One of weirdest in Florida history

Someone brutally stabbed the blonde, 59-year-old member of the Halliburton oil dynasty about 25 times and left her bloody corpse, hands and feet bound, in the bathtub of her posh Florida home in 2014.

Explore More

Someone brutally stabbed the blonde, 59-year-old member of the Halliburton oil dynasty about 25 times and left her bloody corpse, hands and feet bound, in the bathtub of her posh Florida home in 2014.

Her son, then 20, found her, and called the cops in what sounded like a panic.

“My mom killed herself!” he cried when he reached Broward County’s 911 dispatcher. “She just stabbed herself and threw herself in the bathtub!” 

But even as the second murder trial of the suspect, Dayonte Resiles, begins this week, finding out whodunit has become something out of a made-for-TV movie.

“This is what we call ‘Bro-weird County,’ where anything can happen. But there are twists and turns in this case that are pretty strange even for this place,” said H. Dohn Williams, a renowned Florida criminal defense attorney who has represented some of the state’s most notorious murderers and briefly served as Resiles’ lawyer.

First, the victim’s son was briefly considered a person of interest, then Resiles staged a daring courtroom escape in July 2016 and went on the lam for six days before being captured. Finally, in December, the trial ended in a mistrial amid rumors of racial bias. And in a twist that was arguably bad for both the prosecution and defense, a crucial piece of video evidence was deleted.

Jill Halliburton Su with her husband, Nan Yao Su. Facebook

The victim, Jill Halliburton Su, was a grand-niece of the founder of the Halliburton oil empire and the wife of a University of Florida professor. She was widely respected by locals for her volunteer work recording audiobooks for the blind.

Resiles, 28, has a rap sheet that includes several burglary charges. His trial ended in a mistrial after the jury forewoman accused other jurors of not wanting to send a black man to prison for life or death by lethal injection.

The jury had reached a verdict of manslaughter. But the forewoman spoke up during the polling of the jury and said she’d felt pressured into voting for the lesser charge and it should have been Murder One.

Justin Su (second from left) and his father Nan-Yao Su, are escorted from the courtroom as the jury deliberates the case. South Florida Sun Sentinel

The forewoman, who could not be reached by The Post, spoke to the Sun-Sentinel in December. She described herself as a mixed-race Puerto Rican and said she first agreed to the lesser charge of manslaughter, which carries a 15-year sentence, but said she had done so under pressure. She claimed three members of the jury did not want to sentence a black man to life in prison even though at one least one black juror said that wasn’t true.

“I just got a knot in the pit of my stomach,” she said of hearing the manslaughter verdict read in court. “I looked at the defense table. They were just cheering and patting him on the back, like he graduated high school or made the winning touchdown at a football game. I thought, ‘What have I done? Is this the world I am creating for my children, a world where someone can get away with murder because of the color of their skin?’”

But Resiles himself and his supporters think the opposite. Far from being given a break because he’s black, they believe he’s being railroaded — possibly by powerful interests. A French filmmaker, Samuel Collardey, is making a six-part docuseries about the case called “Moochie,” Resiles’ nickname, to be released this summer.

A billboard claiming accused killer Dayonte Resiles was “framed” went up outside the headquarters of the Broward Sheriff’s Office. South Florida Sun Sentinel

A gigantic billboard reading: “Who Murdered Jill Halliburton? Who Framed Dayonte Resiles?” and “Free Moochie” sprung up across from the Broward County Sheriff’s office (BSO) in around Ft. Lauderdale a month before Resiles’ first murder trial.

Resiles’ first lawyer told The Post he felt the evidence against Resiles was weak.

“There are a lot of question marks,” said Williams. “I don’t think the evidence is strong enough. Resiles himself has no history of violence. One of the first burglaries he ever got caught for, he ran when it looked like someone was there.”

Dayonte Resiles’ mugshot.

Williams pointed out that a neighbor of the Su family testified that saw someone who appeared to be pushing something into the front door of the Su home. The witness did not say that it was a body or describe what the object could have been and could not tell if the person she saw was black or white.

“I don’t know exactly what she saw but you can’t push a body back inside a door like that without someone on the other side pulling it in,” Williams said. “There could have been more than one person involved. There could have been three.”

Su’s body was found in her bathtub on Sept. 8, 2014. She and her husband, Nan Yao Su, now 71, had just returned from a two-week vacation in Malaysia the night before, according to prosecutors and courtroom testimony. The couple and their son lived in a $1.2 million home in a gated community in Davie, 11 miles southwest of Fort Lauderdale.

Defense attorney H. Dohn Williams said the case is particularly strange, even for “Bro-weird” County. Courtesy of H. Dohn Williams, Jr.

(Nan Yao married a former research assistant at the University of Florida, Nadia Arodak, 32, in 2017. The two lived in the same house where Jill Su was killed — and they divorced in 2020. Arodak sued another man in a paternity suit near the same time she filed for divorce from Nan Yao Su, according to Florida records.)

Nan Yao and Justin, now 28, both left the house the following morning. Nan Yao went to work and Justin supposedly went to class at a nearby community college.

Su’s slaying was discovered after Nan Yao checked the video feed of his home from work and saw what looked to be a white man with some type of mask or towel obscuring his face in the living room.

He asked his son, who first told police he was in school and later admitted he was sleeping in his car in the school parking garage, to go check on the house and the intruder.

Resiles’ supporters awaited a verdict in the initial trial, but a mistrial was declared. AP

When Justin got home, he found his mother’s body in the blood-soaked waters of the tub with the water running. He was questioned by cops who initially thought he might be a person of interest.

