No suspect yet in murder of woman found in parking lot
Police have interviewed family members of the woman, shot in her car outside a post office. They also have searched the car thoroughly, but so far there are few clues and no motive.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published March 18, 2004
TAMPA - After a day seeking clues and a motive in the murder of a 52-year-old Temple Terrace woman found dead Tuesday in the post office parking lot near her home, police on Wednesday still had no named suspects.
Deputy Chief Patricia Powers of the Temple Terrace Police Department said investigators spent the day combing the two-door red Toyota Tercel in which Maria E. Luperon's body was found by a post office customer, slumped over a bag of dog food lying on the passenger seat.
Police also interviewed Luperon's children and her ex-husband Mariano Luperon, and concluded from those talks that Luperon could have been killed any time after 10:30 Tuesday morning.
"That's a much bigger window of time than we originally thought," Powers said.
Temple Terrace resident Sharonn Niblack found Luperon's body after 3 p.m., as she walked out of the Temple Terrace post office where she receives mail and noticed the car with the shattered driver's side window.
Police on Wednesday confirmed that Luperon died of two gunshot wounds to the head, and said they have ruled out robbery as a motive.
The post office at 9748 N 56th St. is less than 3 miles from the 2-bedroom duplex where Luperon lived with her two youngest sons, 16-year-old Alberto and 14-year-old Alejandro.
Sara Salyers, manager of the 336-unit rental community, Wildwood Acres Villa Apartments, cried Wednesday at the loss of her "No. 1 resident."
"She was an excellent woman, a good mother," Salyers said.
"She made time for those boys when she got home from work, she did things with them. They were so well-behaved, so respectful. We lost a friend, and our hearts are broken."
Management intends to set up a trust fund for Alberto and Alejandro.
Luperon and the boys moved in more than two years ago, and quickly fit in at Wildwood Acres, where every unit has a backyard and the winding streets are lined with lush trees.
Salyers said she never saw Luperon's ex-husband or heard Luperon complain about him.
Mariano Luperon, a 56-year-old mechanic, could not be reached Wednesday.
Maria Luperon, a pharmacy technician at Medco Health Solutions in Tampa, got a restraining order last August that required Mariano Luperon to stay at least 500 feet away from her. She told the court that police recently had come to her door and said neighbors were concerned for her safety, after seeing him frequently driving around the apartment complex.
She told the court another restraining order, issued in May 2002, had expired a few months earlier. Luperon told the court her husband violated that order in early 2003, during a drunken incident in which he demanded to see "a supposed boyfriend of mine."
According to county jail records, Mariano Luperon was arrested Feb. 26 and charged with violating the restraining order. Previously he had been arrested in April 2002 and charged with domestic battery.
It wasn't clear Wednesday whether that case involved Maria Luperon, but his address at the time was listed as 1508 W Perdiz St., the home he owned with Luperon until last year.
The Luperons divorced in September, 28 years after they married in Havana, Cuba. They had four children, court records show, including the two youngest boys. He was ordered to pay less than $300 a month in child support.
Despite the Luperons' history of legal and domestic disputes, Deputy Chief Powers stressed that Mariano Luperon is not a suspect at this time.
"Yes, we have talked to him," Powers said. "Of course, families are interviewed to kind of put together the victim's day. We're still just putting pieces together."
Luperon's is the first homicide this year in Temple Terrace, a quiet, affluent suburb. Powers said there were no murders at all in this city of 21,000 last year.
- Staff researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
