Miya Marcano

Case background and investigation

Miya Marcano, a 19-year-old Valencia College student, was last seen on the afternoon of Friday, September 24, 2021, at the Arden Villas apartment complex in Orlando, Florida, where she lived and worked. When she failed to board a scheduled flight to visit family and could not be reached, her relatives reported her missing that evening, and the Orange County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation that drew national attention.

Investigators quickly focused on Armando Manuel Caballero, a 27-year-old maintenance worker at the same complex. According to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, Caballero had made repeated romantic advances toward Marcano that she rebuffed, and he had access to a maintenance on-call key fob capable of unlocking residents' apartments. Sheriff's officials said fob data showed the maintenance key was used to open the deadbolt to Marcano's apartment at 2:14 p.m. and again at 4:34 p.m. on September 24, before she arrived home, entering against company policy while she was still scheduled to be at work.

On September 27, 2021, three days after Marcano disappeared, Caballero was found dead of an apparent suicide inside a maintenance shed in Seminole County. Because he died before he could be questioned or charged, detectives were never able to interrogate the man they identified as the prime suspect. No arrest was made and no criminal charges were ever filed against him.

After an eight-day search, a body was discovered on Saturday, October 2, 2021, in a wooded area near the abandoned Tymber Skan apartments in Orlando. The remains, largely skeletonized, were found with the hands, feet, and mouth bound in tape. The Orange County Medical Examiner's Office positively identified the remains as Marcano, and on December 29, 2021, Chief Medical Examiner Joshua Stephany ruled the death a homicide by undetermined means, noting that the restraints and disposal of the body in an abandoned area indicated an assault.

At an October 2, 2021 news conference, Orange County Sheriff John Mina publicly named Caballero as the person responsible. Mina said, 'We are not looking for any other people. We believe, pretty conclusively that Armando Caballero is responsible for this crime and there's not any other person or persons that we are looking for in this case.' Investigators later cited physical evidence, including Marcano's blood and hair found among Caballero's belongings, as supporting that conclusion. It is important to note that these determinations were made by the sheriff's office rather than tested at trial: Caballero was never charged with or convicted of any crime, and no prosecution occurred because he was deceased.

The sheriff's office effectively closed the criminal case with Caballero identified as the sole suspect. Marcano's family, however, has publicly disputed the thoroughness of the initial response. In September 2023, the family filed a lawsuit against the Orange County Sheriff's Office and two deputies, Samir Paulino and Cpl. Kenneth Dale, alleging negligence, inadequate training, and civil-rights violations, and claiming the case was wrongly classified as a low-priority voluntary missing-person matter rather than an endangered-person case. The two deputies were internally disciplined for policy violations, with Paulino receiving a 150-hour unpaid suspension. The family also pursued a separate wrongful-death claim against the apartment complex's parent company. Marcano's death was formally classified as a homicide, but because the named suspect died before any charges, it was never adjudicated in court, and it is sometimes carried in databases as unsolved because no one was ever prosecuted.