The Shooting of Estefano

In 2007, again under the name J.L. Greensnake, Gil penned a popular book called Brujo, Espiritu y Santo (Witches, Spirits and Saints). The 238-page tome described the inner workings of the Ochosi Yoruba Church in Kendall, which Estefano began attending around 2000. It profiled the church's leader, or padrino, Andres Suarez, who is called Andres Ochosi, and traced the history of Santería and a similar faith called Palo from Africa to the New World. In ethereal, sometimes incomprehensible language, it talks about judging a "balance" between "the dreams and the living, good and bad — magical reality."

In 2005, Estefano seemed to reach the pinnacle of his career. He moved from a small studio in North Miami-Dade to a 16,000-square-foot facility at 5020 Biscayne Blvd. on the edge of Little Haiti. The sleek white building looked a bit like the San Marco Island home he bought two years before: white, modern, and sterile.

Aluminum doors greeted visitors at the front and back entrances, and a high ficus hedge provided a barrier to prying paparazzi. "This was my dream," Estefano told Billboard, "to have a place to make music where all creative energy could reach its full potential.... This is the place I dreamt of having all my life."

But suddenly there was failure. In 2005, Estefano released his own album, Codigo Personal: A Media Vida (Personal Code: At Midlife). He told the San Antonio Express-News it was a work that came from "the spiritual processes" of his life. Though it received worldwide distribution, the most popular single, "Un Hombre Que No Ha Sido el de Tus Sueños" ("A Man Who Has Not Been the One of Your Dreams"), peaked at number 19 on the Billboard Hot Latin Tracks and then disappeared. Critics loved the cleverly worded songs but nailed Estefano's vocals. "Codigo Personal is missing one hallmark of his work: an electrifying singer with spark, sizzle, and spice," wrote Jason Birchmeier of All Music Guide. "Put another way, Estefano is no Paulina Rubio."

Estefano must have been hurt by the criticism. He had given dozens of interviews prior to the album's release, but didn't speak with Billboard or anyone else about the disc's lackluster performance.

Then came an even bigger flop. Expectations were high when Sony BMG paired him with actress/singer/dance music goddess Jennifer Lopez on her first Spanish-language album. Lopez, who married fellow Puerto Rican Marc Anthony in 2004, wanted to return to her musical roots.

Estefano wrote 10 of the 12 tracks on Como Ama una Mujer (How a Woman Loves), which was released in early 2007. One tune affected Lopez so much that she wept as she sang and had to take a break in the studio. Another song, "Por Arriesgarnos" ("To Risk Ourselves"), included a Lopez and Anthony duet.

But mainstream critics who normally loved Lopez's pop sound universally panned the album. "Torpor, it turns out, really is the universal language," sniffed Entertainment Weekly, which gave the disc a C+.

It got worse. During the first few months of 2007, Estefano was having financial troubles at the Biscayne Boulevard studio, Beltran would later testify. By the end of each month, there was hardly enough money to make payroll or pay bills. "We were always struggling with money," she explained.

It seemed the problems might end when Estefano planned to receive two payments totaling $3.3 million from a songwriting contract with Sony. The money was supposed to be sent to accounts controlled by Gil and then forwarded to Estefano.

But very little of it arrived, so Estefano telephoned Gil to inquire. He was "met with delays, excuses, lectures, and a lot of resistance," says the songwriter's lawyer, Jay Thornton. This call, according to court records, might have been the fuse that lit the powder keg of Estefano's shooting.

Though Gil eventually released a few hundred thousand dollars, that money didn't last long. Estefano went to Colombia for a couple of weeks in May and then took a cruise with a girlfriend named Natalia. He returned to Miami during the week of May 20 and immediately began writing. An insomniac, Estefano enjoyed working at night. Which is why, on May 25, when he left the studio at 9 p.m. to meet up with his handyman Junior, he had every intention of returning to the studio before dawn.

As Estefano lay on the kitchen floor in a pool of his own blood, he faded in and out of consciousness. "When he shoots me, I feel the burn in my head, I feel the explosion in my head," Estefano would later recall. "I lose consciousness and that's it."