Almost a month later she turned up — in the exhumed casket of a woman Villella had buried at the funeral home where he worked.

Villella confessed to killing his 28-year-old wife Exelee, but his lawyer says he was so distraught over his wife's affair and plans to leave him that it was a crime of passion.

In Florida, if Villella stabbed his wife in a moment of passion, he would be guilty of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder.

For Villella, a 41-year-old father of three, the stakes are high — he could either be out of prison in time to drive his youngest child to kindergarten, or, he could spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

THE RELATIONSHIP:

Mark and Exelee Villella met in Maryland in the early 1990's while Mark was married to another woman. It wasn't long before the two ran off together. Mark left his wife and two children and started a life with Exelee. The two — both licensed funeral directors — ran a funeral home together in the Washington D.C. area, reportedly doing work for Arlington National Cemetery, before moving to Florida.

Portrait of the couple in happier times

According to new reports, there were prior incidents of physical violence against Exelee by Mark, but neither prosecutors, investigators nor Exelee's family would confirm those allegations. In 1996, Exelee reportedly left Villella because of their relationship troubles and went to live with her parents in West Virginia.

The following year, however, the couple reconciled and married. Their son, Anthony, was born within a year of their 1997 summer wedding.

But the marriage was far from trouble-free. Exelee Villella thought her husband was a jealous and controlling man. For example, he kept tabs on where she went and insisted that she call him immediately as she arrived at work each day.

"People punish me because I care about her," Villella said in statement to police. She says nobody else calls their husband the minute they get to work. I said it's common courtesy."

Exelee was in fact carrying on an affair with a married co-worker in the months leading up her death.

THE AFFAIR:

When Investigator Steve Willis spoke with Mark Villella at his kitchen table two days after his wife's disappearance, Villella told him about a troubled couple of months in his marriage.

Villella said his wife had "changed," and that he'd suspected she was having an affair. Exelee had begun to spend more time doing her hair and nails, and shaved her legs every day.

She would leave at 6:30 a.m. for the 30 minute trip to work in Orlando, leaving herself an hour and a half to get to work without being able to account for the extra time.

She would have lengthy, private telephone conversations with someone she described as a co-worker, and she would stay out late at night, sometimes returning home drunk.

Villella had also recently found a card in his wife's purse that referred to being "embarrassed about getting so drunk at the party," and "fantasizing about that night."

One of Exelee's co-workers, Marc Camp, admitted to Willis that he gave a very drunk Exelee Villella a ride home from a party, and had sex with her in his truck prior to dropping her off at home.

Villella confronted Exelee about the card, and she admitted to having a sexual relationship with the co-worker. He told Willis that, while he was hurt by the affair, he had told his wife he forgave her and just wanted "another chance."

Mark Villella told Steve Willis that on the evening of August 5, 1999, his wife was making a meatloaf, and asked him to go to the grocery store to buy her a green pepper. He returned not only with the pepper but also a bouquet of roses.

When Exelee saw the roses, she burst into tears and sat crying on the floor for over an hour, telling her husband to leave her alone. At about 10:00 p.m., Mark, who hadn't been able to sleep well for weeks because of his marriage woes, claims he took NyQuil as a sleep aid and went to bed. He says that when he woke up shortly after midnight, Exelee was gone.

THE DISAPPEARANCE:

Exelee's family and coworkers last heard from her on Thursday, August 5, 1999, when she had an evening telephone conversation with her mother and promised to call again from work the next morning. By the following day, her family was quite worried — it was uncharacteristic of Exelee to vanish without word to anyone. They put in a call to the local Sheriff's department.

When deputies knocked on Mark Villella's door on August 6, they found a man seemingly unconcerned about his wife's whereabouts. Villella told them he'd had an argument with his wife on the evening of August 5, and later woke up to find her gone. He told the deputies that Exelee had left because she needed some time to think about things, and would be back in a day or two.

The deputies noted, however, that Exelee Villella had left behind her car, house keys, and even her toddler son.

