Ramón Santiago, one of the four murderers and rapists of the young woman from Getafe Sandra Palo, who was killed at the age of 22 in 2003, has returned to prison.
The National Police arrested him on January 19 along with eight other people, three women and five men, for the kidnapping of two men in Madrid within the framework of Operation Maverik.
They set a trap for the victims, relatives of each other, to kidnap them and ask their relatives for a ransom and they were taken to a squat house in the San Blas district.
Those arrested are charged with the crimes of kidnapping, injuries and robbery with violence and intimidation, and three of them, as confirmed to this newspaper by a police spokesperson, have been imprisoned.
One is Santiago, alias
El Ramón.
The two men had been tricked into an appointment to buy a second-hand vehicle when they were threatened by this gang with a firearm and forced into another car.
In addition to kidnapping them, they stole the money they had with them to purchase the car, as well as the vehicle with which they had traveled to the meeting place set for the sale.
The investigation, as detailed by the police in a note, began on January 17, after receiving a complaint from the victims' relatives that they were being extorted and had two relatives detained.
The kidnappers had contacted them to demand payment of money in exchange for the release of their relatives.
The relatives had already made a first payment to the gang, of an amount that the police have not specified, when they demanded a second ransom that has not been specified by the agents either.
There, they decided to go to the Carabanchel police station and report the case.
The investigators found a possible location of those involved: an abandoned and squatted building in the capital, “which made police work extremely difficult.”
This building is located at number 3 Lola Flores Street, in the San Blas-Canillejas district.
After several communications between the kidnappers and the victims' family to agree on the ransom, on January 19 the agents set up "a device for the release of the victims and for the arrest of those involved in the kidnapping."
The operation, called Maverik and which remains open, resulted in the arrest of eight people in the vicinity of Lola Flores Street - three of them aboard their victims' own car - who are accused of the crimes of kidnapping, injuries and robbery with violence and intimidation.
Four days later, a ninth person allegedly involved in the events was arrested.
In total, there are three women and six men, of which half a dozen are Spanish, two Colombian and one Peruvian, who is also a minor.
Adults are between 23 and 62 years old.
“All of them have prior records,” notes the spokesperson, who does not specify for what crimes or how many there are.
The Special Operations Group (GEO) intervened to access the interior of the occupied building, where the kidnapped people were located and released “immediately and in apparent good health.”
During the search, more than 16,000 euros in cash were seized from the gang – “part of the money initially given by the family” –, a repeating shotgun and two vehicles.
After the arrestees were brought to justice, three of those involved were immediately placed in preventive detention, including Santiago, who has been in the Soto del Real prison (Madrid V) since January 22.
The 'Sandra Palo' case
This man, who is now 37 years old, was responsible for the murder of Sandra Palo along with three other men.
At the time of the crime, on May 17, 2003, they were between 14 and 18 years old and were already expert hitmen (criminals who rob stores by crashing a car into the window).
Ramón had
17 years old, like José Ramón Manzano Manzano,
Ramoncín.
The youngest of all was Rafael García Fernández,
El Rafita
,
and the only one of legal age was Francisco Javier Astorga Luque, nicknamed
El Malaguita
.
The young people were in a car when they saw the girl, who had a mild mental disability, in Plaza Elíptica in the capital waiting with her ex-boyfriend for the bus to return to her home in Getafe.
They put them both in her car and, after getting rid of her ex-boyfriend, they took her to a field near Leganés, next to the Toledo highway (N-401), where they raped her.
To prevent her from blaming them, they decided to kill her and ran her over up to seven times.
The young woman was left badly injured and unconscious.
To erase her traces, they burned her while she was still alive and the serious injuries she suffered eventually killed her.
Her car was also set on fire in Valdemingómez.
The only adult was sentenced to 64 years in prison for one crime of illegal detention, three of rape and one of murder.
The two 17-year-olds were sentenced to serve 17 years in prison and the 14-year-old was sentenced to four.
Ramón Santiago served his sentence from October 2003 to 2012 - first in a juvenile center and at the age of 23 he was transferred to the Estremera prison to finish his sentence - and, upon his release, he continued committing crimes.
He has more than 20 backgrounds and has become a rap-trap singer with the nickname Zuni, with songs about robberies and murders.
His last arrest until this time was in the summer of 2022, when the now rapper was arrested for spraying a man with a fire extinguisher to steal 6,000 euros from him.