Police: Wealthy lawyer ordered lover’s death, gunmen kill another by mistake(Update)

Santo Domingo.- Attorney and businessman Julio Cepeda Ureña, 64, was arrested Thursday night charged with ordering the April 28 death of accountant Suleika Flores and Natasha Sing Guzmán, executed 20 days earlier, by the same assassins who mistook her for Flores.

The police had previously arrested four others in the women’s murders, who had confessed to being contracted by Cepeda to kill Flores, a single mother who was the bookkeeper of his businesses and had an affair until January, when according to local media, she was hired by the Mexican Embassy.

Investigators say Cepeda wanted to keep his relationship with Flores a secret, but his wife, also a lawyer, had learned of it.

That and other conflicts between Cepeda and unnamed partners in the Cepeda & Dotel law firm and his former accountant, police say, led him to pay gunmen RD$200,000 to have her murdered.

In addition to the law firm, Cepeda owns Inversiones Jumel, Hermanos Cepeda and other businesses in Ensanche Ozama, Santo Domingo East.