A Florida man has been sentenced to life in prison after killing his girlfriend. Farel Torres will spend the rest of his life in jail after an alleged crime of passion that prosecutors argued was entirely premeditated. Killing his girlfriend would have been terrible enough, but he committed the crime with the couple’s children in the home. In fact, Torres readied the children for day care after stabbing his girlfriend to death, and he dropped them off as if he hadn’t killed their mother.
In a news release, the Office of the State Attorney 18th Judicial Circuit announced that Torres, 38, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on November 5, 2025. According to the release, jurors only deliberated for 14 minutes during the September 18 trial before finding Torres guilty of second-degree murder.
During the trial, Torres told jurors that he killed 34-year-old Vanessa Santiago in a fit of passion to get a lesser sentence of manslaughter, Fox 35 reported. Prosecutors, however, poked holes in that logic, providing evidence that his stabbing was malicious. Before killing Santiago, he retrieved the knife from the kitchen and then disabled the bedroom’s security camera.
Chief trial attorney for the 18th Circuit Domenick Leo spoke with People about the case, saying Torres moved cameras that “would’ve watched him go into the kitchen to get a knife.” He also “took the SD card out of the camera in the master bedroom where she was killed and hid it under the bed along with a pair of scissors and the knife.”
According to prosecutors, Torres was angry with Santiago because she was ending their relationship and making him leave their two-bedroom apartment.
“The theory is he approached her while she was sitting with her legs crossed on the floor and she was basically telling him to get the hell out,” Leo said, per People. “And then he went to the bed where he hid the knife, grabbed the knife, and then stabbed her first in the chest all the way through to her heart. And then a stab to her right side of her abdomen. He cut her ear and then stabbed her in the face where the knife was lodged in part of her skull. That’s how she was found with the knife in her skull.”
Farel Torres stabbed Vanessa Santiago no less than seven times.
Prosecutors also shared that video evidence showed the couple’s 5-year-old son witnessed his mother’s murder. According to Leo, the little boy could hear screaming and went to the bedroom to see what was happening.
“He goes into the bedroom, basically sees his mom getting stabbed and killed, the defendant tells him to get out of there. The kid turns around and you can see the video of the kid walking back. He looks like a ghost,” Leo said, per People.
After killing Santiago, Torres reportedly cleaned up with baby wipes before he put a diaper on their 3-year-old child, got the kids dressed, and took them to day care.
CCTV footage from the day care shows Torres acting “nonchalant” during dropoff. “It’s no different than any other day,” Leo said, according to the magazine. “You couldn’t tell that there was anything that had happened differently that day than any other day.”
Hours later, a “hysterical” Torres called police to confess his crime. “I stabbed her in the head … I stabbed her ‘cause I was mad,” he said.
“Abuse is not about love, abuse is about control, and we successfully took that control away from the defendant,” prosecutor Sarah Mian said during the trial, according to Fox 39.
“No child should have to experience that type of loss,” prosecutor Jacob Polk added. “I’m just glad that Vanessa has a close-knit family that have leaned on their faith in God to help them through this grieving process.”
If you or someone you know has been the victim of domestic abuse, you can find help and support at DVIS.org, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or by contacting your local women’s shelter (domesticshelters.org).
