Melissa Lewis on Dateline: Villegas Trial and Rothstein Ponzi

The Dateline episode “Betrayed,” which aired in March 2017, told the story of Melissa Britt Lewis, a 39-year-old Fort Lauderdale attorney who was strangled and dumped in a South Florida canal in March 2008. Her killer was Tony Villegas, the estranged husband of her best friend and law-firm colleague Debra Coffey. He was convicted of first-degree murder in June 2016 and sentenced to life in prison. The case drew national attention in part because Lewis worked at Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, the firm whose founder, Scott Rothstein, ran one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.¹

Who Melissa Lewis Was

Lewis was a labor and employment attorney and a recently promoted partner at Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler in Fort Lauderdale. She had started at the firm as a law clerk in 1999, while still a student at Nova Southeastern University Law School, and built her career there over nearly a decade. Colleagues described her as a defender of the underdog who often represented plaintiffs and took on juvenile cases pro bono.²

At the firm, Lewis grew close to Debra Coffey, the chief operating officer. The two became best friends. That friendship placed Lewis directly in the path of Coffey’s estranged husband.

The Night of the Murder

On the evening of March 5, 2008, Lewis stopped at a Publix on her way home from work. She never made it inside her house. When she missed a meeting the next morning, Coffey called Lewis’s sister and asked Plantation police to check on her.³

Officers found the garage empty of her car but full of clues. Groceries had been left behind. Pepper spray residue coated the floor, walls, and ceiling. A button torn from a suit jacket lay on the ground. Lewis’s dog had also been sprayed.²

That afternoon, police located Lewis’s black Cadillac SUV in a Plantation parking lot. Bloodstains marked the trunk carpet. Her brown suit jacket, missing the button recovered from the garage, was inside. Two days later, on the morning of March 8, 2008, a maintenance worker inspecting a clogged grate discovered her body in a canal near Pine Island Road and State Road 84, about four miles from her home.⁴ An autopsy ruled the cause of death manual strangulation.³

Why Tony Villegas Killed Her

Villegas and Debra Coffey had been married 17 years when they separated in 2006. As Coffey and Lewis grew closer, Villegas came to blame Lewis for the failure of the marriage. Prosecutors said that resentment was the motive.⁵

During the divorce, Villegas told Coffey directly: “You think you’re on top now. But you and your friends will be sorry. I’m going to win in the end.” He also sent her a threatening text message.⁶ Both women took the threats seriously. Coffey bought a Taser. Lewis bought pepper spray. That same pepper spray coated the walls of her garage the night she was killed.

How Investigators Identified Him

Detectives first looked at several other men, including Lewis’s ex-husband and Scott Rothstein himself, and cleared them. The break came from cell phone records. After Lewis died, her phone traveled between Broward and Miami-Dade counties along the FEC railroad line, where Villegas worked as a conductor. His own phone’s movements on the night of the murder tracked closely with hers, including a trip to the canal where her body was found and to Hialeah.³

Villegas’s roommate, Wilset Pascual, told investigators that Villegas came home late the night Lewis disappeared and asked how to wash pepper spray off his body. On March 19, 2008, forensic testing confirmed that DNA on the suit jacket in the trunk of Lewis’s SUV belonged to Villegas.² Police arrested him roughly two weeks after the murder.

Why It Took Eight Years to Reach Trial

In April 2010, Broward Circuit Judge Michael Gates declared Villegas incompetent to stand trial after two forensic psychologists concluded he could not assist in his own defense. He was transferred from the county jail to a secure mental health facility overseen by the Florida Department of Children and Families. Under Florida law, prosecutors had five years to restore his competency or face dismissal.⁷

About ten months later, in April 2011, psychologists found him competent, and the defense did not contest it.⁸ Even so, the trial was postponed again and again. By November 2014, Villegas had been held without bond for more than six and a half years. That September, prosecutors dropped the death penalty. Villegas rejected a plea offer. The case finally went to a jury in June 2016.⁹

