Girlfriend Sits Calm in Court, Claims She Was a Pawn — Then Her Own Messages Surface

She sits in an Escambia County courtroom with a story that could change everything. She was not a willing participant. She was a victim. An abusive boyfriend pushed her into crimes she never wanted any part of. And at first, it sounds believable. Then came the interrogation and the recovered Facebook messages.

 And the woman claiming she was controlled starts to look like someone else entirely. This is the chilling case of a Florida woman who used a Facebook friend request to lure a complete stranger into a carefully planned nightmare. Are you knocking on the door? Days before October 7th, 2023, Saul Lopez met Natalie Fonca on Facebook.

 He saw an attractive woman who messaged him first. And he did what almost any man would do. He answered. They talked for a while before she said she was hungry. Pizza? Maybe McDonald’s. He offered tacos instead. She said yes right away. Lopez drove over with the food, handed it to her, spent a little time with her, and went home.

 Nothing about it felt wrong. It felt like the start of something. But in those few minutes, Natalie had learned something about him, something she would use. The very next day, she messaged him again. More food, another invitation, another reason to get him back to that house. He agreed without hesitation. He just had to finish his shift first, then he would come by so they could eat together.

 He did exactly that. They ate. They laughed. To Lopez, this was going somewhere. Then Natalie said she needed to run a quick errand nearby. Lopez offered to drive her because that is the kind of man he was. A few minutes later, they pulled back into the driveway. She stepped out saying she had to grab something inside.

 When she came back, she was not alone. Walking beside her was 31-year-old Nafi Reynolds. She introduced him as her uncle. The three of them drove to another location for a family cookout. Along the way, Reynolds did something strange. He pulled back his waistband just far enough to show Lopez the handgun on his hip. It looked casual. It was not.

 It was a display, not yet a threat. Lopez did not flinch. An uncle carrying a gun to a family cookout was not worth a second thought. But there was something about that address, something sitting in police records that nobody at that cookout knew existed. Remember it. It matters later. The cookout wound down. Lopez walked back toward his van, the same van he had driven all night, because someone asked him for a favor.

 That was when it turned. Natalie climbed into the driver’s seat. Reynolds pressed a gun into Lopez’s back. In a matter of seconds, a dinner date became a hostage situation, and there was nowhere left for him to go. Reynolds started hitting him with the gun with his hands. Then Natalie spoke in Spanish so there would be no confusion about what came next.

This is the night you’re going to die. Natalie did not stop there. She laid the whole night out for him in order where they were driving, what they were taking, and how it was going to end for him. And she said all of it in Spanish because that was the only language he spoke. She wanted him to understand every word.

 His only mistake had been trusting the wrong person. And now that same person was calmly walking him through his own death. Either she had thought this through well in advance or she had done it before. And that question would become one of the hardest things her defense ever had to answer. Nothing about her that night looked like a woman acting out of fear.

 When the van reached the Escambia River Bridge, it stopped. They pulled Lopez out and beat him on the roadside, and Natalie held him in place while Reynolds used a knife on him. Still clutching his neck, still trying to understand what had happened, he was thrown into the cold water below. Neither of them understood that his will to live ran as deep as his willingness to help a stranger.

 He started moving the moment he hit the water, pulling himself in whatever direction his body would still go until he reached a small patch of land along the bank where he stayed until dawn with nothing left but the hope that someone would come. Someone did. A boat came up the river at first light and the boater spotted him and turned toward the bank.

 He could not explain a word of it in English, but it did not matter. The boater got him to the nearest marina. It was the morning of October 8th, 2023, and Saul Lopez had just become a witness to his own murder, which was the one thing his attackers were certain could never happen. From the marina, still soaked and still bleeding, Lopez walked for 10 minutes before he found an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputy.

>> What’s that? >> You okay? >> Oh, here. Have a seat right here. Have a seat right here. Car frame 13. What happened? >> Can I get EMS 512 at the um Tom at Scenic Highway and 9M Road? How how how old are you? An annos. >> How old you? You. >> There was an immediate problem. The deputy did not speak Spanish and Lopez, badly bruised and having lost a great deal of blood, could barely speak at all.

 So, the officers pulled out a phone, opened Google Translate, and pieced together what had happened to him, one sentence at a time. Are >> you knocking on the door? Don’t you see Yeah. No. No. ambulance.

>> Instinct had carried Lopez as far as it could. And what he needed now was a hospital. The officers on scene got an ambulance moving before he could lose any more time. >> Guy come walking from across the street right here. He’s got like probably four, five lacerations, deep lacerations to his throat.

