Tampering With A Corpse
From the December 2024 posted disciplinary actions on the web page of the Florida Bar
Nina Tamar Beltran, PO Box 140652, Dallas, TX, disciplinary revocation with leave to apply for readmission effective 30 days following a November 14 court order. (Admitted to practice: 2012) On June 12, 2024, Beltran plead guilty to one count of tampering with a corpse, in violation of 17.09(C) of the Texas Penal Code, a second-degree felony. Beltran was sentenced to eight years in prison. (Case No. SC24-1430)
Details from the Miami Herald
Prosecutors proved at trial that after Botello left a bar in Dallas’ Deep Ellum section with Charles Beltran, with whom Dykes and Marano were in a three-way relationship, Dykes stabbed Botello to death. Marano and Beltran helped hide Botello’s body, which wasn’t found until months later. Police say they traced Marano and Dykes cellphones to woods near a cement plant in the suburb of Hutchens.
By that point, Marano, Dykes and Beltran skedaddled. Marano wound up in Miami, where she’d be arrested on March 25, 2021. Dykes would be arrested up in Orange County around the same time. Eventually, Beltran was arrested, also.
Marano and Dykes posted bond and were under house arrest in Dallas. Trial testimony by the house arrest supervisor said on Christmas morning, 2021, Marano and Dykes cut off their ankle monitors to skip town and country, boarding a flight at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Seoul, South Korea. The holiday falling on a Saturday gave them two days before the inactivity in their monitors was discovered. They would be recaptured in Cambodia.
Murder charges would be dropped against Marano and Beltran, who also pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence. He testified against Dykes and, with an unrelated robbery conviction, is scheduled to be in prison until April 21, 2027.
Dykes got sentenced to life after being convicted of murder and tampering with evidence. Marano didn’t testify against her. “She just chose not to testify against her spouse,”
Marano’s attorney, Valerie Baston said to Dallas’ Fox4News. “They’re still legally married… They’re not in communication with each other. I don’t believe there’s any animosity between the two.”
(Mike Frisch)