The late night of April 27, girls Olivia and Anna they were killed by their father, Thomas Gimeno, according to investigation carried out by agents of the Civil Guard Tenerife and the Central Operating Unit (UCO). Then, he threw them into the sea, according to the main hypothesis of the case. It is a double sexist crime in which the murderer takes revenge on his wife, Beatriz Zimmerman, the girls’ mother, for having left him and having started a new life with another man.
Six months after the events, it is still not known how Gimeno killed his daughters
The order of the judge explains it thus, Gimeno wanted “presumably to kill them in a planned and premeditated way in order to cause inhuman pain to your ex partner, to which deliberately He sought to leave in the uncertainty about the fate that his daughters had suffered by hiding their bodies, after killing them, at the bottom of the sea, choosing places far from the coast and deep, where I thought they would never be found“.
The main unknown in the investigation is to discover how Gimeno killed his daughters. Investigators found no traces of blood on the farm, the place of the crime according to the judge, or in the car in which they transported their bodies to the port. The definitive results of the autopsy performed on Olivia, although a preliminary report found a pulmonary edema on the girl’s body. Investigators believe their father strangled them, but it is not yet known whether he gave them pills earlier to reduce their stamina, especially that of the older girl.
The body of the little girl, Anna, one year old, nor that of Gimeno has not been found, the kidnapper and murderer. The Civil Guard and the judge maintain that Gimeno also threw Anna’s body into the sea and then committed suicide.
The investigation has allowed us to reconstruct a good part of what happened. These are the certainties, what we know of the kidnapping of Anna and Olivia by their father:
- The body of the oldest girl, Olivia, aged six, was found on June 10 at a depth of 1,000 meters, three miles from the coast and inside a big tennis bag. Next to her was another empty and torn bag in which the investigators and the judge believe that the body of the little girl, Anna, who had not yet turned two years old, was. There is no trace of the father’s body, although the oxygen bottle he used to dive was also found underwater. The almost unique hypothesis is that he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea.
It is proven that the afternoon of the crime Tomás Gimeno picked up his two daughters at five in the afternoon and had to return them to their mother at nine in the evening. At 7:47 p.m., the man ordered his eldest daughter, Olivia, to send a WhatsApp audio to the mother. It was the last time that Beatriz went to hear one of her daughters. In the message, Olivia asked him to come pick them up at nine o’clock at night and then take some pictures with him. The mother arrives at the house shortly after nine o’clock and there is no one there: then she calls Tomás and he tells her that they are having dinner and that he will take the girls an hour later, around ten o’clock.
The two murders had to take place after that message and before five past nine, when Tomás Gimeno leaves driving his Audi A3 car from his home and heads to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. There he arrives at 9:13, stops at his father’s house and leaves his dog, Otto, in addition to two credit cards with his keys and two sets of keys to his last car, a black Alfa Romeo.
At 9:27 p.m., Tomás Gimeno arrives in his car at the port of La Marina, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The security guard opens the door for him and sees him unload several packages on his boat before heading out to sea at 9:40 p.m. There is no sign of Anna and Olivia, they go inside two big tennis bags. The preliminary autopsy on Olivia’s body indicates that she has no water in her lungs, which shows that she was thrown dead into the sea.
Between 9:51 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tomás Gimeno talks with his ex-partner Beatriz and tells her that he is away from the island and that she will not see her daughters again. He announces that they are going to start a new life. The woman then goes to the Civil Guard post and an agent even talks to Gimeno on the phone and tries to convince him to turn himself in.
Around 10:30 p.m. Tomás Gimeno is already with his boat and the two bodies of his daughters far from the coast. There he throws Olivia’s body and, presumably, that of his other daughter, Anna. The two were tied by an anchor using a chain and a rope, both bags are at the bottom of the sea at coordinates 28.4590.-16.2063
- Tomás Gimeno calls his ex-partner at 10:40 p.m. and announces that he cannot allow his daughters to grow up without him. Your mobile runs out of battery and returns to the port
When he is coming ashore, a Maritime Service patrol boat intercepts him. It is 11:21 pm and Gimeno has skipped the current curfew due to the coronavirus. The sports bags and the anchor are no longer in the boat. They take your data and propose you to be fined. Gimeno apologizes and goes down to port. Buy tobacco, a bottle of water and a mobile charger. Then, at 00.27, goes out to sea again. It will not return.
Between 1.30 and 2.11, Gimeno speaks three times more with the girls’ mother and says goodbye to her again. He also sends messages to family and friends in which he leaves various material belongings, such as a motorcycle, his quad and the boat itself. At 2.05 o’clock he writes to his father and tells him that he is sorry, but that at last “I’ll be fine.”
- Gimeno’s boat is located in the sea, adrift, at 17.37 hours on April 28. The lifeless body of her daughter Olivia, after a titanic search, was found 43 days later.