Also arousing suspicions was the fact that Exelee's mother described her as having been very upset and arguing with her husband the last time they spoke. The sheriff's office assigned an investigator to the case, which is not customary in regular missing person's cases.

Villella also told Willis that on August 3, two nights before Exelee disappeared, he and his wife were getting along and even holding hands as they went to pick up a casket at the airport.

Unbeknownst her Exelee at the time, the casket they picked up was the one she would also occupy a few days later.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Interviews with Exelee Villella's family and friends took investigators to a dead end.

A search of the Villella residence turned up nothing, and when he spoke to Villella again on August 11, Villella maintained that he knew nothing of his wife's whereabouts.

Still, Villella was clearly the most likely suspect considering the circumstances of his wife's disappearance, as well as his apparent lack of concern. Willis had even arranged for a deputy to come by the Villella home to take a missing person's report, but Mark Villella never completed it.

Willis then began to look into Villella's employment at the Deltona Memorial funeral home. The home's records showed that there had been two closed casket burials since Exelee vanished, and on August 26, Steve Willis drove to the home to speak to Funeral Director Robert McFall about possibly exhuming those caskets.

Instead of McFall, Willis ran into Mark Villella, and mentioned his suspicions to him. Willis suggested that Villella come by the Sheriff's Operations Center after work and talk.

THE CONFESSION:

And talk is exactly what Villella did — so much so that he confessed to his wife's murder.

"I loved her to death," repeated as he admitted to killing his wife. In the presence of his brother, Jeff, but no attorney, Villella told Willis about the last evening he spent with his wife. After that statement, he was arrested.

Mark Villella said, once again, that when he returned home with the green pepper and the bouquet of roses, Exelee sank to the floor and cried for 45 minutes.

The Villella home

Villella quotes her as saying, "I can't take it anymore. I don't want to be with you anymore. I want to leave you. Take your son away from you. I want a divorce."

Villella claims he tried to talk to his wife and begged her to give him another chance, but had no luck.

He went to bed before Exelee that night, after taking a large dose of NyQuil. He says he hadn't slept well in three weeks-ever since he suspected, then confirmed, her affair.

At about 12:30 a.m. Mark Villella woke up and went to watch TV while his wife slept. He returned to the bedroom at some point because "I just wanted to talk, wanted a hug, wanted somethin'."

Once again he was rebuffed, and went back to lay on the couch and contemplate the situation.

Between 4 and 4:30 a.m., Villella says he took a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen and went into the bedroom, where his wife was asleep on her back. He stabbed her four times in the chest.

While Exelee Villella was being stabbed, her husband says she sat up and said "I didn't do anything," before laying back again, dying.

"I didn't know what I was doing," Villella told investigators. "I loved that woman to death. I couldn't take leaving. Because of her, we had a nice child. I just cracked. I couldn't take it anymore. No sleep. Losing her. Losing my son. I didn't know what to do."

After stabbing his wife, Villella said he "laid back on the couch to figure out what to do next."

The next day, Villella left his dead wife in bed and drove his son to the babysitter. He went to work for a while and then returned home with a white van from the funeral home — and began to cover up his crime.

He wrapped his wife's body in a plastic body bag and brought it to the funeral parlor. He was able to unload the bag into a refrigerator with nobody observing because the entrance to the cooler was inside the garage.

The only people with access to the refrigerator that Friday were Villella and his boss, and Villella took his chances that his boss. who was off the rest of the weekend, would not enter the cooler that day. He later threw the knife in the St. John's River in Sanford, Fla.

The grave of Marjorie Hutchinson

On Monday, August 9, 1999, Villella placed the un-embalmed body of his wife under that of Marjorie Hutchison, along with the bloody mattress-cover of their bed. He then sealed the casket, and presided over brief burial service of Hutchison.

"I'm just scared. I don't know what's gonna happen. I didn't plan this," sobs Villella on the tape. "I didn't mean to make all this mess. I really didn't."

