He held her 2-year-old daughter in his lap while giving a TV interview about the search for his missing wife.
Now a New Jersey man has been accused of beating and strangling the woman before stashing her body in an abandoned house 15 miles from their Elizabeth, NJ, home.
Cops said Abayuba Rivas, 39, lied about Karla Villagra-Garzon, 32, disappearing last month after a walk to a nearby pharmacy.
But surveillance video at the Walgreens shows that she never arrived that night.
Rivas, who admitted to WABC-TV that the couple had marital problems, was charged with murder, and his bail was set at $2 million.
He even told the TV station how he broke the news to the little girl. “Mommy went out and she didn’t come back yet. I don’t have anything else to tell,” Rivas told the news station.
Rivas had been in custody for more than a week on other charges, including endangering a child.
An autopsy Thursday determined that the cause of Garzon’s death was asphyxiation and blunt-force trauma.
Police would not say what led them to the vacant Chatham house where the body was discovered Tuesday night.
Despite his TV appearance, Rivas had been a prime suspect all along, officials said.