 His face is all bruised and broke up. He doesn’t speak any English at all. >> We’re going to go ahead and head up there before the airway starts to crash. He’s cut pretty deep right there. >> Lopez was rushed to the emergency room where doctors told investigators plainly that it was a miracle he was still breathing, but he could give them almost nothing to work with.

 The language barrier was still there, and he did not know the names of the people who had done this to him. All he could say was that there had been two of them, that they had taken his money, his phone, even his shoes, and that his car was gone. But one thing was clear. Lopez had suffered a gruesome attack. >> In fact, I think they tell him what they were going to do.

 Uh so much so that they they they take not only um his money, they take his his his cell phone, uh then ultimately take his shoes. So, so it it seems like they took everything that they could, including trying to take his life, which ended up being an attempted murder, a cold and calculated uh attempted murder. >> Investigator Martinez was assigned to the case, and he spoke Spanish, which made him the first person capable of getting the real story out of the man in that hospital bed.

 Once Lopez was through surgery and able to talk, Martinez went straight to him. Nothing was lost this time. Lopez laid it out in full in his own language how a Facebook friend request had turned into a threat on his life. It was going well until Martinez asked where he had been taken that night and Lopez could not name the street or anything else about it.

 But he told Martinez that if someone put a map in front of him, he could find it. So they pulled up Google Earth and the victim walked investigators back through the route point by point until he stopped on a single house and showed Martinez where it had happened. Martinez took that address and ran it through law enforcement records looking for prior calls, prior incidents, any contact at all between that house and the sheriff’s office.

 What came back changed the shape of the investigation because that address already had a history and the history involved both Reynolds and Natalie. In an earlier incident there, Natalie had reported that Reynolds assaulted her. Then came the vehicle. Emergency dispatch had already taken frantic calls hours after the attack about a car burning on Highway 98.

 And when deputies arrived, it was fully engulfed. It had not caught fire on its own. It had been torched to take every piece of forensic evidence with it. Standing over what was left of it, investigators understood that this had never been only about killing Saul Lopez. It was about making sure no trace of him was ever found.

 Two things were now established, and both would sit badly with the story. her defense wanted to tell. This was not random violence against a stranger, and Natalie had not been dragged into any of it. Investigators already knew who they were looking for, and they brought Natalie in. As far as she knew, there was nothing to worry about.

 The only two people who could put her on that bridge were Lopez, who she was certain had died in that river, and Reynolds, who was never going to say a word against her. Martinez sat down across from her and said he wanted to ask about an incident involving a Mexican man. She did not pause. She did not ask which one.

 She started talking immediately, describing a man she had met at a Circle K and an incident she claimed she had watched from inside her own house, insisting she had seen none of it herself. Martinez let her finish every word of it. Then he told her the man he was asking about was Saul Lopez.

 All she said was, “Oh, remember that?” Because her defense would later spend a great deal of energy trying to explain it away. That one syllable told Martinez everything. Her mind had gone somewhere else entirely to a different man and a different story she already had ready, which meant there was a second victim nobody had reported.

There was. 8 days after Lopez went into the Escambia River, they had gone back to work. And this time, the man was Abul Sanchez, who had stopped at a gas station, seen a couple who needed a few dollars, and reached into his own pocket to help. Natalie brought him to the same house.

 Reynolds robbed him at gunpoint and took everything he had. He walked away shaken but alive. Warrants were issued for both of them. And when the arrest came, Sanchez’s belongings were still in Natalie’s possession. She had not sold them or thrown them away. She had kept them and now they were sitting in an evidence locker with her name on them.

 Martinez understood that it was risky to rely solely on the identification done at the hospital. A defense lawyer could easily argue that Lopez could not have been able to identify the suspects while just recovering from a surgery where he almost lost his life. To make sure that there was nothing for a lawyer to challenge, Martinez invited Lopez back to the station to identify the suspect again.

Lopez picked her out immediately. He had thought he was lucky when she reached out. He had thought she was a friend. Now he was naming her as one of the two people who tried to kill him. Then he identified Reynolds, the man who had held the gun on him at that bridge. Then Martinez walked him through the night again, start to finish.

 Every version that matched was another brick no defense attorney would knock down later. the window. Um, okay. Fore! Foreign! Foreign! foreign. Mhm.

Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. What started as a robbery case turned into something far heavier once the full picture came together. Both were charged with attempted first-degree premeditated murder, kidnapping, robbery with a firearm, carjacking with a deadly weapon, arson, and tampering with evidence.

