DEBARY, Florida — A DeBary man has been arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of his wife after an investigation that stretched from Volusia County to the Philippines and Japan, the Volusia Sheriff's Office announced. Epifanio IX Ramos Gaminde was taken into custody on Monday, October 26, 2026, after a grand jury returned an indictment for the murder of Maria Gaminde, Sheriff Mike Chitwood told a news conference on Tuesday. Maria's body has not been found. The charge is an allegation: Gaminde is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Source: WKMG ClickOrlando, reporting the Volusia Sheriff's Office news conference, Oct. 27, 2026
Maria Gaminde, a teacher at University High School, was reported missing by her family in January 2024 after they lost confirmed contact with her. Her husband told authorities she had voluntarily moved out of their DeBary home and was living overseas, in the Philippines or Japan. For a long time afterwards, messages and purchases in her name kept that story alive — until her family, and then detectives, concluded the story was manufactured.
The messages that did not add up
According to the sheriff's office, sporadic text messages, emails and overseas credit-card purchases sent under Maria's name raised red flags with her family, and eventually with detectives. Investigators checked the most basic fact in the husband's account — whether Maria had ever left the United States — and found no flight records showing that she had. The communications that appeared to come from a woman living abroad, detectives concluded, were part of an orchestrated effort to make it appear she was still alive and avoiding contact with friends, relatives and law enforcement.
Sheriff Mike Chitwood, at Tuesday's news conference, put the question at the heart of the case this way: "What mother of a five-year-old or 11-year-old just disappears?" The children are not identified in this report.
Investigators travel to the Philippines
Working with the FBI, sheriff's detectives and prosecutors from Florida's 7th Judicial Circuit traveled to the Philippines to conduct witness interviews and collect physical evidence, with international partners also involved in Japan. In the Philippines, Chitwood said, detectives interviewed Gaminde's niece, who admitted to making purchases and communications designed to make Maria appear alive — all at the defendant's direction, according to the sheriff. Fox News, reporting the same sheriff's account, said Gaminde allegedly mailed his missing wife's credit cards to a relative in the Philippines to create the illusion she was alive overseas.
Source: Fox News via BayAreaDailyNews, Oct. 28, 2026
Maria Gaminde's body has not been recovered, the sheriff's office confirms. Prosecutors in Florida can and do bring homicide cases without a body, but they must then prove both that the victim is dead and that the defendant caused the death, using the surrounding evidence — here, investigators say, the missing-person record, the absence of any flight out of the US, and the overseas communications trail.
Arrest, jail and an immigration detainer
Gaminde, 48, was booked into the Volusia County Branch Jail on October 26 and is held without bond on the first-degree murder charge, according to the sheriff's office and the county booking record. Federal officials have also placed an immigration detainer on him through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the sheriff's office said. A detainer is a request that a jail notify ICE before a person is released; it is not itself a criminal charge, and it does not decide the murder case.
Background: DeBary and the long road of this case
DeBary is a residential city in Volusia County, in the corridor between Orlando and Daytona Beach, served by the Volusia Sheriff's Office and prosecuted within Florida's 7th Judicial Circuit. Missing-person cases that cross oceans are among the hardest local investigations: records, witnesses and purchases sit in other countries, under other legal systems, and every step requires federal and international help. That is the shape this case took — a family in Florida who stopped believing the messages they were receiving, a sheriff's office that tested the travel claim, and investigators who ultimately flew to the Philippines to interview the person they say sent some of those messages.
Neighbours in DeBary reacted with shock this week as the arrest became public, in television interviews carried by WESH 2 News. For the wider community — including the Filipino and South Asian families who live across the Orlando–Volusia corridor and for whom a family member 'living overseas' is an ordinary part of life — the case underlines a painful point investigators made repeatedly: when contact with a missing relative suddenly exists only as texts, emails and card purchases, families should ask authorities to verify that the person is actually alive and well.
What happens next
The case now moves into the courts of the 7th Judicial Circuit, where Gaminde will face arraignment and pre-trial proceedings on the first-degree murder indictment. The sheriff's office said it will release additional updates as the case proceeds through court. The search for Maria Gaminde's remains has not been declared over. Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to contact the Volusia Sheriff's Office.