The day American businessman José Rosado would have turned 45 years old, the trial for his murder began in Madrid.
Her widower Nic Young remembered it after testifying in that Tuesday session a few meters from the two men accused of killing her husband with a dose of liquid ecstasy 10 times higher than what a human body can withstand.
It happened on October 29, 2021. "It has been returning to the worst moment of my life," Young assured in a corridor of the Provincial Court.
One night before the discovery of the body, the couple had spoken for the last time.
A nondescript conversation about which ladder to buy to paint your Miami home.
That night, José entered his room at the Palace Hotel with Mihahil V. and Mohamed C., two men he had just met in Chueca.
The two guests stayed for an hour.
“We were considering moving to Spain, living in the south, which he adored.
He did not stop talking about salmorejo ”, jokes Young, who has made a great effort to travel to Spain during the two weeks that the oral hearing lasts.
Those days at the end of October 2021, they were supposed to travel together, but Young's health situation and a new increase in covid values dissuaded them, so José came alone.
His schedule here oscillated between leisure and work.
He had stepped down as CEO of Hijos J. Barreras, the largest private Spanish shipyard, just a few months earlier, and was planning to start new businesses in Spain.
For this reason, he visited Paco, his friend and former company colleague, in Córdoba, then spent a day sightseeing in Seville and headed for Madrid.
In the capital, he stayed for dinner with a lawyer whom he had also met at the shipyard, whose name was also José.
"I remember that he was extremely polite, he did not look at his mobile even once, and we ate dinner for four hours," commented the lawyer in the courtroom.
After that dinner, Rosado returned to his room on the fifth floor of the Palace, put on comfortable clothes, and went out for a walk around Chueca.
That night Mihahil V. and Mohamed C. also go out, actually, it's their usual routine.
This is stated by the first, who in the trial defined himself as a "hustler" and also the sub-inspector of Homicide Group V who, after that night, did not take his eyes off them.
"It was their way of working, if you want to put it that way, they would go out through Chueca looking for men to rob, usually foreigners so they wouldn't report it later."
The paths of these two men and José Rosado come together at the Organic Club.
There, José chats with her husband, who is on the other side of the Atlantic.
The man sends him photos of the night in Madrid and they talk on the phone about the ladder that Nic wanted to buy to paint a wall.
At half past two in the morning of the 29th, her last contact was made.
In Miami, Nic continues with his routine.
Adding the night hours in Spain and then in the United States, it will take several hours until she can talk to her husband again.
When she wakes up on the morning of October 30, she is surprised not to see any good morning messages from José.
Her heart flutters when she sees a credit card charge, just as the phone disconnects.
She tries to call the hotel, but she doesn't speak Spanish well, so she looks for a friend who does.
They reply that they cannot open the door for her guests.
It is five in the afternoon in the United States and eleven at night in Madrid.
She calls Paco, her husband's friend from Córdoba, but she is already asleep and does not read her message.
She contacts the American Embassy in Madrid, who calls the hotel, without finding out anything new.
“They gave me the phone numbers for the police and emergencies,
but it gave an error when calling from abroad, ”he says.
The hours pass.
Six in the morning in Spain.
He talks to the hotel security team, who promises to notify the manager when he arrives at nine.
To Nic, every minute seems like a world.
Paco wakes up, and Nic sends him an email with useful information: scars on her husband's body, passport number, her travel times... Paco contacts the police.
The day progresses and Miami enters into the early morning.
Nick gets a call.
It's three in the morning.
It's Paco: “José is dead”.
Without details, she tries to take the blow, she imagines that he has had an accident.
Two hours later, a member of the embassy gives him the second slap of reality: "We believe that he has been assassinated."
He talks to the hotel security team, who promises to notify the manager when he arrives at nine.
To Nic, every minute seems like a world.
Paco wakes up, and Nic sends him an email with useful information: scars on her husband's body, passport number, her travel times... Paco contacts the police.
The day progresses and Miami enters into the early morning.
Nick gets a call.
It's three in the morning.
It's Paco: “José is dead”.
Without details, he tries to take the blow, she imagines that he has had an accident.
Two hours later, a member of the embassy gives him the second slap of reality: "We believe that he has been assassinated."
He talks to the hotel security team, who promises to notify the manager when he arrives at nine.
