Suspects kidnapped wrong woman but killed her anyway in murder-for-hire plot gone wrong: Prosecutors

The murder trial has begun in the case of a Florida woman who was murdered after alleged hitmen kidnapped her — and then realized they had the wrong person.

Kissimmee police alleged Ishnar Lopez Ramos, 38, was in love with a man already involved with someone else so she paid Alex Ramos Rivera and his girlfriend, Gloriamarie Quinnones Montes, both 25, to murder her romantic rival, Orlando television station WESH reported.

The suspects “went to a Lowes and bought a bag of lime. It would be a safe submission, that at point, this wasn’t going to be a kidnapping anymore, this was going to be a murder,” Assistant State Attorney Chris Smith claimed in opening statements on Nov. 8.

On the evening of Jan. 7, 2018, the suspects allegedly followed Janice Marie Zengotita-Torres, 42, after she left her job at a Ross Dress for Less store and followed her home, where, officials claimed, the pair forced her into her own car’s trunk.

After driving to an Orlando apartment, Glorianmarie Montes left her boyfriend, Rivera, and the woman who allegedly contracted the murder, Ramos, and went inside.

“While Glorianmarie was in the apartment, Alexis and Ishnar were in the victim’s car with the victim,” Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson said, The Washington Post reported, noting the two looked through the victim’s wallet and “realized they had mistakenly taken the wrong person.”

The intended target matched the physical description of victim Zengotita-Torres and the two worked in the same Ross store but had no other ties.

Instead of backing out of the failed scheme, the suspects allegedly decided to kill Zengotita-Torres anyway, and they “placed a plastic bag over her head” and “wrapped 54 feet of duct tape around her mouth, nose and head,” Smith claimed.

The suspects then “watched her suffocate to death,” Smith added.

Zengotita-Torres’s body was later found dumped on a road in Ormond Beach.

“The victim was mistakenly — again, mistakenly — targeted and murdered,” Sheriff Gibson said shortly after the murder. “This woman lost her life for no reason. This mother, this wife, this daughter — for no reason.”

Lopez-Ramos, Montes and Ramos were each charged with first-degree murder.