escalera’s wife against him. Just days before her body was discovered, Soto-Escalera was reportedly furious. A witness told investigators he complained Wise had “played him” and asked if they knew how to get a “dirty gun.” But prosecutors say he ultimately used a knife to carry out the killings.
Initially, Soto-Escalera denied being se-ually involved with Wise, claiming she had only stripped for him. But DNA testing later confirmed he was the father of the unborn child. Phone records tied him to the scene—revealing late-night calls with Wise and cell tower pings near the area where her body was dumped. Investigators also uncovered incriminating searches on his phone for terms like “dead body in woods” and “wooded area dead body,” made hours before Wise was found. Soto-Escalera was arrested a month after the murder. The prosecution pursued the death penalty, citing that the murders were “heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” and “committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification.”
During the sentencing hearing on Friday, Soto-Escalera’s defense team asked for leniency, presenting evidence of a difficult childhood, past trauma, and good behavior while in custody. They urged the court to impose life without parole instead of execution. But the jury had already recommended death, with eight jurors voting in favor and four opposed. The judge agreed with the jury’s recommendation, explaining that the severity of the crimes against Wise and her unborn son far outweighed any mitigating details about Soto-Escalera’s past. He determined that “the death sentence is the appropriate and just sentence as to each victim.” With that, a case marked by betrayal, secrecy, and a calculated double killing ended with Florida’s harshest punishment—death for a man who, prosecutors argued, tried to silence the life he helped create.
