Former Survivor producer Bruce Beresford-Redman is walking free in Southern California after being released from a Mexican prison two months ago. The producer was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the 2010 slaying of his wife Monica Burgos Beresford-Redman — but was released after serving just 7 and a half years, reports KTLA and NBC Los Angeles.
According to NBC Los Angeles, La Palabra, the newspaper in Quintana Roo where the murder occurred, reports that Beresford-Redman was released in June with credit for good behavior, and that he gave $2,000 in restitution.
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Beresford-Redman was convicted of murdering his wife in 2015 after being extradited to Mexico in 2012. The couple and their children had been on vacation in Cancún, Mexico in April 2010 when Monica disappeared after a shopping trip. Her nude body was found in a septic tank of the high-end Moon Palace resort, having been beaten and strangled, on what would have been her 42nd birthday. An autopsy found she had died by asphyxia by suffocation, and that she had bruising on her face and a head wound.
Suspicion immediately fell on Beresford-Redman following Monica’s death. Mexican authorities said he hit his wife in the head with a metal tube, bat or stick and then choked her to death before dumping her body in a hotel sewer.
Two teenagers staying in the room below Beresford-Redman and Monica were awakened the morning of April 5 around 6 a.m. by “screams, crying for help and extremely loud banging from the room above [theirs]… It sounded like a woman in extreme distress,” according to the complaint filed in the U.S. court on behalf of the Mexican government.
Beresford-Redman told hotel staff that the noises were from a fight they were having about the behavior of their children. He told investigators that the screams were from a game they were playing with their then 3-year-old son, according to the complaint.
Beresford-Redman, who in addition to Survivor also acted as a producer on Pimp My Ride and The Restaurant, maintained his innocence throughout the investigation. He even appeared on 48 Hours Mystery in 2012, saying, “Everyone seems to have decided that I killed my wife. I didn’t kill my wife — I really didn’t.”
But Monica’s sister told the show they believe he murdered their sister, who owned Zabumba Bar & Restaurant in Venice, California. She and Beresford-Redman had reportedly been having marital problems ahead of her death, and she was upset that he was having an affair.
“I told her, ‘Monica, don’t worry. You know, come back here, just move on with your life,’” Monica’s sister Jeanne Burgos told 48 Hours Mystery. “‘You’re just going to build up your life again and you’re going to be happy again.’”
Beresford-Rodman’s neighbors told NBC Los Angeles that they were surprised to see him back home in June. “In the old days people got executed for doing stuff like that. I guess nowadays you get a second chance,” neighbor Maria Doll said.
