On November 2, 1990, Florida Power and Light workers discovered the emaciated body of a small child hidden in the bushes of a wealthy Miami Beach home. The boy, dressed only in a lollipop-decorated T-shirt and a soiled diaper wrapped in brown packing tape, had been beaten, starved, and systematically tortured. He weighed just eighteen pounds. This is part one of the story of how a mother's resentment turned deadly.

VICTIM PROFILE:

Lazaro Figueroa was born September 18, 1987, into what should have been a life of comfort. His father, Fidel Figueroa, was a well-connected drug dealer who kept his family in a lavish penthouse overlooking Biscayne Bay. But fate intervened before Lazaro ever drew breath. Just two days after his birth, his father was executed in a gangland-style shooting outside a Miami riverfront bar. The murder was never solved. From that moment forward, Lazaro became the target of his mother's displaced rage, blamed for the loss of everything she had.

THE CRIME:

Ana Maria Cardona's abuse of Lazaro began shortly after he was returned to her custody from foster care in late 1988. Over the next eighteen months, she systematically starved, beat, and confined her son in conditions the Dade County Medical Examiner would later call the worst child abuse he had ever witnessed. Lazaro spent weeks locked in closets and tied to beds. His arm was broken and left untreated, eventually becoming fixed at a ninety-degree angle. His two front teeth were knocked out. Cardona wrapped duct tape around his diapers to avoid changing them, leaving his skin raw with bedsores. On October 31, 1990, Cardona beat Lazaro with a baseball bat, fracturing his skull. She then dumped his dying body in the bushes of a Miami Beach mansion and fled the state with her girlfriend, Olivia Gonzalez, stopping at Disney World before their arrest.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Miami Beach police initially could not identify the battered child, dubbing him Baby Lollipops after his T-shirt. Detectives conducted door-to-door interviews in English and Spanish and distributed flyers throughout the community. The break came when a neighbor who had occasionally cared for Lazaro recognized him from police bulletins. The investigation led detectives to Ana Maria Cardona and Olivia Gonzalez, who had fled to central Florida. Both women were arrested within weeks. Gonzalez eventually testified that Cardona had called Lazaro the son of the devil and blamed him for her descent from riches to rags.

CURRENT STATUS:

Ana Maria Cardona has been convicted of first-degree murder three times. Her first two death sentences were overturned by the Florida Supreme Court on procedural grounds. In 2017, she was convicted for the third time and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Olivia Gonzalez served fourteen years for her role in Lazaro's abuse and has since been released.

RESOURCES:

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Escambia County, FL. March 24, 2010. When Tina Brown invited twenty-year-old Audreanna Zimmerman to her trailer under the guise of reconciliation, the young mother had no idea she was walking into an ambush. What would unfold in the following hours represents one of the most horrific crimes in Florida history.

Part 02 of 02.

VICTIM PROFILE:

Audreanna Zimmerman was just twenty years old, a young mother navigating the precarious landscape of poverty in rural Pensacola. She lived in close proximity to Tina Brown's family, sharing the forced intimacy of a mobile home park where everyone knew everyone's business. Despite the tensions that had developed between her and Brown—accusations of slashed tires, broken car windows, reports to child protective services—Zimmerman believed in the possibility of peace. When the invitation came to clear the air, she accepted it with the trust of someone who had not yet learned that reconciliation can be a weapon.

THE CRIME:

On the evening of March 24, 2010, Zimmerman entered Brown's trailer expecting conversation. Instead, she was ambushed with a stun gun. Tina Brown, her sixteen-year-old daughter Britnee Miller, and Heather Lee restrained Zimmerman, beat her, and forced her into the trunk of a car. They drove her to a remote clearing in the Florida woods, where the assault escalated to torture. Zimmerman was struck repeatedly with a crowbar, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. The women left her burning in the clearing, believing they had killed her.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Zimmerman did not die. A third of a mile away, witness Terrance Hendrick heard cries for help and found a figure so badly burned he could not determine her race or whether she wore clothing. Despite injuries that defied comprehension—her skin crackling as she walked, her jaw broken, burns covering the majority of her body—Zimmerman remained conscious. She identified her attackers by name. She told investigators everything that had been done to her. She survived for sixteen days before succumbing to thermal injuries at the University of South Alabama Burn Center.

CURRENT STATUS:

On June 21, 2012, a jury convicted Tina Brown of first-degree murder. On September 28, 2012, she was sentenced to death. The court found the murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated; heinous, atrocious, and cruel; and committed during the course of a kidnapping. Britnee Miller and Heather Lee were also prosecuted for their roles in the crime. Tina Brown remains on Florida's death row.

Content warning: This episode contains extremely graphic descriptions of torture, burning, and prolonged violence against a young woman. Real medical and investigative details. Listener discretion strongly advised.

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On March 24, 2010, nineteen-year-old Audreanna Zimmerman was ambushed by three women she knew from her Pensacola trailer park. What followed was one of the most brutal attacks in Florida criminal history. Beaten with a crowbar, shocked repeatedly with a stun gun, and doused in gasoline before being set ablaze, Audreanna somehow survived the initial attack. Despite burns covering sixty percent of her body, she managed to walk nearly a third of a mile to a nearby house for help. Before slipping into a medically induced coma, she gave authorities the names of her attackers. Sixteen days later, Audreanna died without ever regaining consciousness. She was a mother of two.

Part 1 of 2: Before the crime comes the life. This first episode traces the devastating childhood of Tina Brown, the woman who would orchestrate Audreanna's murder and become one of Florida's only female death row inmates.

VICTIM PROFILE:

Audreanna Redawn Zimmerman was born on April 13, 1990, and was just nineteen years old when her life was taken. A young mother of two, she lived in a Detroit Avenue mobile home park in Escambia County, Florida. Despite the volatile environment of her neighborhood, Audreanna believed she had patched things up with the women who would ultimately kill her. She visited them as a friend on the day she died.

THE CRIME:

The murder of Audreanna Zimmerman stemmed from escalating disputes between trailer park neighbors. Accusations flew about slashed tires, broken windows, and reports to child protective services. The situation reached its breaking point over a romantic entanglement. On that March evening, Tina Brown, her sixteen-year-old daughter Britnee Miller, and neighbor Heather Lee lured Audreanna into a trap that would end with her burning in the Florida woods.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Audreanna's dying declaration proved crucial to the case. She identified all three attackers before losing consciousness. Physical evidence corroborated her account, including a bloodied crowbar and stun gun, a piece of hair weave, and DNA evidence recovered from Brown's vehicle. Authorities waited until Audreanna's death to arrest the suspects, ensuring murder charges that could not be plea-bargained down.

CURRENT STATUS:

Tina Brown was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in 2012 and sentenced to death. She remains the only woman currently on Florida's death row at Lowell Correctional Institution. Her daughter Britnee Miller, who was sixteen at the time, received a life sentence. Heather Lee accepted a plea agreement and received twenty-five years, with a scheduled release in 2031. Brown's multiple appeals have been denied, most recently in May 2024.

This episode examines how decades of trauma, addiction, and unresolved rage shaped the woman who would commit this unthinkable crime. Part two will cover the night of the attack in full detail.

RESOURCES:

Learn more about this case at https://www.mythsandmalice.com/show/obscura/

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