More than 30 hours of interrogations, testimonies and expert statements have shaped a complex trial with two accused and an enormous disparity in criteria between the parties. From the Prosecutor’s Office, which pointed out the man as the material author of the homicide and … prosecuted as an accessory, to the private prosecution, which requested sentences for murder for both, including the acquittal requested by the defenses. Long sessions that have shed light on a crime with many edges and questions.
Pedro José and the accused met by chance. According to her, he began cleaning her house and, despite an age difference of more than 35 years, in 2018 they began a relationship of several months that investigators consider fictitious. During that time, the defendant managed to get the victim to give her more than 54,000 euros. In July of that year, Pedro José felt deceived and reported her for a possible scam.
One of the keys to the trial. There is no call record between the two, no messages exchanged, nor does anyone’s name appear on the other’s phone. But the Police found a cell phone in the house on Pepe Blanco Street that, between May 31 and June 8, 2018, was used by the defendant. For researchers there is a link between the two. For the defenses, an accidental connection: the accused took the cell phone from Pedro José’s house, a cell phone that he did not use, and lent it to her romantic partner while she fixed her broken phone.
On the morning of February 18, 2020, the accused’s phone was connected to the mobile phone antenna on Alfonso VI Street, which provides coverage to Pedro José’s house, a very unusual place for that terminal. Furthermore, between 10:44 and 10:56 a.m., the accused tries to contact him 19 times, most of them without a response. The neighbors point out that time as the time of the crime. At noon, the cell phone reconnects and does so to an antenna in Poeta Prudencio, where it is usually located. On the afternoon of February 18, the Moroccan man tries to contact his then partner 50 times. For the accusations, the presence of the accused in the area is undoubted, while the defense alleges that the antenna serves a wide area and is located more than a kilometer from Pedro José’s home.
The terminal that links, for accusations and investigators, Pedro José and the accused was found in the former’s house. In it there were a multitude of photos of the accused, contacts of people of Moroccan origin, searches for porn with animals… limited to those days of May and June 2018. The last message is that of a telephone store that asks the user to go to remove your fixed phone. Did Pedro José lend it to you directly? Did he do it, perhaps without knowing it, through the woman, who at that time had a romantic relationship with the accused and another fictitious relationship with the victim for financial purposes? It has not been clear. But there is a conversation of more than half an hour in the early hours of June 2 between that number and that of the accused. And, during that conversation, three photographs of Pedro José ‘sneak in’. Then some messages arrive: “Me, bitch? you like him? “Fuck you.” For the police, messages that prove that the victim and accused were together at that time and that they knew each other, even that they could have a relationship, according to the text of the messages. The defendant explained that the messages that night were directed to a woman, ‘La Turca’, with whom her partner was cheating on her.
Pedro José’s family maintained that he was very careful and “always” closed the door twice. However, when the ex-wife and daughter arrived at the house that February 18 and found the body, the door was bolted shut. The police investigation maintains that this shows that Pedro José opened it voluntarily. The set of keys was not hanging from the interior lock, but was on a table in a room at the back of the house. For the defense, there is no logic in the fact. Did he receive the defendant, did he take the keys to a table and then hit him?
At the crime scene, no remains of the accused were found: no DNA, fingerprints or hair. The other defendant was in Madrid on February 18. The forensic experts explained that the house was “so contaminated by the blood of the deceased” that it was very difficult to find other remains. Yes, eight unknown fingerprints were found on a bank document, which do not correspond to any of the police data banks. A Scientific agent explained that the aggressor “had to take protective measures”, probably gloves, from which a fingerprint can be sensed in the sink of the house, where the victim’s blood was also found. The defense of the accused defended that, without these genetic traces, which are added to the statements of the neighbors, the accused cannot be placed in the house on Pepe Blanco street.
Pedro José Sáez’s home underwent two searches immediately after the crime, but it was on May 5 when at another police entrance the documents of the complaint filed by the deceased against the woman who supposedly deceived him with a false romantic relationship were found. get 54,000 euros from him. Until then, investigators had not found a motive for the violent homicide. From that moment on, they tracked the woman and her relationship with the other accused and the investigations began. For the investigators, based on the dates, the objective of the crime was to stop the complaint, since just two weeks before the crime the sentence of between 4 and 6 years in prison that was requested for the alleged fraudster was formalized (and that finally, after the death of Pedro José, she was acquitted). No one around the deceased knew about the embezzlement suffered. For the Romanian woman’s lawyer, this discovery, lacking other evidence, caused a ‘tunnel effect’ in the investigators and they only focused on both accused.
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Aggression violence
The retired professor suffered a very violent death. He was beaten at the entrance to his house and dragged to the kitchen, where he was also attacked. According to the forensic experts, due to the injuries received, with “at least two blunt objects” (one shaped like an angle and the other jagged), in addition to blows and punches. And Pedro José did not die instantly: his death occurred due to blood loss, it is unknown how long after the beating. What became clear is that the neighbors heard muffled cries of “help, help” but did not call the police because either they did not determine the place where they were coming from or they blamed it on a “problematic” neighbor. The accused woman’s lawyer defended that “it could be two aggressors” and the forensic experts ruled that “it could be a single individual, although it cannot be ruled out that there were more people.”
One day after the crime, the accused travels to Madrid, where the other defendant resided, and they spend the night together in a hotel. To leave, he leaves a rented apartment in the center of Logroño three months before without giving a reason to the owner. Furthermore, he tells no one around him about his destiny and he even assures his boss that he is going to Morocco to see his dying mother, so he gives him money (the defense claims that this amount was what he owed him for several years). jobs). He leaves with a small backpack and after that night in Madrid, he heads by bus to Italy. Months later, the other defendant goes to live with him during the summer. At the trial, he explained that the departure occurred after his nationality was denied in November, something that the accusations doubt because he made subsequent procedures, and also because a regularization process was going to be opened in Italy on March 8. «This was published on May 8. Without a time machine that had determined a pandemic and everything that was going to happen, it would be impossible to know. “Either he had that machine or he is lying,” the private prosecution argued.
At the trial, the toxicity of the relationship between both defendants was evident, as they reproached each other for alleged mutual infidelities and that they exchanged continuous messages and calls… until the relationship broke up. For example, in March 2021, when the accused is in Italy, he yells at him: “Leave me. You killed me. “Enough!” By then, both of their phones were tapped and the Police discovered that on March 25, a person notified the defendant, who was on her way to Logroño to appear in another judicial process, that the agents were looking for her. On that trip, without her knowing, she was accompanied by two plainclothes police officers who, when they saw that she was deleting WhatsApp messages with the other accused, precipitated her arrest in the middle of the bus trip.
