Unidentified body found after husband charged in Fort Lauderdale city employee’s murder

Broward Sheriff’s deputies found a woman’s body in Miami-Dade County on Wednesday, a day after the husband of a missing Fort Lauderdale city employee was charged in her murder.

Mimose Dulcio, 39, was thought to be missing for several days until the Broward Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday that detectives had arrested her husband, Jose Luis Pacheco, 36, on a second-degree murder charge in her death.

Detectives found evidence suggesting that Dulcio was murdered in her home, then taken in the couple’s shared vehicle to an “unknown location,” according to a news release Tuesday.

By late Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office had not identified the recovered body, which deputies found on the 5500 block of Northwest 204th Street, about 1.3 miles from Pacheco’s mother’s apartment in Hialeah, where he was staying, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Dulcio worked for the City of Fort Lauderdale’s Development Services department. She and Pacheco were getting a divorce, and Dulcio had just signed the papers, according to the affidavit.

The couple lived in a home owned by Dulcio in unincorporated Broward County near Fort Lauderdale. Pacheco told detectives that they slept in separate bedrooms and that Dulcio had a new lock installed on her bedroom door. She had asked him to move out on Nov. 9 because she didn’t feel comfortable with him in the house, he said.

Pacheco told detectives he had returned to the house the morning Dulcio disappeared to retrieve belongings, the affidavit states. He said that when he arrived at the house, Dulcio wasn’t there, and it appeared that no one had been in the house for several days.

Detectives informed him that they knew Dulcio was with him in the house that morning and asked him where she was, according to the affidavit. He said he did not know multiple times.

Later that morning, her sister, Seminta Dulcio, arrived at the house and spoke to Pacheco while he packed the trunk of the couple’s vehicle. He then drove off.

Dulcio was last heard from about 5:30 a.m. Friday in a text message sent to Pacheco’s daughter, which reads: “Okay. Whatever he goes through just be there for him. It’s hard for me to believe the papers are real but since he will keep you posted about his progress, only time will tell.”