• Events X-ray of Lardero's monster: extreme violence, sadism and... Why was he on the loose?

The jury that tried Francisco Javier Almeida for the crime of the child from Lardero has found him guilty. This has been estimated by the nine members of the jury unanimously, who have made public their verdict this Thursday, in the Provincial Court of Logroño, after two days of deliberations.

After the verdict, the case is awaiting the sentence imposed by the presiding judge according to the opinions of the jury. Both the Prosecutor's Office and the private and popular prosecution requested, in their final conclusions, that he be sentenced to permanent prison reviewable and 15 years in prison for the crimes of murder of a minor and sexual assault, respectively.

It will be the third conviction for Almeida, 55, for similar crimes, since he was already sentenced in 1993 to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor. Upon his release from prison, in 1998 he reoffended and raped and murdered in Logroño a 26-year-old real estate agent with whom he had met to show him a flat.

For this crime and sexual assault he was sentenced to a total of 30 years. He served 21 years of sentence and went out again on the street in April 2020, after Penitentiary Institutions, despite the unfavorable report issued by the Treatment Board of the prison in which he was -El Dueso, in Santoña (Cantabria)-, decided to grant him the third degree.

Almeida was released on parole and settled – in a rented apartment and next to a park and a school – in Lardero (Logroño), a town where, on October 28, 2021, he committed the acts for which he has now been tried. That afternoon/night, nine-year-old Alex celebrated Halloween disguised as the exorcist's girl in Entre Ríos Park while his parents dined at a nearby picnic area. Almeida took the boy from the park. A four-year-old girl playing with him alerted her parents and gave directions about the man she had left with. Although the family and the police services quickly activated their search, when the agents went to Almeida's building, he was already going down the stairs with the dead child in his arms.

"Have no doubt that this individual, the moment he sets foot on the street again, is going to do it again. For Alex and for all the victims of this barbarian, this heartless, this ruthless being, I ask you please, forcefully, that guilty verdict, "asked the jury the lawyer of the prosecution, Alicia Redondo, in her last intervention, in which she defined Almeida as "the vilest personification of evils" and "a sexual predator who satisfies his most disgusting desires."

The prosecutor, Enrique Stern, for his part, described him as a man of "extreme cold blood." "These days that we have been seeing some horrible photographs, that we have been listening to the father, that even the psychologist burst into tears ... Have you ever seen any pitiful gesture from Mr. Almeida? Have you ever been seen sad? Have you noticed that you had any anguish about what we were seeing in the photographs? Have you seen any gesture of empathy with respect to parents?" he said of his lack of affectation.

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  • Articles Ana María Ortiz
  • HBPR