Husband of woman burned alive in horrific Brooklyn murder hopes for a happier ending

The last time Pedro Valasquez heard his wife’s voice, she was already dead.

Police said runaway wife Surgeon Ramirez was tied up and burned alive in a Brooklyn apartment by a crazy boyfriend on Nov.

“She said, ‘I just want to say I missed you, I just want to be with you,'” he said of the call nine days before her death. “… I didn’t even have the opportunity to say goodbye,” he lamented.

Police said Ramirez, 40, was the target of her current beau, who was arrested for murder and kidnapping after tying her to a chair and setting her on fire. Prosecutors said Lachon Duffy was filmed shopping for twine, a lighter and lighter fluid before going to the apartment where Ramirez was squatting.

“I wish it never happened, but I knew it would happen sooner or later,” said Velázquez, her 10-year-old husband. “When I found out what happened, I went crazy.”

Velázquez recalled that he and Ramirez, a mother of two, met in an inpatient rehab facility 16 years ago and their relationship finally ended in 2021 when Ramirez started using drugs again. According to him, they remained a temporary couple until last summer, when she ended the relationship.

“The last time I spoke to her, I left her a message and she called me back via video,” he recalls. “And she said, ‘You’d better leave me alone, because I have a real man. He treats me like a queen.”

Prosecutors said the 28-year-old accused killer went on a deadly rampage after Ramirez destroyed his comic books and video game console. The medical examiner determined her cause of death to be serious burns and violence related to the murder, with Duffy being held at arraignment on $1 million bail or $500,000 cash bail.

Eric Warren, a close friend and ex-boyfriend of the victim, claims that Duffy beat and robbed him before he left Ramirez’s East New York apartment on the night of the murder.

“Probably he wanted me to leave, and I didn’t leave,” said Warren, 59. “That’s how he made me leave… And I wondered why she was even dating or doing business with him. He was just a demonic person.”

Warren recalled Ramirez, who friends said dated her killer for about two months, as someone who deserved a better fate.

“She was a very good person, a kind, loving person,” he said. “She cared, gave, always smiled. She was a good person and what happened to her really hurts me.”

Velázquez said he tried to visit Ramirez’s body at the mortuary for a final goodbye, but was told he would not want to see her charred remains.

“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” he said. “[Duffie] I’ll have to live with it, because he killed not only her, but also me. There isn’t a day that I don’t think about her.”