On September 20, 2023, a woman named Priscila went to the Civil Guard to report that her husband had just confessed to her that he had been hiding for two months the body of the elderly man whom they had been caring for for years.
She had done it, according to her testimony, after the man died unexpectedly in her husband's car after feeling unwell.
In addition, she told them where her husband and the victim's body could be.
There was no record of any disappearance in the old man's name.
A patrol went to a farm in Sotillo de la Adrada (Ávila) whose address the woman provided.
There, they found her husband, Jaime, whom they had to shine a flashlight on because it had already fallen into the night.
Nervous and with a broken voice, he explained to them that he had done “very bad things,” he stressed that he had hidden them from his wife and said that he wanted to commit suicide.
Jaime offered another version.
He explained to the agents that on July 12, when he was returning with the elderly man from the hospital, an argument had broken out between them; he had parked next to a gas station in Brunete (Madrid) and had suffocated him with the seat belt.
Later, he had hidden it in the basement of his family home in San Martín de Valdeiglesias (Madrid), where the old man also resided.
According to Jaime, that September 20 he had taken the body out, put it in a drum with lime, which he in turn placed in a white box and taken it to that farm, owned by a friend.
With daylight, the agents opened the drum and, sure enough, found the victim's body with the hospital bracelet still intact.
His name was Manuel and he was 90 years old when he died.
The wooden box in which the drum of lime in which Manuel's body was found was found.
There was a body and a culprit who had confessed.
The reason was missing.
Reviewing the old man's accounts, investigators discovered that the couple's house in San Martín de Valdeiglesias had been purchased with the deceased's money.
They claimed that he had donated it to them.
They also confirmed that in recent weeks there had been dozens of money withdrawals and they found 64,000 euros in 50-dollar bills in a box in the home. The couple had bought two cars in recent years.
In total, the Civil Guard believes that 500,000 euros of Manuel's assets went to the family who cared for him.
In addition, two of the couple's children had settled in a home that the old man had in the capital of Madrid, in the Carabanchel district.
The thing didn't end there.
There were things that didn't add up, such as the state of a corpse that should have been in an advanced state of decomposition if it had been hidden in a basement before being sprinkled with lime.
It was also strange that the man had suffocated the victim at a gas station in broad daylight, where anyone could see him.
It also didn't fit that the woman had not asked herself in two months where the old man she had been caring for for years could be.
The investigators from the homicide group continued the investigations to not leave any loose ends because, for them, there were.
So they checked her marriage's cell phones and found on hers some conversations with a woman who was in charge of cleaning tasks in her house that caught her attention.
“Don Manuel is not going to return home,” she tells him in an audio message on July 12 at ten in the morning.
That day, Priscila had slept in the hospital with the old man and in the morning, Jaime had gone to look for him because he was being discharged.
In that exchange, he asked her to empty the room of the old man's things.
The garage in San Martín de Valdeiglesias where Manuel's body was supposedly kept.
Another message that raised alarm bells was sent on September 19, in which Priscila told him to clean the kitchen, where they had done work.
The agents did not find any renovation in the house and suspect that the remains that the woman collected were from the construction of the box in which they placed the drum in which her body was.
The cleaner even helped the man carry it to the car, without imagining the macabre contents of it.
In addition, the agents gathered the testimony of a doctor who recalled that the old man had complained about his bad relationship with Priscila.
For all these reasons, on December 22, the woman was also arrested as an accomplice of her husband.
Her defense, exercised by Beatriz Uriarte, denies this possibility and argues that, without the complaint from her representative, it would not have been possible to find her body.
The man arrested for the crime, on the Ávila farm where he took the body.
The Civil Guard suspects that Manuel was murdered in Carabanchel's house shortly after leaving the clinic.
Traffic cameras indicate that Jaime's car was there on that date and the cleaner's testimony indicates that the man never returned to San Martín de Valdeiglesias alive.
Forensic tests also indicate that the deterioration of the body did not correspond to what would have been normal in the summer, which is why they point out that he was placed in the drum that was immediately left in the basement.
During the search of the home, criminalistics agents detected traces of lime inside a room closed with a padlock.
For investigators, this crime was a two-person affair.
The Civil Guard also inspected the house in Carabanchel, where they suspect the murder was committed and where the old man had lived with his sister, who died years ago.
The man never married nor had children or nephews.
In the police reports, the agents describe that the address “does not reflect the use during the years that Don Manuel lived there, more than 30, there being very few memories and personal effects that anyone can hoard throughout his life.” life".
In a drawer of that house, the agents found some papers with a handful of phones that they took, hoping to find someone to notify of the death.
Among the numbers were that of the painter, that of the blinds workshop and that of a funeral services company.
After several calls, they managed to find a distant relative who had no relationship with the deceased.
Someone who once knew Manuel.
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