It had been at least a month since the three brothers who always went everywhere together had not been seen in the town.
Ángeles GA, Pepe GA, and Amelia GA, between 68 and 72 years old, had many friends in their town, Morata de Tajuña (Madrid), but in recent years, something had distanced them from almost all of them.
They had become increasingly closed to a reality that only the sisters seemed to understand, according to neighbors and relatives.
Many of them explain that, for years, they had been asked for large amounts of money almost obsessively.
3,000 euros.
15,000 euros.
To some, they explained that they needed money to complete the procedures to collect an inheritance in the United States.
But it had been a long time since they had asked anyone for anything.
They had not been seen in the usual places since at least early December.
On Thursday, after obtaining an entry permit from the court, the Civil Guard entered his two-story, exposed brick house to discover the three semi-burned bodies.
Together, as they were always seen around town.
The three brothers, single and without children, had lived for years in Morata de Tajuña (Madrid), the town that knew them and that has now decreed three days of mourning, although they were originally from Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real).
They had also had an apartment in the capital of Madrid and another in a coastal municipality.
Pepe, who spent his mornings at the senior center and enjoyed Real Madrid games at the bar, had a disability and was under the tutelage of Amelia, the most “forward” sister, as those who knew her define her.
Ángeles had worked as a teacher and Amelia had worked in the antique dealer business.
They liked to “eat out there”, take short trips and music, as one of them even sang in the choir of a church in the town.
They also liked Facebook.
The publications of the two sisters on this social network are constant and numerous.
One day, about seven years ago, Amelia told Enrique Velilla, one of those former close friends from whom they had distanced themselves in recent times, that she and Ángeles had met two men through this social network and that they had started a relationship. relationship.
To him, like many others, it sounded strange to hear that those two mysterious men were two soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, one of them named Edward.
They were even more surprised to learn that, a few weeks into the romance, they had begun sending them money under the pretext that they needed it to help them collect an inheritance.
Members of the Civil Guard, in the house of the three murdered brothers.
SERGIO PEREZ (EFE)
“We warned them many times that it was a hoax, we showed them news about love scams, but they said no, that what they had was real,” says Velilla.
“He even showed me a message that he said Pedro Sánchez had sent him, with spelling mistakes and everything,” he adds.
This former friend, owner of one of those hair salons that all the ladies in the neighborhood pass by, assures that they were leaving aside all those who tried to warn them of the danger.
“They went from leading a good life to not going out, they were left without money.
Every time they received the pension, they sent it to these scammers,” he says.
While he is telling this, the criminalistics service of the Civil Guard is collecting evidence in the house where he visited so many times, now converted into the scene of a crime.
The house, spacious and surrounded by a white wall, has a beautiful patio full of flowers, garden figures and posters of the Virgin Mary, which Amelia often boasted about on her social networks.
But on her Facebook page, you can also see several messages from men's accounts in which they flatter them and ask for friendship.
These messages follow the typical scheme of so-called love scammers, criminals many kilometers away who look for vulnerable victims to deceive into money under some pretext.
In the images that the sisters published, there are two photos of two gray-haired men, who were supposedly their partners.
Amelia even put the image of what she believed to be her long-distance love as her profile photo.
By entering this snapshot into a search engine, she can see that it actually belongs to Wesley Kanne Clark, “a retired general in the United States Army.
NATO Commander during the Kosovo War.
Ángeles also boasted about her supposed boyfriend with a photo that actually belongs to an American politician of Cuban origin named Mario Guerra.
These men have nothing to do with the relationships that Amelia and Ángeles believed they had.
These types of scammers also often use random photos they find on websites, knowing that their victims rarely have enough knowledge to identify the lie.
The three victims of Morata de Tajuña.
Velilla says that they sold their apartment in Madrid a little over a year ago and that they even “rented a room” in the house to a man a few months ago, with whom they ended up having a confrontation “with hammer blows” in which the police had to intervene. Civil Guard.
After that, the brothers changed the locks on their house.
“The man demanded 60,000 euros from them,” he recalls.
This seems to have been one of the sisters' attempts to get some money, because in the town there are numerous testimonies that reflect their almost compulsive activity to get cash.
Mari, another friend who looks in amazement at the funeral home vans waiting to take away the bodies, recounts how the sisters asked her for 3,000 euros on several occasions.
She tried to minimize these demands in the eyes of her family, but her husband eventually found out about her and argued with Amelia.
He “told her not to come home.
I never gave him anything, but I did show him news about a case of deceived women.
If someone had helped them, this could have been avoided.
The media has to report more on this,” Mari is sad.
A few steps away, another neighbor named Ángeles shows some messages from Amelia, from December 2020, in which she gives her condolences for the death of her mother, which had happened six months ago.
In that exchange, Amelia suggested having coffee the next day because she wanted to “ask him for a favor.”
The next morning, they sat at a table and the younger sister explained that they had received an inheritance from the United States, but that they needed 15,000 euros to complete the procedures or they would lose it.
“She promised me that, as soon as she got paid, she would return 30,000 to me for being me.
But I barely knew them, I was very surprised,” this woman remembers.
The investigation will now delve into the accounts of these three brothers, the people from whom they had asked for money and their relationships on social networks, to find the author or authors of this triple homicide, but the hypothesis of settling scores is what takes charge. more strength.
This crime is reminiscent of the one described by Fernando Fernán Gómez in
The Strange Journey
.
Three brothers, who end up living almost isolated in a town and who die together in a disturbing way.
His friend Enrique Velilla remembers that this year he did not get to congratulate Amelia's birthday on December 3, the anniversary date they shared.
The autopsy may shed more light on the circumstances and date of death, but the fact that the bodies are semi-calcined will complicate this task.
At the hairdresser's, a few days ago, they talked about the brothers and they were surprised that they hadn't seen them for so long, but many thought that they had gone on a Christmas trip.
Although they had already embarked on another journey.
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