Man killed pregnant mistress to hide affair from his wife

When Tania Wise refused to have an abortion, she paid with her life

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Soto-Escalera at his sentencing in October this year

Tania Wise was just a week away from giving birth to her second child through elective caesarean, and was really excited about adding to her family. Tania, 23, who already had an eight-year-old son from a previous relationship, was expecting another boy who she'd named Josiah. She revealed the name at her baby shower and everyone there saw how happy she was at the prospect of becoming a mum for a second time.

Single mum Tania had fallen pregnant again after she began seeing a married man. She was a dancer at a club north of Palm Beach, Florida, and had started a relationship with dad-of-four Jose Soto-Escalera, after meeting him at the club. When Tania fell pregnant, Soto-Escalera, 41, who drove a garbage truck for a living, was worried that his wife would find out, so he insisted that Tania get rid of the baby and gave her $500 to have an abortion.

At first, Tania took Soto-Escalera's money but then she changed her mind and decided to raise the baby by herself, giving the abortion money away to an ex-boyfriend. She loved having a child, so she welcomed the chance of being a mum again. Tania's family weren't surprised at her decision because she always put family first and they promised to support her and the baby.

But on 24 August 2018, just days before Tania's baby was due, a passerby found a body lying face down in a roadside drainage ditch in a rural area of St Lucie County. It was Tania. She had suffered brutal injuries. There was significant blunt force trauma to her head, which had fractured her skull and injured her brain. Her throat and jugular vein had been cut, with the 19cm wound going right down to the bone. Either injury would have been fatal, and the medical examiner couldn't tell which had been done first to the heavily pregnant woman.

As a result of Tania's injuries, baby Josiah, though almost full-term, had tragically also died.