The Trial and Verdict

The trial was held in Fort Lauderdale before a Broward County jury. Prosecutor Shari Tate walked jurors through the DNA, cell phone, and witness evidence. Villegas’s DNA had been found on Lewis’s suit jacket 16 separate times. “There’s not one other person on the planet earth that could leave the DNA on this jacket… other than that man right there,” Tate told the jury.¹⁰

Debra Coffey testified for the prosecution. She described Lewis as her “dearest friend” and confirmed Lewis had bought pepper spray out of fear of Villegas. Judge Jeffrey R. Levenson excluded the specific text-message threat, ruling it was “too long before the murder” and “not specific enough” for jurors to hear.⁵ Defense attorney Bruce Fleisher declined to cross-examine her.

Fleisher’s defense argued that Lewis’s death might be tied to the Rothstein Ponzi scheme, suggesting that someone at the firm who “knew too much” could have targeted her. He also noted that Rothstein had served as counsel for the Plantation Police Department. The judge barred that theory from the jury, and investigators maintained the murder had no connection to the fraud and that Lewis herself was not implicated in any wrongdoing.¹¹

On June 27, 2016, the jury found Villegas guilty of first-degree murder. The judge imposed the mandatory life sentence.¹²

The Rothstein Ponzi Scheme Backdrop

The Dateline framing leans heavily on Lewis’s workplace, but the Ponzi scheme was not the reason she died. Scott Rothstein, the founder of her firm, sold investors shares in fabricated lawsuit settlements using fake bank documents and phony agreements. He pleaded guilty in January 2010 to five federal counts of fraud and conspiracy and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The firm, which had employed more than 70 lawyers, collapsed.¹³

Debra Coffey, who had forged signatures on phony legal settlements after Rothstein told her he was in trouble with the Mafia, later pleaded guilty to federal money-laundering conspiracy. She was sentenced to ten years and released in December 2014 after serving roughly three and a half for cooperating with prosecutors.¹⁴ Rothstein acknowledged an affair with Lewis but denied any knowledge of her murder and walked out of a deposition when questioned about it.¹⁵

Where Tony Villegas Is Now

Villegas is serving his life sentence at Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City, Florida.³ Besides the Dateline episode, the case was also featured on Oxygen’s “Buried in the Backyard” in Season 4, Episode 4, “Wading in the Water,” which focused on how cell phone data placed Villegas at the canal on the night of the murder.¹⁶

Reflecting on her friend, Coffey said: “She was just a very special person taken away from us because of an evil person who didn’t get his way. It’s senseless.”³

1
NBC Miami. Dateline to Feature South Florida Murder Case Tied to Ponzi Scheme
2
Miami New Times. Did Friendship Cost Rothstein Lawyer Melissa Lewis Her Life
3
Oxygen. Tony Villegas Killed Melissa Lewis Threw Body in Florida Canal
4
Sun-Sentinel. Body of Missing Attorney Found in Broward Canal
5
Orlando Sentinel. Ex-Wife Testifies Against Tony Villegas
6
CBS News Miami. Villegas Ex-Wife to Testify Against Him at Murder Trial
7
Sun-Sentinel. Judge: Tony Villegas Incompetent to Stand Trial in Rothstein Law Partner’s Murder
8
CBS News Miami. Villegas Ruled Competent in Attorney Murder Case
9
Orlando Sentinel. Tony Villegas Trial Delayed Again in Rothstein Lawyer Murder Case
10
WSVN. Tony Villegas Murder Trial Winds Down
11
ABA Journal. Man Is Convicted of Murder of Former Partner in Law Firm of Convicted Ponzi Schemer
12
CBS News Miami. Villegas Murder Trial Winding Down
13
ABC News. Scott Rothstein 50 Years for Ponzi Scheme
14
Sun-Sentinel. Rothstein’s Right-Hand Woman Has Fond Memories of Him Despite Ponzi Scheme
15
Law.com. Rothstein Deposition in Lewis Murder Case
16
Oxygen. Wading in the Water