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(DALLAS, TEXAS) — Weddings symbolize a future filled with tomorrows. However, for Dallas woman Laura Grillo, there would be no wedding, no honeymoon and no future.
Urged by her best friend, Heather Nabor, and maid of honor, Grillo followed the ritual in the bridal salon, ringing a handbell when she selected her dress.
“I remember we finally picked out her dress and that perfect outfit for the perfect day,” Nabor told “20/20” “Making the wish, ringing the bell, I kinda talked her into it. I’m glad I did that.”
She never got to wear it — just a week before her big day, around noon on Nov. 13, 2015, she was found lying in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor.
When officers and emergency service workers arrived, they discovered Grillo dead. A shell casing was found on the floor — Grillo had been shot.
“Inside the master bedroom there was a safe on the dresser, the door was open, and there was two plastic totes that were turned over on the bed,” Detective Jeff Freeman, who worked on the case, told “20/20.” “It didn’t look as far as burglary that was interrupted or anything like that. It just didn’t look right to me.”
Since Grillo’s fiancé, John Makris, was captured on surveillance video at a Home Depot store across town at the time she was killed, after interviewing him police determined he couldn’t have killed her.
Nonetheless, his behavior following Grillo’s death raised questions.
Originally from Greece, Makris was a contractor.
Detectives recalled what Makris said at the scene when they asked him who lived in the house — before he was told that Grillo had died.
“He stated that it was him, the kids, his mother and the victim’s brother,” Freeman said. “But he never did say the victim’s name. That was a huge red flag. Because maybe he knew a lot more of what was going on.”
After finding out that the wedding flowers were non-refundable, Laura’s best friend says he repurposed them for the funeral, and asked a neighbor to help scrub Grillo’s blood off the kitchen floor using Grillo’s own toothbrush.
Jesus Treviño, one of two employees seen with Makris on the morning Grillo was attacked, was questioned by investigators — and disappeared.
Treviño was ultimately located in the Clearwater, Florida, area and taken into custody by U.S. Marshals. Treviño refused to talk, so investigators turned to Makris’ other employee seen with Makris the morning of the murder, James Vileda.
During a four-hour interview, he gave a troubling account of a plot, a crime and a cover-up.
He told police he received a call from Treviño — an old friend — about a new job. Vileda said that the conversation quickly shifted from working on a construction job to becoming an accomplice in a murder.
Vileda claimed that Grillo’s death was not a robbery gone wrong. He said it was a murder for hire, orchestrated by the man Laura Grillo was just days away from marrying –her fiancé, Makris.
In September 2018, Makris was convicted on a murder-for-hire charge and sentenced to life in prison. Treviño was convicted of capital murder and received a life sentence, while Villeda pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for his testimony and got a 25-year sentence.
From prison, Makris tried to have custody of their daughter awarded to his mother, so she could raise her in Greece. He did not succeed, and she was adopted by Grillo’s best friend Nabor — the woman who would have been her maid of honor.
ABC News reached out to Makris at the Texas prison where he is serving his life sentence, but he declined our request for an interview.
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