• Crime X-ray of Lardero's monster: extreme violence, sadism and... Why was he on the loose?
  • Events The murderer of the boy from Lardero, the most isolated prisoner in Spain a year after his crime

Francisco Javier Almeida was out of prison the day he killed nine-year-old Álex, against the criteria of the professionals who treated him inside the prison, who did not trust his reintegration or rehabilitation. The report prepared by the technicians of the prison of El Dueso (Cantabria) in February 2020 was clear: there was a risk of recidivism. This was reflected in a dossier known in part after the tragedy but whose textuality has had access, for the first time, EL MUNDO.

If the report prepared by a jurist, the psychologist, the educator and the social worker had been attended, the now known as Lardero's monster would not have been in third grade when he committed the crime on October 28, 2021, but Penitentiary Institutions, a department integrated into the Ministry of the Interior, ended up opting for the prisoner's side. who was not serving a sentence until 2023.

The specialists insisted on its dangerousness and bet on its continuity within the prison. They attribute to him, verbatim, "a medium-high prognosis of recidivism". And they expose their warning: "The seriousness and criminal recidivism motivate that there are not enough guarantees for the proper use of the regime of semi-liberty (third degree)."

The dossier was put to a vote among the nine members that make up the prison's treatment board. Six voted against Almeida's departure and three validated his partial freedom. As it was not a unanimous decision, the inmate appealed to the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions, which decided to grant him the third degree because, objectively, Almeida had the legislation on his side: 23 years in prison, good behavior, 38 permits enjoyed without incident and excellent disposition in prison life.

His record was not well calibrated, which gave meaning to the content of the report that advised against the third degree: a conviction in 1993 for raping and attempting to strangle a 13-year-old girl and the murder of a 26-year-old woman in 1998, recently released from prison. The technicians recalled it in the section entitled "Evaluation of alternatives and motivation of the proposal": "Inmate serving a sentence for sexual assault (recidivist) and murder (treachery)". They then recount their conduct in prison and make their observation: "Good behavior and proper enjoyment of permits. However, seriousness and repeated criminal offences mean that there are insufficient guarantees for the proper use of semi-liberty'.

Francisco Javier Almeida, during the trial. RAQUEL MANZANARESEFE

After the approval of Penitentiary Institutions in February 2020, Almeida was transferred from the Cantabrian prison to the Logroño prison. It was March 2020. His was a third degree with restrictions far removed from the standard technique. He could not go out on weekends and had to stay in the Social Insertion Center. The confinement imposed by Covid-19 on March 16, 2020 played in Almeida's favor since, in general, it was ordered that all inmates in the third degree would not return to prisons.

On April 8 of that year, he agreed to conditional release after the judge of Penitentiary Surveillance of Logroño agreed to it and the Prosecutor's Office did not object. He settled in the new area of Lardero (La Rioja), where Alex lived with his family. Until that time, the prison system had always been cautious of him.

Francisco Javier Almeida was able to access the third degree in 2017, having already served three quarters of the sentence that the Court of La Rioja imposed on him for murdering with treachery the employee of a real estate company in 1998. He also had good behavior. But he ran into the criteria against the treatment board of the El Dueso prison. The committee did not see clear his transition to freedom. The follow-up offered no guarantees and those doubts of the professionals about returning him to the street made the prison delay his release by three years.

During the trial, the different professionals who have taken the stand have woven a profile of Almeida that allows him to approach the qualification of monster. Especially heartbreaking was the testimony of the agent who instructed the proceedings, who detailed that the marks presented by Alex were "of extreme violence". The child, he added, had bruises on his mouth, upper gum and inner lip, marks of "high violence." He also had in the neck, the result of a suffocation caused from behind, with his arm, raising it even upwards. Something that made the child "at all" have a means of defense. The coroners pronounced themselves in the same sense. They stated that the child died of asphyxiation after an assault exercised with extreme violence and brutality.

Doctors who studied his mind concluded last summer that Almeida is able to distinguish between good and evil, that he knew what he was doing and that he has zero regrets. "We can conclude that there is no psychiatric diagnosis or psychopathological alteration," the forensics said.

Last session of the trial and jury deliberation

Francisco Javier Almeida faces the request for permanent prison reviewable for a crime of murder; and 15 years in prison for a crime of sexual assault, both in the crime of Alex. Today is the last session of the trial and it will be then that the president of the jury delivers to the people's court the object of the verdict so that its members retire to deliberate. In his statement at the trial, the only one since he killed the child on October 28, 2021, Almeida assured that it was not his "intention to assault and kill him" and even went so far as to allege that Alex did everything "voluntarily". His attempt to attenuate the facts by attributing his behavior to alcohol consumption was dismantled.

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  • Lardero
  • La Rioja
  • Ministry of Defence
  • Coronavirus
  • Logroño
  • Ministry of the Interior
  • THE WORLD
  • Cantabria
  • Justice
  • Reviewable permanent imprisonment