A man was arrested in Florida on Wednesday in the execution-style killing of a couple in the Bronx as their child waited in another room. The arrest came 33 years after the fatal shooting.
Homeland Security agents arrested the man, William Antonio Solis, 62, in Tampa, according to a statement released by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. On Tuesday, a grand jury indicted him on three counts, including two charges of murder, which carry the death penalty if he is convicted. He was expected to appear before a magistrate in federal court in Florida on Wednesday afternoon.
The murders made headlines in June 1993 during a period of extreme violence in the Bronx fueled mostly by rival drug gangs. But the killing was especially chilling because of reports that the child, a 3-year-old boy, had seen his parents taken away by the gunmen before they were killed. The case, though, went unresolved for more than three decades, despite police having collected fingerprint evidence at the scene.
According to court documents filed this week, three men agreed to meet Luis Guerrero at an apartment in the Bronx to buy two kilograms of cocaine from him on June 21, 1993. But they had no intention of buying the drugs, according to prosecutors, and instead planned to steal six kilograms from him. Mr. Guerrero’s wife, Danis Sime, was later lured to the apartment with her son, prosecutors said. The court filings did not identify the other two men, referring to them as co-conspirators.
While the investigators recovered fingerprints from duct tape that was used to bound the victims, Mr. Solis was not identified as a match until last year, according to court documents filed this week. He was identified through comparison to fingerprints on file, officials said. It is unclear why he was not a suspect until last year.
“For more than 30 years, this Bronx double murder has haunted a family and the people of New York,” Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said. “That ends today.”
On the night of the shooting, prosecutors said, the group decided they had no choice but to kill the couple. Mr. Solis stepped into a “leading role,” according to the court documents, and separated them. Ms. Sime was killed first, in the bedroom, as the men held her down with a pillow over her head.
The three men then walked into the living room, where they held a pillow to Mr. Guerrero’s head and shot him. The child was left unharmed. Mr. Solis is named as the gunman in the court documents.
Mr. Solis fled New York more than a year after the murder in December 1994 and settled in Tampa, where lived in plain sight for three decades, prosecutors said. He was arrested in 1995 in Florida and convicted of battery, a misdemeanor, prosecutors said, and became a U.S. citizen in 2001. He is still a dual citizen of the Dominican Republic, where he was born.
Samantha Latson is a Times reporter covering New York City and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
The post Man Arrested in Florida 33 Years After Double Murder in the Bronx appeared first on New York Times.
