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By Miriam Raftery
Photo via WTVT pool video: Donald Santini is led into a Tampa courtroom before pleading guilty in the 1984 slaying of Cynthia “Cindy” Ruth Wood.
December 28, 2023 (Lake Morena, CA) – A Florida judge has sentenced Donald Santini to 50 years in prison, with 15 years parole, after he pleaded guilty to the 1984 strangulation murder of Cynthia Wood, the mother of three young children, the Tampa Bay Times reported in November. A fugitive for 40 years, Santini 65, lived under the alias Wellman Simmonds in Campo’s Lake Morena community and even held public office. He served on the Campo-Lake Morena Community Planning Group and as president of the Lake Morena Views Mutual Water Company.
His arrest in June by federal marshals for the murder of a Florida woman decades ago since shockwaves through the Lake Morena Community, as ECM reported.
Santini’s guilty plea came two weeks before his scheduled trial, after the prosecution revealed testimony that would be presented as evidence. According to the prosecution, Wood told friends she was going on a date the night that she disappeared. Santini reportedly borrowed a van from a woman he’d been dating and said he’d been hired by Wood’s estranged husband to provide damaging evidence that could be used in a custody battle. The van was seen by neighbors at Wood’s home.
According to the witness, Santini first told her he planned to get Wood drunk and drop her at a police station. But later, the witness said he confessed to killing Wood, whose body was found three days later in a drainage ditch in Hillsborough County, FL.
Woods left behind three young children, who went on to lead troubled lives. One son committed suicide, and another is in jail; her daughter is homeless, the Tampa Bay Tribune reported.
Santini had a history of criminal actions. Convicted of rape while serving in the Army, he later returned to his home state of Texas, where he married, had a daughter then disappeared after confessing to robbing a convenience store at knifepoint. His wife in Texas, Marla Santini, to whom he is still legally married, was shocked to learn of his arrest, the Daily Mail reported.
He then moved to Florida, working under an alias. After Wood’s death, he fled and remained a fugitive for the next 39 years, working under various aliases before winding up in rural Campo in San Diego’s East County. He was featured numerous times on the America’s Most Wanted television show but remained at large. He was ultimately apprehended after applying for a passport renewal. In a letter to ABC 10 News sent after his arrest, he said he used bankruptcy to finance his life on the run.
He became a bigamist in 1990, when he married a Thai immigrant in Las Vegas. They had a daughter, Whitney, and together shared custody of Whitney’s 13-year-old daughter until Santini’s arrest. Whitney described her life growing up as “so normal” and said her dad “never got into trouble.” Her father had various business enterprises, she told the Daily Mail, including owning a Thai restaurant and managing apartments locally.
Her mother had a hard life; she grew up in a jungle in Thailand and became an indentured servant at age eight after her father was murdered, Whitney Simmonds told the Daily Mail. Her mother planned to sell the family’s home in Lake Morena and move to Las Vegas, Simmonds added.
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