Natalia Puga Pontevedra
Pontevedra
Updated Saturday, March 2, 2024-00:03
Galicia Arrested for the suitcase crime in Vigo, a man convicted of killing his grandmother and his girlfriend and who had been free for a year
Events The police identify the woman found in a suitcase in Vigo: she had been dead since last summer
José Manuel Durán González
was 30 years old when, in March 1988, he raped and killed his grandmother.
After being convicted and spending 15 years in a psychiatric hospital, he was released and, in December 2004, he killed his girlfriend and was imprisoned again.
He served a full sentence of 17 and a half years in prison and in February 2023 he was free again.
At 66 years old, and after half a life behind bars, he has just been arrested again as a suspect in what would be his third murder, the one known as the Vigo suitcase crime.
The three victims are women and he was in a relationship with all of them.
With her grandmother,
Celestina Dorrío
, 83 years old, who is related to her and, in addition, he had resided with her since he returned from Switzerland, where he had emigrated with her parents.
His second victim,
Alicia Rey
, 33, was a neighbor and they were a couple.
Her alleged third victim has not yet been fully identified, but it is known that she was a resident of Vigo between 40 and 50 years old with whom she lived in a boarding house and with whom, according to initial investigations, she had started a relationship. .
The three crimes follow a similar pattern and have a knife-type weapon in common.
He stabbed her grandmother 16 times in the chest and gouged out her eyes.
His girlfriend, two stab wounds.
The third investigation is not concluded, since the body was located on February 22 inside a suitcase in an advanced state of decomposition, but it is known that he received at least one stab wound.
Place where the suitcase with the body appeared in the area of Espedrigada Street.EUROPA PRESS
The man, whom those who know him describe as "cold" and "cruel", also repeated a pattern in that he remained at the crime scene after killing his victims.
He killed her grandmother, hid her in a block half naked and, until two neighbors found her, she remained in her family home.
He killed Alicia Rey in an open field, she left her body in the middle of the mountain and returned to her house, not far from her.
In this third case, he continued living in the same boarding house for months after killing her and leaving her body in a suitcase, half naked.
That suitcase was first in a doorway and then, for months, in a nearby field.
Known in his hometown, in A Lama (Pontevedra), as
O Chioleiro
, he spreads panic wherever he goes.
In his municipality, so much fear was generated when it was known a year ago that he was free that his updated image filled the WhatsApp groups and, as soon as they saw him reappear in the old family house that had been abandoned for years, they called the Civil Guard and He was arrested for violating a previous restraining order.
Panic among neighbors
His girlfriend and her grandmother were from this town;
Many residents of this town in the interior of Pontevedra suffered their threats;
and the second victim's family was also from there, so they could not settle there.
Yes, he had been living in the area for many years, since he served most of his 17 and a half year sentence in the provincial prison, located in this same town, just 2.5 kilometers from the town, but in those years they lived peacefully. because he was imprisoned.
Just before regaining freedom he had been changed prisons so that, when he got out, he would be far away.
But it didn't take him long to catch a bus and return.
When he was arrested and knew that he could not return there, he looked for other accommodations and in recent months there had been no public news of him.
However, as it was just learned, he had supposedly returned to his old ways.
The police investigation of the suitcase crime soon put investigators on his trail, albeit in secret and with an express warning from the judge not to disclose information.
Finally, after several leaks, he tried to flee and was located at the Pontevedra bus station mid-morning on Thursday.
He spent a day and a half in the cells of the Vigo Police Station and the Investigating Court number 4 of Vigo yesterday agreed to admit him to prison without bail.
He returned to A Lama, but to prison.
It means closing the circle of this murderer, who before the age of 30 had been arrested for raping his grandmother and had been admitted to psychiatric centers several times.
He lived in Switzerland with his parents but returned alone when he was young and in 1988 he was arrested for the rape and murder of his grandmother.
Years followed in the Fontnivel Penitentiary Psychiatric Hospital, in Alicante, in which they lived peacefully in A Lama, until he was free and it didn't take him a year and a half to kill Alicia Rey.
He was arrested days later, in January 2005, and convicted in 2006.
As was revealed in the trial held against him in 2006 in the Pontevedra Court, when he was arrested for this second murder, he asked two of the Civil Guard agents who were guarding him in the court cells how many years they could sentence him to. for this crime to find out if, at the end of his sentence, he could have time to end another person's life again.
O Chioleiro
always denied having made such a statement, but the agents did confirm it during the oral hearing.
In addition to sowing panic among the residents of A Lama, it also did so among the media.
During the time between his arrest and his sentence in 2006, he sent threatening letters to several journalists in the province of Pontevedra and to the prosecutor in the case,
Benito Montero
, now retired, who took the most serious of all those he issued to trial. .
The recipient was a media professional to whom he wrote that, as soon as she was released, he would wait for her after work and end her life.
He ended up sentenced with his consent to six months in prison for threats.