Days after Thanksgiving 2011, Kristin Werkhoven received an unexpected call.

On the other end of the line was Brian Brimager, her decorated Marine ex-boyfriend and the father of her young daughter, who told her he was coming back home to Southern California after spending the last two months vacationing with military buddies in Panama. 

The pair had been broken up for some time, but Brimager needed a place to stay. Werkhoven offered her spare bedroom and picked Brimager up from the airport.

Quickly, they fell back into old habits. Their 'magnetic chemistry' was too difficult to resist, Werkhoven told the Daily Mail, and within days of his return, Brimager asked for her hand in marriage.

Photos from their modest wedding in Dana Point on New Year's Eve that year depict a couple very much in love, resplendent in their happiness – but the honeymoon period was short-lived.

In the days that followed, Werkhoven began noticing a series of increasingly strange behaviors exhibited by her new husband. He refused to talk about his time in Panama, he wasn't eating, and he was up at all hours of the night pacing around their home. 

'He didn't sleep. He's a Marine and he can sleep anywhere in any environment,' Werkhoven said. 'But when I'd go to work in the morning at five or six, he'd still be up, which was completely abnormal.'

While confused by some of his behaviors, Werkhoven said she was struck by how much attention and affection Brimager was lavishing on their daughter.

'He was acting strangely, but at the same time, he was constantly doting on our daughter... looking back, I think it was because he was on borrowed time and knew he was about to get caught,' she said.

The FBI soon delivered the explanation for Brimager's increasingly erratic behavior.

Ambushing her at a work conference, agents informed Werkhoven that the man she had just married hadn't been away in Panama with friends as he'd told her – he'd actually been living there with his girlfriend of two years, Yvonne Baldelli, 42, who went missing days before Brimager, then 37, returned to the US.

Werkhoven had never heard of Baldelli.

She and Brimager had been emailing on and off during his time in Panama about their daughter and about his travels, but he never once mentioned Baldelli or that he was in a relationship.

Prosecutors believe those messages set in motion the confrontation that ended with Baldelli's murder.

Baldelli and Brimager, who had been dating since 2009, moved to Panama in September 2011.

Brimager had just left the Marines and wanted to launch a singing career, touring local beach bars with his guitar, while Baldelli brought with her a sewing kit in the hope of creating her own boutique swimwear brand.

Though they were chasing a life of tranquility, what followed was anything but peaceful.

Locals recalled the pair drinking heavily and engaging in heated public exchanges. Neighbors overheard late-night shouting matches. One witness claimed to have seen Baldelli with a black eye.

In the early weeks of their trip, a joyful Baldelli had been calling home frequently and sending a constant stream of emails detailing her adventures with Brimager.

But slowly, the phone calls and messages became less frequent before stopping altogether around Thanksgiving.

Alarm bells began to sound for her family back in California.

'I was calling her every day, and there was just no answer,' Baldelli's step-mother, Lillian Faust, told the Daily Mail. 'I got really nervous about that.

'My daughter Michelle had been in almost constant contact with her to that point, and she knew things hadn't been right for a while – but she didn't tell us that at the time to protect us.'

The silence continued for two weeks before Baldelli's sister, Michelle Valenzuela, received a text message on December 14. But it wasn't from Baldelli.

The message, from a number she didn't recognize, read: 'This is Brian. May I make arrangements to pick up my truck?'

Valenzuela immediately called him back and asked him where her sister was.

Brimager told her that they were no longer together. They fought in Panama after Baldelli discovered he had secretly fathered a child with Werkhoven, and he had returned to the US without her.

In a panic, Valenzuela started combing back through her messages with Baldelli and discovered an email in her inbox that she'd overlooked.

'Hi sis. Just an update. Brian and I are no longer together,' it began. 'I should have trusted my instincts that he's a lying, cheating a**hole. I'm heading to Costa Rica with a man I met when we first got [here.]'

Something about the message didn't sit right with Baldelli's family. They didn't believe for one second that she had run off with another man. She was besotted by Brimager and would've been devastated by the discovery of his child with Werkhoven.

Three more weeks passed before another email arrived. This time, the message said Baldelli was missing her family and would be returning soon to California in time to attend a scheduled family get-together in the first week of January.

She never showed, and all emails ceased.

Faust and Baldelli's father, Jim, flew down to Panama and went door to door, handing out missing posters, chasing down false leads and scouring shorelines and jungles for traces of their missing daughter.

The search proved fruitless and emotionally taxing.

Faust recounted collapsing on the beach with Jim in floods of tears, confronted by the increasing possibility that Baldelli was likely no longer alive.

Then came another shock. A friend back home texted them a link to an announcement about Brimager's marriage to Werkhoven.

'I opened it and I screamed,' Faust told the Daily Mail. 'I thought right there, this must be why he killed her.'

Back in California, Brimager was coming under increasing scrutiny.

It was discovered that the messages sent to Valenzuela from Baldelli's email address came from a device inside his home.

Even though her husband had lied about his reasons for going to Panama, hidden his relationship with Baldelli, and was the last person to see her alive, Werkhoven never suspected Brimager was a killer – even as the evidence began to stack up.

'You want to believe the best in people, especially your spouse,' she told the Daily Mail. 'He was told by his lawyer not to tell me anything, so we couldn't really talk about it… but I wanted to believe he didn't do this because I had never seen him violent.'

Amid the mounting scrutiny, Werkhoven asked Brimager directly if he knew where Baldelli was. He said he didn't and Werkhoven took him at his word.

More than a year passed before Baldelli's whereabouts became known. In a green military duffel bag hidden in jungle brush, investigators found her dismembered remains.

Prosecutors said Baldelli had been stabbed to death with a machete and dismembered in a shower. 

Brimager sold the murder weapon on Facebook shortly after Baldelli's death, authorities said. In a listing, he wrote that he had 'only used it to chop up one stripper.'

DNA evidence found beneath the machete's handle sealed Brimager's fate. He later pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 26 years.

The confession caught Werkhoven off guard.

'It was a point of contention for me for a long time. I was pissed, because – why would you marry me if you did this?' she said.

'To this day, he says that although it wasn't the right thing to do, he had just done everything wrong and he wanted to do something right.

'When people commit crimes and they go back to their mom because they feel safe – I think I was safe for him and he knew that.'

Werkhoven has stayed by Brimager's side, and the pair are still married.

During a court hearing last year, Brimager claimed to have transformed during his more-than-decade behind bars, dedicating himself to faith by becoming a Christian worship leader and a mentor to other inmates.

Werkhoven is convinced he has turned a new leaf.

She now documents their relationship on social media, advising the partners of other convicts while also answering questions from the public and recounting her 'love story' with Brimager.

Werkhoven has around 50,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram.

Under the name The Real Inmates Wife, she posts images of her and Brimager alongside captions such as: 'Our story isn't finished… but we've already won.' 

She told the Daily Mail that, while it has taken years, she has forgiven Brimager for his sickening acts and lies.

'I told him the other day, "I love you, but I hate what you did," and people find that hard to understand,' Werkhoven said. 

'But he has transformed. Before this, he loved himself more than he loved me, but now he puts the kids and me first, and everything he is doing is because he wants to be the best person he can when he gets home.'

Brian is due to be released from prison in August 2035.

The thought of him one day being a free man is a difficult one for Baldelli's loved ones to stomach.

'She really believes he's a good man, and I don't understand that,' Faust said.

'He has taken so much from this family… Yvonne thought he was going to marry her and he disposed of her like trash, as if she meant nothing.'