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The lonely, divorced carpenter thought he was going to Brazil to make wedding plans.
Instead, he was drugged and held captive for six days at his fiancee's home while she and a man emptied his bank accounts, according to Brazilian authorities. Then they drove the 56-year-old to a vacant lot, where they strangled him with copper wire, doused his body with diesel fuel, and set it aflame.
Authorities recovered Raymond Merrill's charred body in early April and buried it in an unmarked grave.
For months, his family knew nothing of his horrifying demise.
Merrill met Regina Filomena Rachid last year through an online dating service. The two exchanged dozens of phone calls, e-mails and photographs -- often enlisting Rachid's 18-year-old daughter as a translator.
"I was thrilled for my brother," said Merrill's sister, Marcia Sanchez Loebick.
Before he had met Rachid, Merrill was lonely and depressed, said Bill Rauch, Merrill's best friend. A woman in Las Vegas had taken advantage of him -- allowing him to buy her expensive gifts before breaking up with him.
Merrill, who was drawn to Latina women, turned to the Internet, where he met Rachid. She was 41, from an upper-middle-class family that was in the real estate business, according to authorities in Brazil.
"He would talk to me about ideal relationships and pure love," Rauch said. "With age doesn't necessarily come wisdom. He was used to doing things his way and, in the end, it did him in."
Merrill also spoke fondly of Rachid to his sister.
"I thought, 'This is going a little fast,' but I didn't want to sound critical," Loebick said, sitting at her brother's dining room table, boxes piled all around.
The warning signs were obvious to Rauch, who knew Merrill for nearly 30 years.
He gave Rachid $10,000 to start a skin care clinic. He bought her a $20,000 SUV. She complained it wasn't a fancier, more expensive model, Rauch said.
"This from a man who was tightfisted," Rauch said. "Ray and I would go out and I'd have to buy all the beers. All of a sudden, he's lavishing all these gifts and money on a relationship he's not even close to consummating."
"I said, 'Ray, these are so many red flags. I can't believe you're pursuing this,'" Rauch said. "He would just slough it off. He'd say, 'She's just a passionate and emotional Latina.' What do you say to a guy like that?"
Loebick also began to wonder "how legitimate is she?"
"She was extremely clever," she said. "The love letters. She was so convincing in her plans to marry, her love for him. That's what he wanted to see and believe."
Merrill visited Rachid twice in Sao Jose dos Campos, an industrial city about 60 miles northeast of Sao Paulo. Both times he stayed a week longer than planned. Both times he notified Rauch, who drove to Merrill's two-bedroom home in San Bruno to water the plants and collect mail.
On the third trip, Merrill again overstayed his planned April 1 return. But this time, he didn't call Rauch to let him know.
Loebick, who lives in Cleveland, began to worry. She wrote to him at an e-mail address he had given her. No reply.
By mid-April, their 86-year-old father was failing. He had been having heart trouble for months, but this time it seemed serious. Loebick flew to Florida to be with her father. She e-mailed her brother again and got no response.
A few weeks later, she sent another, more urgent e-mail: "Dad is dying," she said. Again, nothing.
Their father died May 1. The funeral came and went with no word from Merrill.
Rauch called San Bruno police to report his friend missing. They told him Merrill's sister had done the same.
But what had happened to Merrill was more awful than either could have imagined.
Sometime after he arrived on March 21, Rachid and her real boyfriend, Nelson Siqueira Neves, drugged Merrill and kept him in a room in Rachid's house, authorities said.
They drained his bank accounts, stealing about $200,000 in all, according to Merrill's sister and Brazilian authorities.
Then, on April 1 -- the day he was scheduled to return to California -- they paid a man to help kill him and set fire to the corpse, according to inspector Ana Paula Medeiros Monteiro de Barros, the lead investigator in Brazil.
"At a certain point -- we are not sure when or why -- they decided they had to get rid of Raymond," Monteiro de Barros said. "She and (Neves) then hired Evandro Celso Augusto Ribeiro to kill (Merrill) and get rid of his body. They agreed to pay him 12,000 reals (U.S. $5,600)."
The identity of the scorched remains was a mystery for more than two months, until police suddenly unraveled the case while investigating a robbery.
Rachid and her boyfriend still owed Ribeiro about $1,200. So, Rachid helped Ribeiro hold up a local black-market money changer, Monteiro de Barros said. They fled, but Rachid forgot to take her purse.
The money changer went to police and turned over the purse, which contained Merrill's credit card. Hours later, Rachid showed up at the same police station to report her purse stolen. Police arrested her on the spot.
Police also found a photo of Ribeiro and Neves posing together and realized the robbery and Merrill's disappearance were connected. Ribeiro was arrested and confessed to helping Rachid and Neves get rid of Merrill's body. He told police where the body had been dumped; investigators ordered it exhumed.
Rachid and Ribeiro are in custody, charged with armed robbery followed by death.
Neves remains at large despite being questioned by police Oct. 2
Neves said "he witnessed what had happened to (Merrill) but he had no part in it," Barros said. "I would have arrested him, but since Brazilian law stipulates that no one can be arrested five days prior to an election or 48 hours after the polls close, I had to let him go."
Also under investigation are Rachid's daughter and live-in housekeeper, Barros said.
Back in the United States, Loebick is waiting for Brazilian investigators to finish DNA testing on her brother's body. She plans to cremate his remains. Rauch simply misses his friend.
"I feel a really terrible sense of loss," he said. "You expect to lose your parents. But you don't expect one of your best friends to die."
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