William Lowe shot his wife, Aydil Barbosa Fontes, in the head, dismembered her with a chainsaw and dumped the remains across the Intracoastal Waterway. (Mugshot: Palm Beach County Jail; reconstruction image: Delray Beach Police Department)
When Florida cops found a woman dismembered in three suitcases along the Intracoastal Waterway, there was no telling if and when they would catch the killer. The victim’s name was a mystery. Investigators had to resort to making a reconstruction of her face and released pictures of her clothes and the suitcases.
The answer, however, was pretty much around the corner. The victim, now identified as Aydil Barbosa Fontes, 80, lived nearby with her husband and alleged murderer, William P. Lowe Jr., 78, according to cops in Delray Beach.
As previously reported, witnesses separately found three suitcases with different body parts along the waterway on July 21. Cops said in a newly released arrest affidavit that these contained small landscaping rocks. The second of the suitcases had a sticker featuring the name “Barbosa.”
More grisly discoveries emerged from the waterway. The following day, police found a Tote-type bag, tied shut with twine, that contained the victim’s head. Investigators later identified Fontes through dental records.
They found a single gunshot wound behind her ear, with the exit wound behind the opposite ear.
A purse slightly north of this was tied with the same type of twine. The purse had an ashtray inside, which authorities suggested was possibly used as a weight. It also had an odor of decomposition.
But where could the killer be? He was very close, according to cops.
Two separate couples and three men doing roof work all claimed to see an older white man with a gold sedan hanging about near where another witness found the third suitcase. The roof workers said the vehicle the mystery man was driving was a Ford.
One of the couples said that this stranger looked into the waterway for several days before July 21.
“They stated he appeared to be looking at the suitcase,” police said.
The witnesses claimed to see him approximately five or six times over a three-day period.
The male witness told police he asked the man what he was looking at. The stranger allegedly claimed to be “waiting for the big boat to come into the harbor.”
The witness, however, told him that no big boats came in because the harbor was too shallow.
The male witness questioned the stranger about which boat he was waiting for. The stranger pointed to a boat across the waterway and said, “a boat like that.” Appearing nervous, the stranger immediately walked to his car, the same older model gold sedan, and left the area.
The roof workers claimed to see the same stranger on July 21, the day the suitcases were found. They described the stranger standing on the seawall looking at the suitcase.
“S—,” he allegedly said, then immediately left in his car.
A second couple described seeing this stranger enter the waterway using a metal dock ladder. That same ladder was later tested when a detective noticed the bottom step was missing barnacles. The testing was positive for blood, police said.
The stranger appeared to have a brush on a metal pole in his hand.
“The witness[es] stated they observed what appeared to be the subject attempting to push or scrape something in the waterway (using the brush in a downward motion),” authorities wrote.
Surveillance footage showed a white man with gray hair climbing down a resident’s dock ladder at 7:04 a.m. on July 20, police said. The male then climbed back up the ladder and walked out of the area of the surveillance. Footage also showed him climbing down the ladder later that day at 4:13 p.m.
Shirtless, the man carried what seemed to be a Cheesecake Factory bag that appeared to have some kind of weight to it. He also had the same metal pole with him, officials said.
He climbed down out of the shot, then reemerged minutes later without the bag.
“The subject immediately removes his shoes and exits the frame,” they wrote.
Cops found a pair of shoes in the same area.
That Cheesecake Factory bag detail is important because police said the third suitcase had a Cheesecake Factory bag that had multiple landscaping rocks.
Police tracked down Lowe after a detective noted a gold Ford Taurus and ran the tags, according to the affidavit.
The defendant lived just 0.1 miles from the location where the third suitcase was found, and 0.3 miles from the dock ladder, cops said.
Post Miranda, Lowe allegedly claimed his wife had been in Brazil for “about three weeks” but did not know how she got to the airport, police said.
Lowe allegedly said he did not know when he last spoke to her.
Shown a picture of two of the suitcases, he claimed to have never seen these before. Asked why a sticker on one had his wife’s name, he said, “I don’t know.”
Detectives executed a search warrant at the couple’s apartment. Cops said they found blood spatter pretty much everywhere: the living room, dining room, hallway, both bathrooms and the master bedroom. There was blood in the master bath shower drain. There was blood in the tub of the second bathroom.
Officers also found drag marks in the living room, hallway, and master bathroom.
Police said there were numerous cleaning supplies throughout the apartment. Some of these also contained blood spatter.
On top of all of that, Lowe allegedly tried returning home during the execution of the search warrant attempting to enter through the rear window before officers stopped him, according to the affidavit.
He claimed he was just trying to get his phone and the keys to the storage unit, cops said.
Detectives checked out the aforementioned storage unit where they allegedly found a chainsaw, which had blood, bone matter, flesh and hair on it, police said. Apparent blood marked the cover and inside of a nearby cooler as well.
One of the couple’s neighbors told investigators she had not seen Fontes for a couple of weeks.
The neighbor also relayed some recent suspicious incidents. In one, her dogs barked one early morning; she claimed to hear Lowe’s apartment door open and close. That alleged activity from Lowe’s apartment was unusual, the neighbor said.
She and another neighbor said that Lowe’s sister lived in an apartment one story up from his. One of them said she had never seen her, however, and another said she had not seen this sister in more than two years.
One of those neighbors said that she saw a trail of what she thought was “soup” leading from the doorway of Lowe’s apartment through the hallway, up the stairs, and to the door of the sister’s apartment.
She said this happened two or three weeks before.
A maintenance manager backed up this story, saying he cleaned the trail with a 409 cleaning agent.
Officers executed a search warrant at the sister’s apartment. A mental plaque on the front door read, “The Bill Lowes.”
Cops claimed they found cleaning supplies and also a black cover and charger for a chainsaw inside the apartment. This was the same brand as the chainsaw in the storage unit, they said.
Cops arrested Lowe on Wednesday. The defendant remains held without bond at the Palm Beach County Jail for a count each of murder in the first degree and abuse of a dead body.
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