(This story was updated with new information.)
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a 38-year-old man in connection to the October 2024 death of Linda Campitelli, a nurse at Wellington Regional Medical Center.
Detectives took Rene Perez into custody in Miami-Dade County and drove him to the Palm Beach County Jail, where he will face charges of first degree-murder and tampering with evidence in connection with the death of Campitelli, then 35, whose body was found along Lyons Road.
Campitelli worked as a nurse in the post-anesthesia care team at Wellington Regional and was the married mother of two girls who hadn’t yet turned 10 years old on the day she died. Her family and friends described her as “bold, sassy and fun-loving.”
PBSO determined Capitelli’s death was a homicide after detectives found her body late on Oct. 28, 2024, near a vehicle parked on Lyons south of Lantana Road, about 5 miles southeast of the hospital.
Perez is scheduled to appear at a bail hearing at the jail on Wednesday, March 11. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney or whether the county Public Defender’s Office would represent him.
Online records suggest Campitelli and Perez were coworkers at Wellington Regional. His LinkedIn page says he also was a nurse in its post-anesthesia care unit from 2021 to 2023. Perez was working in the same role at Delray Medical Center at the time of Campitelli’s death. Wellington Regional did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Perez most recently was living in Hialeah, according to online jail records, which show he was booked into custody early on March 10. The sheriff’s office did not reveal what evidence led them to Perez or what happened when they arrested him.
Campitelli’s family has said little about the case to date. An online obituary said she was born Linda Casanas and that she received a full scholarship to the University of Miami after graduating from Southridge High School.
After becoming a nurse, Campitelli worked at South Miami Hospital and then at Larken Hospital, where she met her husband, Jon, a family physician who later worked at Wellington Regional. They married in 2016.
Valentina Palm covers immigration and Palm Beach County’s western communities for The Palm Beach Post. Email her at vpalm@pbpost.com and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @ValenPalmB. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PBSO makes arrest in death of Wellington nurse Linda Campitelli
Reporting by Valentina Palm, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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