- When Erika split up with Pedro at high school, he was in denial
- Later at uni she found happiness – with their mutual friend Christian
The couple thought it best to keep their love secret to protect Pedro’s feelings, then Christian went missing
Erika Friman couldn’t stop smiling.
The 18-year-old had just started dating her good friend, Christian Aguilar, also 18.
They’d met in school but had grown close after both enrolling to study at the same uni in 2021.
Erika had told friends that Christian made her really happy. But there was just one problem. For now, they needed to keep their relationship secret.
In high school, Erika had dated their mutual friend, Pedro Bravo, but things had turned sour just before they’d graduated.
Erika told Pedro she wanted to step away from the relationship, but he became depressed and was in denial.
For that reason, Erika continued to date Pedro, 18, for a few months but ended things before heading off to university.
She told him, ‘This doesn’t make me happy right now.’
‘I was really concerned that… something bad would happen if we took a break,’ she later recalled to ABC News.
‘I tried to be as clear as I could, but I mean, apparently he didn’t understand it,’ she later said.
Despite Pedro’s obvious unhappiness about the breakup, university was a fresh start for Erika.
Growing closer with her friend Christian, she couldn’t deny her feelings for him.
But they both agreed to wait before telling Pedro, worried it might tip him over the edge.
In September 2021, Christian, who was always punctual, was supposed to stay the night at Erika’s – but he never showed up. He wasn’t answering calls or replying to text messages either.
He wasn’t answering calls
The next day Erika contacted his parents, Carlos and Claudia, but they hadn’t seen him.
Worried for their friend, Erika and Pedro headed to the police station to report Christian missing.
Speaking to police, Pedro, who was believed to be the last person to see Christian alive, said he had reached out to his friend because he was feeling depressed, and Christian had said to come pick him up.
The pair had driven around town in Pedro’s SUV, grabbed a bite to eat, and gone shopping.
Bravo then claimed on the way home from the shops, he picked up a hitchhiker – a man in his 50s or 60s.
After dropping the hitchhiker off, Pedro said he and Chrisian argued about how he was handling some personal issues and Christian then asked to be let out of the car.
Pedro said he dropped him at the side of the road by a shop that sold 4WDs, near a wooded area and claimed he hadn’t seen him since.
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Police drove out, located the area and began to look for Christian.
The area was known to be home to crocs and snakes, so cops worried he might be lying injured somewhere.
Soon an air unit and hundreds of volunteers joined the search.
Meanwhile, police continued to question Pedro, whose story kept changing. He said his fight with Christian had got physical and that he’d punched him in the face.
Something wasn’t adding up…
Police investigators then discovered the connection between Pedro, Chrisian and Erika – and learned that Pedro had found out about the new relationship through mutual friends.
They got a warrant and searched Pedro’s car. They found two Gatorade bottles and some duct tape.
Meanwhile, the search party had found something much more significant, and tragic – the body of Christian Aguilar, buried in a shallow grave.
There was duct tape on his body, and when it was tested in the lab, it was determined to be the same type of tape found in Pedro’s car.
Additionally, tests on the Gatorade bottles revealed traces of sedatives.
He’d also searched for how to hide a body online. Bravo was arrested and charged with Christian’s murder.
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During his 2014 trial, where he denied the charges, another of his journal entries was read out. I’m a monster for having hurt Christian the way I did, it said.
The final pieces of the puzzle were found in a search of Pedro’s home – a receipt for a shovel and a diary, filled with entries about his anger about Christian’s new relationship with Erika. He’d written a step-by-step plan to make Christian ‘disappear’.
Prosecutors said Bravo had lured Christian into meeting him by saying he needed help with his depression.
But really, he planned to make Christian disappear so he could win back his ex girlfriend, Erika.
Pedro had given Christian the spiked Gatorade to subdue him, they claimed, before strangling him with his belt in the back of his SUV.
Traces of blood on the car seats indicated a struggle, but eventually Christian was subdued, duct taped and murdered.
Bravo then used the shovel he’d purchased to dig a shallow grave and bury Christian.
CCTV revealed he’d bought he shovel, as well as the tape, sedatives, and bandages, the night before the murder, making it entirely premediated.
‘He literally bought the murderer’s starter pack,’ Prosecutor Bill Ezzell said.
He’d purchased the shovel to dig a shallow grave
Bravo, then 20, was found guilty of first-degree murder, false imprisonment, poisoning and tampering with evidence.
In August 2014 he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
‘You took his past, everything he had been, you took his present, everything he was and you took his future, everything he would have been,’ Judge James Colaw said.
In the years since, Bravo failed to appeal his conviction several times.
Pedro Bravo died by suicide in prison in March this year at the age of 31.
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