- Investigation: The Civil Guard attributed the crime of Sheila Barrero 15 years ago to the ex-boyfriend
In 2007, three years after the murder of the young Sheila Barrero , the City Council of Degaña ( Asturias ) determined that all January 25 would be an official day of mourning in the sine die town until the murder of her neighbor was resolved. Everything indicates that the flags will fly at half-mast that day for a long time, since on January 28, shortly after the 16th anniversary of the crime, the Justice decided to file the case for the second time.
The case had already been closed in May 2008 by the Provincial Court of Oviedo , which considered that there was insufficient evidence to maintain the accusation against Borja V. , the only suspect.
The Civil Guard managed to reopen the procedure in 2015 alleging that advances in forensic technologies could provide new evidence, always pointing to the aforementioned Borja as the alleged perpetrator of the crime.
"There are currently no evidence, including evidence, that in an objective and reasonable way allow the case to be directed against a specific person or persons," he concludes in Court of Instruction No. 1 of Cangas del Narcea in the dismissal order.
"We are very sad because we believe there is enough evidence against him, the Civil Guard reports are overwhelming, leave no doubt and all we ask is that these tests be assessed in a trial," replies Julia Fernández , the mother of Sheila, convinced that Borja was the person who shot her daughter in the neck. For the mother, the judicial verdict is as if she was told that her daughter was not killed by anyone.
Sheila Lorena Barrero Fernández was 22 years old. She was a graduate in Tourism and lived in Gijón , where she worked in a travel agency. On weekends, however, he spent them with his family in Degaña and took the opportunity to work, Friday and Saturday, in a pub in the neighboring town of Villablino , 23 kilometers away, but already in the province of León .
The facts
That Saturday Sheila entered the pub at 00:30 hours, that is, just started on Sunday, January 25, 2004. She would be behind the bar until closing, at 07.00 hours. His car, a white Peugot 206 , was in the workshop, so he had planned to sleep at the home of his brother Elias , who lived in Villablino himself. Around 02.00, however, the mechanic took the keys to the pub: the vehicle was fixed.
Sheila finished working, took something with her colleagues and about 08.00 got into her car in the direction of Degaña. He did not tell his brother that he would not sleep at home and did not notify his parents of the change.
Around 12.00 on Sunday, his brother Elias arrived at the family home in Degaña with his wife and daughter for Sunday lunch.
- And where is Sheila ?, asked the mother, Julia, just open the door.
- But he didn't come, mom?
- Do not.
-When coming here I saw a car similar to Sheila's in the area of Alto de la Collada. I will look to see if it is yours.
"And of course, at the moment, my child is calling me with a heartbreaking voice ...", says Julia Fernández. "My son thought I was asleep there, because I was placed in his seat, with his hands on his lap and everything."
The reconstruction of what happened to the Civil Guard concluded that Sheila stopped her vehicle on the side of the road, halfway between Villablino and Degaña, at the height of a recreational area. Someone got into the car, sat in the back seats and shot him in the neck with a very small caliber weapon. The bullet, 6.35 millimeters, came out from his forehead at eyebrow height.
The assassin moved Sheila's body to the passenger seat, placed himself in the driver's place and moved the vehicle to a less visible place, about 50 meters inside the service area. Once there, he put Sheila's body back in the driver's place.
"With the soles of your feet perfectly seated on the ground, with your hands crossed on top of each other and on your lap, and with your clothes perfectly aligned." Thus he describes in the provisional file of the case the thoroughness of the murderer.
Tests
Of everything collected in the five eye inspections that were carried out on the vehicle, two elements focused the interest of the investigation: the small bullet bushing and a blue colored fiber found in the rear seats, specifically on a black scarf that belonged to Sheila
The young woman's environment was studied and six men were summoned to undergo a test to look for shot residue in their hands and clothes. Among them was Borja V. The young man, 19 years old at the time, had maintained with Sheila a relationship described in the car as a "weekend roll" between October and November 2003.
It was Borja, as several people declared, who ended the relationship and, although they maintained telephone contact until December 17, 2003 - a month before the murder -, in the judicial brief it is stressed that the calls and SMS after the rupture always left Sheila "without getting a response from Borja, except for an SMS that he sent on December 8".
The examination of the remains of gunpowder was carried out 33 hours after the crime. In the experts' opinion, the optimum would have been to do it in the first three or four hours after the shot. Particles compatible with shot residues were found in three of the six men analyzed. Among them, Borja V., who claimed that he had been hunting nine days before the murder.
Two particles found in Borja's right hand were examined with special zeal, whose composition, according to the experts consulted during the investigation, coincided with those detected in the bullet shell found in the car and were not common in hunting weapons. But several of the experts did not rule out that the waste could have reached Borja's hand transferred from another surface.
Then there was the blue fiber, the same color as the jacket that Borja provided to the Civil Guard when he was asked to deliver the clothes he was wearing that day. After the reopening of the case in 2015, the garment and the fiber were sent to a specialized laboratory, capable of analyzing the number of washes to know if both corresponded to the same fabric.
Inconclusive tests
The final report, according to the court decision, did not provide relevant data. And even if he had shown that the fiber belonged to the jacket, it would not have been conclusive for the investigating judge.
"The presence of a fiber of the jacket of the investigated on a scarf deposited in the rear seats of the vehicle does not allow to place it between 08.15 and 10.00 hours in the young woman's vehicle, since, according to several witnesses, she had been several times inside the same one, being able to have deposited the fiber in any of those previous occasions ", reads in the car.
He adds the resolution that Borja's alibi - who said he had spent that night at home with his parents and this was endorsed - "remains in force" and that "there is no witness to place him outside the family home at the time of the crime ".
Nor have the victim's biological traces been found, the judge concludes, in Borja's clothing, although, "according to the reconstruction report of the UCO [ Central Guard Unit of the Civil Guard], the author had moved the body of the victim".
"It is not that we want to accuse Borja V., God set me free. We rely on the evidence of the Civil Guard, not on hypotheses or on what we can think," says Sheila's mother, convinced that Justice errs .
"The evidence says that there is detonation gas in Borja's hand, which fired," he says.
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