Paco C. was found when he had been dead for several days.
They had suffocated him and left the gagged corpse, tied hand and foot between one of the rooms and the corridor in his house in Madrid.
Watches, drugs, money, a pistol and ammunition were missing from the house.
Upon moving the body, investigators found two rings under her back, one with the date "5-21-65" and the other with the name "Marian."
Did that carry some hidden meaning?
Was it a simple robbery?
Why did they leave the body like that?
A popular jury has just ruled that the only one guilty of that murder committed in March 2018 is his girlfriend, Verónica C., who was 32 years old at the time and has remained on provisional release during all this time.
When the verdict was read, the victim's brothers were in the room and also his ex-partner, Paloma.
It was she who raised the alarm when she had not heard from the man for several days, who died at the age of 47, and who went to her house on two occasions when she did not respond to her calls or messages.
She also contacted the family lawyer, Iván Montoto, when the judge released the detainee for the crime pending trial.
Paloma and Paco were together for 15 years and after the sentimental relationship ended, she followed another of friendship and care for the man, with very delicate health.
She had become almost her "mother", as she herself defines, and was part of her life to the point that she had offered to go on vacation with her and her new partner on some occasions.
Paloma remembered one of the last sentences her ex-boyfriend said to her, because it was the next day that he was murdered.
"Everyone thinks I'm going to die, but I'm still here," he told her when she told him that she saw him very scruffy.
After that, he stopped responding to her calls and messages.
She asked one of her sisters if she knew anything about him, but the answer was negative, and both women began to worry.
Paloma made a first visit to the house, but the door was closed and no one answered.
A few days later, the lack of response raised the alarm and the two women and Paloma's boyfriend went to the house, this time with a locksmith.
Paco had changed the lock a month before and none of them had a copy.
“I stayed outside and the one who entered and saw the corpse was my partner, something that cannot be forgotten.
On leaving he told me: Paco is inside.
I thought that he had had a heart attack and he had died in bed, but my partner told me: Paloma, they have killed him, ”recalls the woman.
The body was bound hand and foot, wore blue espadrilles with white details and the plastic of a remote control in the mouth.
Several valuables were missing from the house, such as watches and money, but also drugs and a gun belonging to the victim.
Paco's was one of those crimes that goes unnoticed in the media.
He was a man with drug addiction problems, he had a police record, he died in Ciudad Lineal, a popular neighborhood in Madrid, and in the house, the neighbors reported, there was a lot of visitors.
Sometimes, the lack of media focus is an advantage for investigators, who can work without the pressure of an immediate resolution.
The Madrid Homicide Group V guard phone was the one that rang minutes after the discovery of the body.
Four years later, Sub-Inspector Alberto dusted off the documentation on his investigation to appear as a witness in the trial.
At the moment he and another inspector set foot in that house, several hypotheses were open.
Was it a reckoning?
A robbery that had gotten out of hand?
What did the rings mean?
The testimonies of Paco's relatives opened several paths: a Cuban girl, some acquaintances from a nearby bar, and also Verónica.
This last line of research was the one that gained strength.
“We tried to locate it and on the first try it picked it up but it cut off or hung up.
It was impossible to talk to her about her until we quoted her father and he contacted her, then he responded, ”said the sub-inspector at the oral hearing.
When she finally appeared before the investigators, he recounted that the last time she had seen Paco was the morning in which the police placed the man's death.
"She said that that day she had left the house for churros, that when she returned there was a man in the house and that she went to eat at McDonalds in a nearby shopping center and did not hear from him," the agent said.
But the testimony of the neighbor on the top floor, Ana, contradicted this supposedly idyllic Saturday morning.
“At night there was a huge argument, I heard how he asked her to drop the knife from her.
In the morning, when I left home,
Paco and Verónica, a few months before the murder for which she has just been convicted.
The analysis of Verónica's phone arrived and her version continued to fall apart.
The monitoring of the antennas indicated that at the time of the crime, she was in the house.
The cameras of the mall where she is supposed to have eaten do not pick her up at any time.
And in her background, the police found several reports both of hers and of Paco for mutual assaults and even another note for having been involved in another homicide, for which she was not charged.
With this accumulation of evidence, seven months later, the perpetrator of that crime was arrested when she was walking down the street with her new partner, who was also investigated for cover-up, although it was finally ruled out.
The defendant listened to her guilty verdict with her hair on one side, as she had been throughout the trial trying to hide the teardrop tattoo on that side of her face.
She requested not to immediately enter prison, something the magistrate refused, due to the seriousness of the crime judged.
The jury took into account the special vulnerability of the victim, who had suffered from colon cancer, was treated with methadone, had several bypasses, had mobility sequelae from a car accident and barely weighed 50 kilos when he was murdered.
The date of one of the alliances was the date of his parents' wedding and Marian is the name of Paco's older sister.
"Paco, Marian and I had that alliance with our names, but he had exchanged it with his sister," says Paloma.
Investigators believe that Veronica simply forgot to add them to the loot she stole from the house because they were left under her body.
The sentence of the Provincial Court of Madrid condemns her to 20 years in prison.
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