In November 2018, Venezuelan/American tourist Carla Stefaniak came to Costa Rica to celebrate her 36th birthday, but was brutally murdered by the security guard at the Airbnb where she was staying, Villa La Mas (now closed). It was to be her last night in Costa Rica before returning home to Florida. Her family feels she was twice brutalized, once by her murderer Bismarck Espinoza Martinez, and again by the Costa Rica court system, who gave her killer a lenient sentence of 16 years of prison. The family has appealed.

In her family’s appeal, they state that although Bismark was the only suspect in the homicide case, and all evidence was considered conclusive against him, including a witness who overheard his wife say he had confessed to her, the judges elected to charge him with second degree murder (homicidio simple), and give him a lesser sentence. First degree murder holds an 18-year sentence. Capital punishment is not allowed in Costa Rica. Espinoza has begun to serve out that sentence in prison in San Jose.
The reason for the lighter sentence, judges declared, was that “It was not possible to establish that there were acts especially macabre as there have been in other cases.” In a peaceful country like Costa Rica, the details of this case were macabre enough for a crime television script. Carla was alone in a nearly empty Airbnb, when the lights went out in a heavy thunderstorm. There was a knock at Carla’s door. Relief! It was just the security guard who had welcomed her when she arrived. The guard had used his position as security guard to gain entrance to her room, where he attempted to rape her, stabbing her seven times when she resisted, finally killing her with a knife wound to the neck.

Then Bismark wrapped her in plastic, and dragged her to a shallow grave not far from her hotel room, burying her half-naked body. Then he returned to her room, and used his access to the janitor’s closet to get cleaning products to scrub the crime scene, until it was almost impossible to tell that a crime had occurred. Her family feels the crime was macabre enough to devastate Carla’s whole family, and alarming enough to do serious damage to Costa Rica’s tourist industry.

Carla’s lawyer points out in this new appeal, that the judges failed to take into consideration the murder weapon, and the fact that this was an even more serious crime when one considers that Carla was in fact robbed, making the crime also one of aggravated robbery. One of her suitcases has yet to be found. The judges also seemed to overlook the fact that Bismark (Nicaraguan), was working without a work permit, in fact without legal immigration status to even be in Costa Rica. The family feels that the murder was horribly violent, inflicting great pain and suffering on Carla, and certainly qualifies as being “macabre” in any judicial system in the world, given the murderer’s cunning entry into her room, and evil treatment of her body after the murder.

The murder rate in Costa Rica was down in 2018 to 587 murders, compared with 603 in 2017. Even so, Carla was one of several young foreign tourists murdered that year, marring the country’s reputation as a safe place for tourists, even young female tourists. Efforts have been made since then to both improve security in tourist areas, and improve Costa Rica’s reputation as a safe tourist destination.

In 2018, Carla’s family stated after Espinoza’s sentencing, “This is beyond sickening. This, like many other cases in Costa Rica, are either swept under the rug or minimized in hopes that it will be forgotten.” Carla’s family is making every effort to assure that her death will never be forgotten.
Bismarck has been ordered to pay her family a penalty of $53,000, a penalty shared with the owners of the now defunct hotel

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