THE EXHUMATION:

The day following Villella's incriminating statement, the sheriff's office secured an order to exhume the body of Marjorie Hutchison. In the casket, investigators found the body bag containing Exelee Villella's body.

The coffin where Exelee Villella's body was secretly buried is exhumed

The medical examiner claims the body was so well hidden under Hutchison's propped up legs that one would not have noticed it at first glance — were it not for a strong odor of decomposition.

The remains of Marjorie Hutchison, an 89-year-old widow and homemaker, were later reinterred in the same spot, next to those of her husband who passed away in 1976.

The remains of Exelee Villella were flown to West Virginia, where her family arranged a small, private service.

THE PROSECUTION'S CASE

Prosecutor Raul Zambrano says one only has to watch the defendant's videotaped statement to know he's guilty of premeditated murder. Mark Villella said he was laying on the couch for hours because he couldn't sleep, contemplating his relationship.

After deciding to kill Exelee, Villella had to walk at least 25 feet into the kitchen, select a knife from the butcher block, and then walk to the bedroom. This surely would have provided ample time for Villella to reconsider his actions, Zambrano says.

In addition, the fact that there were multiple wounds and that Villella says his wife sat up and spoke during the stabbing suggests enough time passed in between the stabs to allow him to come to his senses. Instead, Villella continued to stab his wife four times, so hard that the knife hit her spine.

Zambrano agrees with the defense about the fact that the emotion Mark Villella displayed while giving the statement is telling. This is, after all, the man who sat down with an investigator at his kitchen table the very day he buried his wife, and matter-of-factly stated he knew nothing about her whereabouts.

The contrast between Villella's demeanor during the two statements points to cool-headed calculation rather than emotional turmoil, says Zambrano.

Although the defendant's actions after the killing obviously can't be used to show premeditation, they do give a clue as to the sort of mind is at work in Mark Villella, says Zambrano.

The burial of his wife with another woman, the failure to at least embalm her body first, and the cool demeanor Villella displayed in the three weeks after his wife's murder are not consistent with a man who loved his wife and — in Villella's words — "just cracked."

THE DEFENSE'S CASE

Defense attorney Mitch Novas says Mark Villella was a man pushed to his limit. He had lost two children in a previous marriage, was paying $900 a month in child support and could barely afford to see his out-of-state kids.

He'd suspected, then confirmed, that his new wife was having an affair. He had even told her he forgave her, and would do anything to make things right — but she insisted on leaving him. The night of the killing he brought her flowers, tried to talk, and even requested a hug, but was rebuffed each time. As he sat there alone on the couch, his mind foggy after weeks of sleepless nights, thinking about the possibility of losing yet another family, Mark Villella simply snapped, says Novas.

That the crime was an act of passion is evident from Mark Villella's actions after the murder, Novas says. He clearly didn't plan the crime, because if he had, he would have thought about such details as removing his wife's wallet and car from the home. He would have also arranged to cremate her remains rather than sticking them in a grave where forensic evidence would be preserved.

Finally, the emotional confession is clear evidence of Villella's tortured mindset, says the defense.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully moved to suppress the August 26, 1999 statement, claiming the state's key evidence was obtained in violation of Villella's constitutional rights.

VERDICT & SENTENCE

On September 18, after approximately three hours and forty-five minutes of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted Mark Villella of first-degree murder.

Later that afternoon, after a statement by the victim's father, Judge Shawn Briese sentenced Mark Villella to a mandatory life in prison without parole. The court also imposed a judgement of $2471 in restitution, $378 in court costs, and a $500 public defender lean.

Exelee Villella's parents, Norman and Sandra Pittman, have been awarded permanent custody of Anthony Villella, who is now 3-years-old.

The Pittman family has filed a lawsuit against Mark Villella as well as the Deltona Memorial Funeral Home and its director, Robert McFall.

According to their lawyer, the suit claims the funeral home director should have more closely monitored the activities of employees.