Wilfredo Ruiz, you lying liar.
Miami resident Ruiz has been charged with dousing his wife with gasoline and trying to set her on fire -- on Christmas morning, with their kids in the house. But when we last spoke to him, he told us that he was innocently fueling a pressure washer when his son pushed him, causing him to accidentally spill the gas on his wife. "I never got out a lighter," he said. "I never tried to kill anybody."
But just-released 911 tapes contradict that story. Especially when he tells an emergency operator: "I want to kill my wife."
At 10:41 AM, Wilfredo's hysterical daughter called 911 and said that her dad "was just going crazy" and hitting her mom. Six minutes later, a neighbor called to relay a chaotic scene: Wilfredo's son was holding an ice pack to his head after his father had hit him with a "stick". And his wife was soaked in alcohol: "She smells like gas, big time."
Then Wilfredo himself calls, and casually explains to an unflappable 911 operator: "No, no-- I want to kill my wife, but they'll take me to jail."
The operator instructs him to wait outside for the police, and he agrees.
When we called Wilfredo last night to confront him with the 911 tape, he continued to insist that he had accidentally spilled the gas on his wife. And he tried to make his 911 sound noble: "I said: But I cannot do that. I called them to make sure I don't do anything."
Ruiz is awaiting trial on five counts each of third-degree attempted murder and first-degree arson.
We've embedded the audio below, with subtitles for a loose translation of Wilfredo's Spanish.
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