Devastated by anxiety and defeated by tears, lawyer Víctor Salas fell asleep at home, at the end of the longest day of his life.
On June 22, 2016, an individual murdered his colleagues Maritza Osorio and Elisa Consuegra and his client Pepe Castillo in his office in the Usera neighborhood of Madrid.
But the target was him.
In the dream he had that night, Víctor saw the women running from one side of the office to the other and he yelled for them to stop and tell him what had happened.
Six years later, that nightmare has not yet ended, because the trial of the accused of that triple crime has just been reconvened for the fourth time, after changes in judges and prosecutors that have caused it to start from scratch.
He will be processed in Venezuela, whose nationality he shares with the American.
“There is not a single day that I do not think of them and whenever I can, I visit their graves, in Getafe.
It is impossible to forget the photos of the scene”, says the Peruvian lawyer.
Salas recalls over and over again in great detail what happened that day.
Maritza called him shortly before three in the afternoon and announced that a client had arrived without an appointment, with a cause of one million euros.
Since it was not long before the lunch break, they agreed to ask him to return in the afternoon.
"The last time I spoke to her, she had her nervous voice, he told me that the man had gone into the bathroom and wouldn't come out," he points out.
That day Víctor was transfixed after eating and arrived late at the office.
At a quarter to six he parked his motorcycle on Marcelo Usera street and met several clients in the doorway of the block where his office was.
They had been calling since five and no one answered.
"It was then that I saw the fire through the windows and I ran up, I only thought of Elisa and Maritza," says Salas.
Firefighters put out the flames and discovered the bodies of the women and that of a third victim.
From that first moment, the policemen realized that it was not the fire that had ended their lives.
Their throats had been slit and the man was struck hard on the head.
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As in many investigations, visual inspection was vital.
And in this case, on a scorched stage, that work was especially hard.
In the midst of the disaster, they found a detail that the murderer had left.
A stopper from a bottle.
From a brand that was only sold in Germany.
Just from Germany, the lawyer Salas had received a threatening call two months before.
On the other side was Dahud Haniz-Ortiz.
"He told me to leave Irina, that he had been trained to kill and that I was an obstacle in his goal of winning her back," says the lawyer.
Salas had met that woman a few months earlier, during a case he took on in Germany.
She introduced them to a mutual friend and soon after they began a relationship.
In a few months they saw each other in Barcelona, Madrid, Mallorca and made a trip to the Maldives.
"She never spoke to me about her past, only about the future," recalls the lawyer.
But the past, she came back in the wildest way.
The photo that the alleged murderer of the Usera triple crime sent hours after the murders of his ex-partner, in Germany.
According to the police reconstruction, the day before the murders, Haniz-Ortiz, a former soldier who had participated in the Iraq war, had driven from Germany.
He arrived in Madrid and not finding his target in the office, he killed the two women and waited patiently with the two bodies.
Until at five in the afternoon a client arrived whom he mistook for the lawyer and attacked him ferociously.
"He was wrong because that day he was also wearing a suit," says Salas, the survivor of certain death.
Despite all the precautions that the war veteran had taken, everything pointed to him, but when the arrest warrant came, he had escaped.
The journey took him to the United States, Colombia and finally Venezuela, where he had relatives who protected him.
He was arrested in that country in 2018, but Caracas denied his extradition.
A year ago the trial began there, in which Víctor had to testify.
It was the first time he had seen his killer face to face.
He plucked up the courage to tell him in the courtroom: "Justice takes time, but it comes."
It was the promise he had made to the victims so many times in his head.
Salas had to live with police protection the entire time Haniz-Ortiz was on the run and left him with Irina shortly after the murders, although he still maintains a relationship with her today.
Justice is taking longer than he ever believed.
When only one witness was missing to appear - that of the friend to whom the defendant had left his phone in Germany so that the antenna would not place him in Madrid - the judge who presided over the court was relegated.
This has meant that, once again, we have to start over from scratch.
After that, there have been two changes of prosecutor that have continued to delay the process.
In all this time, the defendant has remained in prison.
The lawyer, who no longer has a relationship with Irina, will appear again at the Venezuelan court because his testimony is key: “I don't know what is happening, but if I have to go back, I will go.
I promised them."
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