“It was a bloodbath. She’s facedown in this bathtub that’s full of blood. The smell’s like iron, so much blood,” Justin testified on the second day of Resiles’ trial, telling the jury he dragged her out and tried to give her CPR before calling 911.

His father returned back to the home after learning of the murder.

Jill Haliburton Su’s home in Davie, Fla., where she was murdered.

Police said a glass door near the living room had been shattered, indicating a break-in. Drawers in the master bedroom and another bedroom also appeared to have been tampered with, according to police.

Justin was later cleared when Davie police found DNA on a belt loop and a knife near the front door that matched Resiles’, although his DNA was not found on the murder weapon — believed to be the knife found at the bottom of the bloody bathtub.

Both knives belonged to Justin Su, Resiles’ current defense attorney Allari Dominguez told The Post. The one found in the tub was a dagger-type knife that Jill Su had given to her son as a present. The only DNA found on it belonged to Justin and his mother. Both Dominguez and Williams told The Post they found it very strange that Resiles’ DNA was not found on the murder weapon if prosecutors say he killed Jill.

Prosecutors think Resiles, whose last known address was about 25 miles away, broke into the house to burglarize it and killed Su because she could identify him later. Attorney Maria Schneider said during the trial in December that she didn’t have to prove a motive for the crime. His courtroom escape in 2016 from the Broward courthouse and his later efforts to invent an alibi indicated how far he would go to try to get himself off, she said.

Nan-Yao Su testified about the moment the paramedics wheeled his wife from his home during the murder trial of Dayonte Resiles. AP

“Justin Su is lucky that they found DNA to match someone else’s because those cops were convinced he did it,” Williams said. “They held him for 13 hours in an interview room. Those police were coming in and out saying, “Confess you know you did it.'”

As for the white man seen in the home surveillance video, Nan Yao testified that police had initially asked him if the person he saw on the video surveillance tape was black or white and he said white. But on the stand he said he wasn’t sure. One theory is that Justin had many parties at the house and Nan Yao might have thought it was a friend of his. Another theory is that it was an acquaintance of Justin who had cased the house previously.

“There are just so many strange coincidences in this case,” Dominguez told The Post.

Justin left the family home sometime around 9am and Nan Yao between 11:30 and 11:40 a.m. on the day or the murder. Nan Yao told police he checked the video his home surveillance camera when he got to work and saw an apparent intruder in the home. He called his son, who returned to the house at 12:37pm.

“An hour is not a long time to break into a house, murder someone and leave,” Dominguez said.

A detective who responded to the scene testified at Resiles’ first murder trial in December about what he saw.

A mistrial was declared during his Resiles’ initial murder trial after jurors finished deliberations without reaching a unanimous decision. AP

“She was laying there; she was wearing only underwear,” Davie police Det. Paul Williams said. “I noticed multiple stab wounds on her body. Her hands were by her chest. Her elbows clenched up. Her wrists were bound together with cloth, a belt to a robe. Her feet were tightly bound. Her ankles were bound by an electrical cord.”

The Broward Medical Examiner testified that Su sustained between 23 and 27 stab wounds.

The victim and her husband had signed up for a free, 30-day-long trial subscription to video surveillance sometime before their trip. But in an incredible twist of fate, police learned that the trial expired around the day before the murder — and the surveillance company had deleted all video taken at the Su home, including on the day of the killing when Nan Yao spotted an intruder on the live feed.

Justin Su, seen here with his father Nan Yao, was initially looked at as a possible suspect. South Florida Sun Sentinel

Friends and supporters of Resiles, who’s about to stand trial for a second time this month, are so convinced he’s innocent that they allegedy helped him engineer a daring courthouse escape in 2016.

In a stunt that made national news, Resiles jumped up and bolted past a bailiff during a pretrial hearing and managed to slip out of his handcuffs and jumpsuit while running down the stairs and out the door. He was on the lam for six days before being captured at a motel in Riviera Beach, about an hour away.

Dohn Williams, Resiles’ attorney at the time, told The Post that cops initially asked him if he knew who had slipped a handcuff key to Resiles. It was later discovered that a jail guard, another Haitian-American like Resiles, had given the suspect a key, Williams said. The guard was later fired or resigned, he added.

Nan Yao saw an intruder on his home’s surveillance feed, but the footage was deleted. TNS

“It was one of the more bizarre events of my career,” Williams said.

Seven people were later arrested as accomplices in the daring escape, including a pregnant teenager who used a three-way calling technique to allow Resiles to communicate with others from jail, CBS News reported.

Nine more associates of Resiles, including a girlfriend, were then arrested in 2017 in connection with a RICO investigation called “Operation Rico Suave.” They were charged in an elaborate scheme to help Resiles’ establish an alibi defense. Some have pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

Dayonte Resiles at one point staged a daring courtroom escape before being recaptured. TNS

Resiles told the New Miami Times that the arrests were trumped-up in retaliation for what he had done.

“There is a conspiracy against me,” Resiles said. “My alleged escape resulted in a nationwide manhunt and was publicized in media outlets. The BSO and [Sheriff] Scott Israel have it out for me for that reason in particular … It is no secret to me that I’m Broward Sheriff’s most hated.”

Dohn Williams said the second trial, which is expected to start this week, may be “fraught with doubt,” adding that the deleted video surveillance tape was the most crucial plot point in the case.

“That was make or break evidence,” he said. “The fact that it was deleted is pure happenstance but it’s incredible. We have to wait and see what new twist and turns the case may take.”

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3N7j2tmampfn7atuIyhmKWkmZfCs8DOp2SsrV2iwrOwxKtkqKaVYrynedaeoKuclajBbrXNZp2lp6KesaJ5x6Kqraeirnw%3D

 Share!