• A 29-year-old man kills his 53-year-old father after a family quarrel
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The mistreatment of his father led José Mateo – Keko to his entourage – to several juvenile centers during his adolescence and even earned him an incommunicado and 200-meter separation order from his father that ended in June 2015. That protection also included his mother, Justa. Keko, now 31, was arrested on October 21, 2021 for stabbing his father to death in his home in Casas del Río (Murcia) and since last Tuesday he has been sitting before a jury court.

After the crime, he waited for the Civil Guard in the same house where he had committed the crime, eating a hamburger; the one that moments before his mother prepared in the kitchen with the screams (something usual in the family home) between father and son. Keko was facing a request for a sentence of 14 years by the Prosecutor's Office that will finally be reduced by the confession in the first session of the hearing, which began last Tuesday. He acknowledged that he committed the crime but blamed it on the alleged mistreatment to which his father subjected his mother for as long as he could remember. However, both the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Civil Guard investigators who investigated the case maintain that the crime was triggered by the fact that the deceased, José Miguel, asked his son to look for a job in the face of his constant refusals.

Keko, in her statement, assured the people's court that her father beat her mother, Justa, "all her life" and that, by killing him, she would no longer have to "suffer anymore". The confessed murderer - who during his childhood was diagnosed with a hyperactivity disorder and was recognized as having a 33% disability, which meant he was on the radar of Social Services for a long time - abounded in his relationships with his father and detailed that they were always disastrous. They were, he said, "bad as always." That day, she insisted, "he started insulting me and my mother and I defended myself." The Prosecutor's Office points in another direction. When José Mateo and José Miguel got into the argument, Justa was in the kitchen making dinner. At one point, Mateo pounced on his father on the couch and began stabbing him all over his body: neck, chest, and limbs. Up to 14 stab wounds were counted by forensics. "The accused, who was sitting on a sofa next to his father, waiting for his mother to finish dinner, with the intention of ending his life, pounced on his father, lifted him from the sofa, they struggled, and when he pushed him against the wall, he stabbed him several times in the neck with the knife with a 12-centimeter blade, that he was wearing in his trousers", specifies the brief of the Public Prosecutor's Office.

Noticing what was happening in the living room, Justa ran to ask for help from the person closest to her: her neighbors. Ana Maria, one of them, called the emergency services. "You've killed him, executioner, you've killed him," Justa shouted, as stated in the provisional document of the facts of the Public Prosecutor's Office. Meanwhile, Keko grabbed one of her mother's burgers and ate it right there. "Do you see how I killed him in the end?" he said to his mother. Afterwards, he went to his uncle's house (which was across the street from his), only to return a few minutes later and finish eating the hamburger. Then, according to the Prosecutor's Office, he snapped at the woman: "You're still crying, aren't you glad I killed him?"

Keko waited for the Civil Guard to arrive, as he had gone to his uncle's house to notify the agents and arrest him. The members of the Armed Institute found him in the house and, as stated in the proceedings, he urged them, without resistance, to "put the handcuffs on him" because he had killed his father. An ambulance from the Mula Emergency Service was also mobilized, whose health workers could only confirm that the man was dead. The tense family atmosphere had been going on for a long time. Mateo's refusal to look for work and the fact that José Miguel sometimes referred to him as "maintained" made matters worse. This was explained by both Justa and one of Keko's brothers in the second session of the hearing. The woman gave a good account of the bad father-son relationship and Keko's attitude. "Everything happened. He's never wanted to work," he told jurors. Later, another of his sons explained that his father called Keko "maintained" and that it infuriated him. The young man's defense made an X-ray for the Chamber of the family situation at Keko's house. The lawyer stated that his client grew up in a "broken" family, with a "difficult" economic situation and without resources. Today the jury will have the object of the verdict.

  • Guardia Civil
  • Murcia
  • Justice