Jon Campitelli thought his wife was having dinner with friends. That was the simple, ordinary explanation Linda gave her husband before slipping on a red dress and black heels and walking out the door on the evening of October 28, 2024. He had no reason to doubt her. Hours later, she was dead — her body found face down on the side of a Florida road, beaten and dragged, 50 feet from her own SUV. The truth behind the last night of linda campitelli’s life, and what her husband learned in the days and months that followed, would become one of the most gripping murder cases in Palm Beach County history.
This is the full story — from the secret relationship that lasted two years, to the birthday night that turned fatal, to the arrest that finally gave a grieving family answers.
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The Man Who Didn’t Know
Jon Campitelli and Linda built a life together in Wellington, Florida. They were married, raising two young daughters, and by every outward appearance, they were a family moving forward. Linda had recently been accepted into an advanced nursing program and was preparing to begin a new position at a local medical facility in December 2024. Life looked promising.
On the evening of October 28, Linda told Jon she was going to dinner with friends. She dressed carefully — a red dress, black heels — and left the house around 7:30 p.m. Jon had no reason to question her story. She never came home.
When investigators spoke to Jon in the hours after Linda’s body was discovered, he told them exactly what she had said: dinner with friends. That statement became one of the first threads detectives pulled on, and what unraveled behind it would stun everyone who knew the family.
A Two-Year Secret
After speaking with Linda’s friends in the wake of her death, investigators quickly learned she had been involved in a secret romantic relationship with a co-worker named Rene Perez, 38. The two had met while working together as nurses at Wellington Regional Medical Center in Palm Beach County. Both were married. Both had children.
Their relationship had been going on for roughly two years. They communicated almost every single day through WhatsApp, exchanging messages about their families, their work schedules, and plans to meet. Linda had at times expressed frustration about having to share Perez’s time with his wife.
The relationship was deeply hidden. Perez reportedly used a second mobile phone specifically to communicate with Linda, and on some occasions left his primary phone at his workplace so his location couldn’t be tracked by his own family. Despite those efforts, digital forensics would eventually become the key that unlocked the case.
The Birthday Night That Ended in Murder
The planned meeting on October 28 was meant to celebrate Linda’s birthday. The night before, the two exchanged WhatsApp messages about getting together. Linda wrote that she felt nervous, that she didn’t know what to expect, and that Perez had never done anything like this for her before. Perez responded that it was no big deal — that he was just trying to show her he could be romantic.
What investigators found inside Linda’s Chevrolet Tahoe told a far darker story. A birthday blanket had been placed in the backseat, along with medical sheets typically used to absorb liquids — items Perez allegedly took from Delray Medical Center, where he was employed at the time. A photograph recovered from Linda’s iPhone showed these items inside the vehicle on the night she died.
Linda’s body was found by a passerby around 10:15 to 10:20 p.m. in the southbound lanes of Lyons Road, approximately 50 feet from her Tahoe. The birthday blanket and medical sheets were gone by the time deputies arrived. What remained was a large pool of blood in the road, blood marks leading away from the passenger side of the SUV, and Linda’s lifeless body still dressed in the red dress and black heels she had worn when she kissed her husband goodbye.
The back of her dress and the heels of her shoes were described as completely worn out — consistent with her body having been dragged across the roadway. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner later ruled her death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head and torso. She had suffered four lacerations to the right side of her scalp, rib fractures, a fractured skull, a lacerated lung, and severe road rash across her body. Her bloodstained Apple Watch was recovered from the center console of the SUV.
Perez’s Failed Alibi and the Evidence That Caught Him
When detectives first interviewed Rene Perez, he told them he had canceled the birthday meeting because his son had fallen sick. Investigators could not find a single message that supported that claim.
Perez also told detectives he had been at work at Delray Medical Center the entire night. Surveillance footage directly contradicted that. Cameras captured him leaving the building around 6:30 p.m. He returned just before midnight. About ten minutes after returning, he was seen leaving again — stopping at a trash can to discard an unknown item before driving home.
Cell phone data further dismantled his story. Investigators spent more than a year analyzing hundreds of hours of phone records and executing more than 50 search warrants before a critical piece of cell phone evidence connected to Perez was identified. That discovery proved to be the turning point in the case.
When detectives later examined a second phone Perez had purchased — acquired two weeks after Linda’s death — the entire WhatsApp message history between him and Linda, more than 10,000 messages, was gone.
The Arrest — 16 Months Later
On March 10, 2026, Rene Perez was arrested in Miami and transported to Palm Beach County. He was charged with first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and tampering with physical evidence. A judge ordered he be held without bond.
Linda’s mother, Edina Russo, spoke publicly after the arrest. She described experiencing a flood of emotions — sadness that never goes away, but also a sense of closure now that someone had finally been held accountable.
Perez’s wife had filed for divorce just two months after Linda’s death. That divorce was finalized in April 2025.
Jon Campitelli — the husband who believed his wife was at dinner with friends on the last night of her life — has remained away from the spotlight throughout the investigation. He is raising the couple’s two daughters, now growing up without their mother.
Where the Case Stands Now
Rene Perez remains in the Palm Beach County Jail without bond as the case moves toward prosecution. He faces first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and evidence tampering charges. No trial date has been publicly announced as of March 2026, but the arrest affidavit, now a matter of public record, lays out a detailed case built on cell phone data, surveillance footage, forensic evidence, and the messages Linda sent just hours before she died.
Linda Campitelli was 35 years old. She was a nurse. She was a mother of two little girls. She was a wife who left home one evening in a red dress, and never came back.
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