 Neither of them risked a trial. On September 16th, 2025, both entered please and stood before Circuit Judge Linda Nobles in Pensacola for sentencing. >> That’s not, you know, the Mexican score I’m talking about. I’m talking about the one that had his throat cut and then she just sat back in her chair like, “Oh, I said he didn’t die.

” >> So, at that point, investigator, was it clear to you that Miss FCO was actually talking about her victim? >> Yes. >> After Martinez stepped down, it was the defendant’s turn, but Natalie’s lawyer spoke first. The plan had been for her to take responsibility and ask the court for mercy. That is not what happened.

 He told the court she was a pawn. that years of abuse at Reynolds’s hands had turned her into a tool he could point at whoever he wanted and that she had no way out. And that reaction in the interrogation room, the one that gave up a second victim, he told the court it was not guilt at all. It was damage. There are no words for what both victims and myself have experienced.

 Even words tripping with me so much upset. I can never get down on paper the mental, emotional, and physical abuse that has developed from being in a relationship with Mr. Reynolds. Since July 9, 2015, I felt the need to protect someone who created trauma within me and took advantage of my vulnerability. This phase in my life where my freedom where my freedom was paused has taught me about life and most importantly about myself.

Not everyone has good intentions in life. Mr. Randles persuade my mentor with rainbows and unicorns to get me out of my mother’s house at the age of 16. Where I was once pure, enjoying life as a teen, I thought love was what I found. But love only became a mental illness. I became fragile, confused, addicted, even suicidal.

Every visible scar on my body came from Mr. Reynolds. >> She stopped calling him by name. He became Mr. Reynolds. Spoken with the distance you use for a stranger. She was not just shifting blame. She was cutting the relationship loose right in front of the judge. The prosecution stood in shock at what Natalie and her lawyer had said about Reynolds.

 Their mission was to secure convictions against both defendants. The prosecution then did something out of the ordinary. >> Good afternoon. Just a second. Do you remember me? >> You remember tell the judge a minute ago that you gave two depositions in this case? >> They were they were with me, weren’t they? >> Right.

 Do you remember the very first question that you asked when Mr. Longire and myself walked in the room? >> I do. >> What was that question? >> What would my sense seem to be looking like? >> If I suggested to you that you said, “Mr. Longire, what am I going to get for talking today?” Would you agree that that’s the truth? >> Did you hear your lawyer several times ask that you were taking responsibility for your conduct today? Okay.

 But what if I suggested to you that in your in your letter that you read to this to the judge, you repeatedly deflected towards Mr. Reynolds? Would you agree with that? >> I don’t agree. >> The prosecution told the court that Natalie’s role was far too large for her to walk out from under it. She had stopped talking about what she did that night and started talking about what had been done to her.

 And every word of it pointed at Reynolds. So people lives are destroyed by my actions and choices I’ve made that brought me to the victim in all this. I’m deeply sorry. I pray he’s as I seen earlier you’re a young person. How old are you? >> 33. >> 33 years old. So Judge Noble might give you 30 years today. She might give you 20. She might give you 25.

 She might give you 15. >> What’s your life going to look like when you ultimately leave prison? said a better way. What if the court was concerned that you might be danger to our community if you were someday released from prisoner when you are? What would you say to that? >> That would be danger. I I didn’t mistake and I was in my mind.

>> I heard the part of your letter where you offer apologies to the victims in this case, but you see the gentleman there in the red t-shirt in the second row. Is there anything else that you’d like to say to him? >> Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah, I hurt you so bad. I was I wish I could change it. >> Any remarks for the other gentlemen as well? >> Deputy Chief Assistant State Attorney Frederick Longmire had made the state’s position clear before either defendant said a word.

 Both were equally responsible for what happened on that bridge and 30 years was not excessive. It was necessary. With both sides heard, Judge Nobles laid out where the court stood before she said a number. >> The sheer violence of what happened to Mr. is I mean in his letter to me he said that Ms. Fona looked at him and said something along the lines of this is your last day to live.

 I cannot imagine the fear. He then said she grabbed his hair and pulled it backwards and Mr. Reynolds slit his throat and I believe it was three times. That in and of itself is enough to convince me to the sentence that I am going to sentence. >> Judge Nobles gave both of them 30 years on each of the four primary counts. attempted first-degree murder, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery.

Arson and evidence tampering carried just under 19. Everything runs concurrently, so 30 years each, with 695 days of credit for time already served. Both are in the Florida Department of Corrections now. Neither is due out until the early 2050s.