To Nic, every minute seems like a world.
Paco wakes up, and Nic sends him an email with useful information: scars on her husband's body, passport number, her travel times... Paco contacts the police.
The day progresses and Miami enters into the early morning.
Nick gets a call.
It's three in the morning.
It's Paco: “José is dead”.
Without details, he tries to take the blow, she imagines that he has had an accident.
Two hours later, a member of the embassy gives him the second slap of reality: "We believe that he has been assassinated."
and Nic sends him an email with useful information: scars on her husband's body, passport number, travel times... Paco contacts the police.
The day progresses and Miami enters into the early morning.
Nick gets a call.
It's three in the morning.
It's Paco: “José is dead”.
Without details, he tries to take the blow, imagining that he has had an accident.
Two hours later, a member of the embassy gives him the second slap of reality: "We believe that he has been assassinated."
and Nic sends him an email with useful information: scars on her husband's body, passport number, travel times... Paco contacts the police.
The day progresses and Miami enters into the early morning.
Nick gets a call.
It's three in the morning.
It's Paco: “José is dead”.
Without details, he tries to take the blow, imagining that he has had an accident.
Two hours later, a member of the embassy gives him the second slap of reality: "We believe that he has been assassinated."
Among all those hours of tension, there is one that is key, the one that Mihahil and Mohammed spent in José's room.
Hotel security footage shows the three men entering the building, taking the elevator, and entering the room.
Rosado walks normally while he chats with the men.
Mohamed carries a bag with what they just bought at a 24-hour store.
It is five in the morning.
An hour later, the two come out with that same bag in hand.
The researchers have no doubt that this is the time when everything happens.
It will take hotel staff 24 hours to access the room and find the businessman dressed and lying lifeless on the bed.
On the right, José Rosado, in an image provided by her husband Nic Young, who appears on the left.
The police arrive shortly after.
On stage, a half-empty bottle of white wine, a full Coca-Cola, an unopened Red Bull and an empty one in the sink, an open bag of Doritos, another bag of chips, an energy bar on the floor... What is missing is the businessman's smartwatch, his tablet and his card.
José's body will speak a few hours later, in the autopsy.
His blood alcohol level was extremely high, 1.43 grams per liter – triple the limit allowed for driving – and also, forensics found a level incompatible with life of GHB, a drug also known as liquid ecstasy.
José died of a cardiac arrest caused by the massive ingestion of this narcotic.
Everyone around the victim denies that he was a drug user and that he barely drank alcohol because he was worried about his weight.
Also,
The defense of the loquacious Mihail and the reserved Mohamed consists in the fact that it was the businessman who bought the drug and spent the whole night consuming it and that they went to the hotel so that the former could have relations with José.
"Upon arrival, he told me that he no longer had cash, so I got angry and we left there," said the first.
The cameras record his departure, and the trail of the card and the recordings of a tobacconist show that shortly after they bought tobacco with Rosado's card in Móstoles and also tried to use it in a game room in a shopping center.
These indications were added to the traces that the scientific police found at the scene of two men with a history of robberies: they already had two names and two faces.
The policemen observed Mihail and Mohamed for a month and found that they went to Chueca together every night.
When they were arrested, on December 23, they found the passport of a Mexican citizen at the second's house.
His belongings had also been stolen weeks before.
In recent years, the police have arrested several men in Madrid for using chemical submission to fleece victims with the profile of José, and in this case the Prosecutor's Office has no doubt that they went too far with the dose.
The trial was seen for sentencing this Friday.
Before the table of the popular jury, three options.
The murder conviction requested by Nic's lawyer, considering that he was given a dose of ecstasy that left him defenseless.
The murder requested by the mother's lawyer and the prosecutor's office, who exposed to the jury that, although his intention was to steal, they supplied the deceased with a lethal dose.
"They knew it, they didn't care," argued the prosecutor.
Or the free acquittal requested by the defenses, who have not considered it proven that they put the drug in José's wine.
Nic spends these days in Madrid.
He remembers the day he met José, 13 years ago, when he traveled to Miami for vacation.
"We started a long-distance relationship, no one knows if something like this is going to work, but a year later I found a job in his city and I moved," he says.
He feels that being here during the trial is the last thing he can do for Juni, as his family affectionately called her.
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