Left: Hillsborough County cold case murder suspect Donald Santini weeps moments before he is denied bond by Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Catherine Catlin during his hearing on Thursday, July 6, 2023, in Tampa, Fla. Santini is accused of strangling Cynthia Wood in 1984. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP) Right: Cynthia Ruth Wood (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office) Inset: Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Catherine Catlin (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP).
An accused murderer who led authorities on a decades-long manhunt after the 1984 strangulation of a Florida woman will be kept behind bars ahead of his trial.
Donald Santini, 65, openly wept as a judge denied his request to be released from jail after being extradited from California following his arrest for the murder of Cynthia Ruth Wood. As Law&Crime previously reported, Santini was living under a fake name in San Diego County when federal agents caught him allegedly “committing identity fraud to illegally obtain a passport,” according to court documents.
He was arrested on June 7, ending a decades-long manhunt that took investigators to Texas, California, and Thailand, and prompted no fewer than three profiles on “America’s Most Wanted.”
“You being on the run for almost 40 years shows a consciousness of guilt,” Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Catherine Catlin told Santini at his bond hearing on Thursday. “You knew you were running from something. You are the definition of flight risk. There is nothing I can do to preserve the safety of this community if I were to let you go.”
Wood, 33, was found dead on June 9, 1984, in the Hillsborough County community of Riverview, south of Tampa, having been strangled to death and dumped in a water-filled drainage ditch. She had last been seen alive leaving her home in Manatee with a man on the night of June 5, just four days prior. Santini had reportedly told a woman on June 6, 1984, that he had killed Wood, but at the time he was using the alias Charles Michael Stevens and was only later determined to be Santini, according to court documents.
In their motion for pretrial detention, prosecutors said that Santini had initially been wanted in Galveston County, Texas, for robbing a convenience store clerk at knifepoint of $270 in May 1983. Investigators tracked him down because the victim got his license plate number, and although he gave authorities the knife, handed back $219 and showed them the getaway vehicle, he fled the Lone Star State while out on bond, authorities said. He is believed to have been in Florida by the following year.
After eventually ending up in a border town near Mexico about an hour east of San Diego, Santini was apparently a civic leader, serving as the president of the board of the Lake Morena Views Mutual Water Company and a member of the Campo-Lake Morena Community Planning Group, Tampa NBC affiliate WFLA reported. In January 2023, he reportedly received a warning from the State Water Resources Control Board that his water utility needed an administrator because it “has not consistently provided an adequate supply of affordable, safe drinking water to its customers.”
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Before all of that, however, Santini was apparently a married man and father in Pasadena, Texas. According to WFLA, Santini’s one-time wife, Marla Santini, married Donald Santini in 1980 and gave birth to a daughter in 1981. Less than two years later, however, he had apparently left his family behind without a word.
Marla Santini told WFLA that she believed he was dead — until one of her daughters saw the news of his arrest. She managed to set up a video call with him while he was in California awaiting extradition to Florida.
“He got on the first video,” Marla Santini told the station. “He says, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I know you. Do I?’ I went, ‘Really? Really? I have your daughter.””
Marla Santini said that she didn’t discuss the alleged crimes with her estranged husband — they apparently never officially divorced — but she did ask him about why he left her.
“I’m just like, ‘What did I do? Did I do something for you to leave?’” she told WFLA. “He said, ‘No Marla, it was all the demons and stuff.’”
Law&Crime’s Colin Kalmbacher and Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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