In a Miami courtroom on Thursday, Lisbet Fariñas read out a letter that she wrote to her sister. But it was a letter her sister, Yvette Fariñas, would never read or hear.
Fariñas, a waitress at La Carreta, was brutally murdered on Jan. 24, 2005. Lisbet said she had convinced herself to believe that her sister was not killed — and instead had gone to another city and would one day return.
“But as time passed, I realized that it was a fantasy that I had made up to help me overcome the pain that I was going through, and to continue on,” Lisbet said.
Lisbet’s emotionally grueling testimony — and that of Fariñas’ loved ones — came during the death penalty resentencing of Rafael Andres, 61, who was convicted in 2014 of Fariñas’ murder. Prosecutors rested their case after the family’s victim impact testimony…