No trace of what killed Luis Lorenzo's aunt: the "incriminating" powders were salt, sugar and bicarbonate

The judicial investigation directed by the head of the Court of Instruction number 9 of Arganda del Rey (Madrid) against the couple formed by the actor Luis Lorenzo and Arancha Palomino, accused of the alleged poisoning of the latter's aunt, Isabel Suárez (85 years old). ), still without finding the evidence of the crime.

According to the investigation carried out by the Civil Guard, the couple would have killed the old woman to benefit from her inheritance.

The investigators accused the couple of murder after having the results of the autopsy, which established a death of "homicidal" etiology due to "acute intoxication with heavy metals", specifically cadmium and manganese.

However, the criminalistics report to which EL PAÍS has had access, concludes after analyzing the allegedly incriminating remains collected by the investigators of the armed institute in the house of the couple where the old woman died on June 28, 2021, that the powder suspected of being poison are, in fact, "salt, sugar, and bicarbonate", rules out the presence of cadmium in the seized batteries and only finds manganese in the dye and paint cans found on the terrace of the house.

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A second coroner moves away from the thesis of poisoning as the cause of the death of actor Luis Lorenzo's aunt

“The white powder collected on the black cloth corresponds to salt (halite) and sugar (glucose).

The white powder adhered to the battery corresponds to potassium bicarbonate.

In this last powder, higher concentrations of the metals zinc and nickel are detected, compatible with the characteristic components of the type of battery studied”, reads the study of the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Civil Guard.

Isabel Suárez Arias died, after experiencing an ordeal of neglect, three months after arriving in Madrid from Asturias in her niece's car: "My aunt took me by the hand and told me that she was leaving the inheritance to me because I deserved it ”, Arancha Palomino recently declared in an interview with Telecinco.

Both she and her husband, Luis Lorenzo, pleaded not guilty to the woman's death, and the judge released them with the withdrawal of their passports and the obligation to appear weekly in court.

In the three months that "Aunt Isabel" was in the house of Arancha and Luis Lorenzo, both known without work since 2015 and 2016 respectively, the couple spent —according to the police report— 23,000 euros from the old woman's account, with the justification of “medical assistance expenses”.

Her caregiver (24 hours) charged 1,800 euros per month.

The judicial investigation, which began with the complaint of "disappearance" filed at the Avilés barracks by a brother of the deceased, and carried out by the Homicide Group of the Madrid command, concludes that her death was "violent" and that the The cause is "an intoxication with heavy metals (cadmium and manganese)", since the cadmium was found in an amount 200 times higher than normal.

However, it does not explain – and neither does the autopsy – how these toxic substances could have reached her blood without leaving a trace in her liver or in her respiratory tract.

After the prosecutor requested a second autopsy and in the absence of the various doctors who treated the old woman during her last three months of life in Madrid, a second coroner explained in court that in some corpses, after a death occurred, a natural process of redistribution of heavy metals that pass into the blood from the liver is generated.

The fact that it does not always occur or in all bodies is due to multiple factors, from environmental to life habits, as pointed out by the coroner at the hearing.

That same thesis - that the high concentration of cadmium may be due to a natural reaction of the body and not to poisoning - was presented, in an interview in EL PAÍS, by the director of the National Institute of Toxicology, based on studies carried out in the United States. United and China.

The hypothesis of the murder by poisoning with heavy metals, without these leaving a trace of their passage through the body of the deceased and without finding traces of determining substances in the house of the alleged murderers, seems to be diluted as scientific investigations progress. .

And with it, the crime seems to vanish.

The investigators and the judge will have to assess whether a possible negligence in the administration of drugs and neglect that borders on mistreatment and that have been accredited by numerous witnesses can be sufficient to support that accusation of murder.

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