TAMPA, Fla — For Denise Kozer, her stepmother, Cynthia Wood, can be summed up as a free spirit who was kind, smart, and loved hard.
"She was sort of a hippy woman," she said. "She would have went to the ends of the Earth for all of us. Even though I wasn't hers by blood, but just growing up with and around her, we were a family."
But Kozer said that love was snatched away when Wood was murdered in June of 1984.
Kozer was 20 at the time. Her siblings were 3, 5, and 12, and the impact of that loss was devastating.
"My siblings really didn't get the full life with her, which angers me," she said.
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office (HCSO), a then 33-year-old Wood was strangled and left in a ditch in Riverview by a man named Donald Santini.
The 1984 warrant for Santini's arrest claims that he told a woman he knew about the crime and then took off.
In early June, almost 40 years after the crime, Santini was caught by federal agents in California and has since been extradited back to Florida.
Recent Story: Florida man arrested in California for 1984 Tampa-area murder
Thursday, he made his first appearance before a Florida judge, where they discussed the topic of bond—which is something Kozer said he doesn't deserve.
"I'm pleading with the district attorney and the sheriff's office; please do not give him any bond; he doesn't deserve anything. My stepmother didn't deserve what happened to her either," she said.
And as his case moves forward, Kozer told ABC Action News that she feels he deserves this message instead.
"You will pay for what you've done to our lives and so many lives. And I hope you get the death sentence," she said.
While awaiting extradition in California, Santini also wrote a 15-page letter to KGTV, our Scripps News station in San Diego.
In it, Santini said he had an abusive childhood and admits to a rape but later claims he has since been to therapy.
And while he doesn't mention Wood in the letter, he does end it by saying that he is "Sorry for all the wrong he has done in his life."
Santini will have his pretrial bond hearing on July 6.
