The late night of April 27, girls Olivia and Anna they were killed by their father, Thomas Gimeno, according to research carried out by agents of the Civil Guard of Tenerife and the Central Operational Unit (UCO). Then, he threw them into the sea, according to the main hypothesis of the case, a hypothesis that was established when the body of Olivia, the oldest of the little ones, was found at the bottom of the sea. Olivia, according to the autopsy, died of mechanical asphyxiation, that is, that she was suffocated or strangled. It is a double sexist crime and a case of vicarious violence, in which the murderer takes revenge on his wife, Beatriz Zimmerman, the girls’ mother, for leaving him and starting a new life with another man. Zimmerman has complained that Anna and Olivia were unprotected by the monstrosity of the father and advocates that children have defense tools in situations like the one she and her daughters had to endure.
The judge’s order explains it this way: Gimeno wanted “allegedly to kill them in a planned and premeditated manner in order to cause inhuman pain to his ex-partner, to which deliberately sought to leave in 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“.
Six months after the events, it is still not known how Gimeno killed his daughters
The main unknown of the investigation is to discover how Gimeno killed his daughters. The investigators did not find traces of blood on the farm, the place of the crime according to the judge, nor in the car in which they moved their bodies to the port. They are not known final results of the autopsy performed on Olivia, although a preliminary report found a pulmonary edema on the girl’s body. Investigators believe that their father strangled them, but it is not yet known if he gave them pills beforehand to reduce their resistance, especially that of the older girl.
The body of the little girl, Anna, one year old, and that of Gimeno, have 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 made it possible to reconstruct a good part of what happened. These are the certainties, what we know about the kidnapping of Anna and Olivia by their father:
- The body of the oldest girl, Olivia, six years old, was found on June 10 at a depth of about a thousand meters, three miles from the coast and within a large tennis bag. Next to her was another empty and torn bag in which the investigators and the judge believe the body of the little girl, Anna, who had not yet turned two, 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.
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It is proven that On 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 at night.. 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 Beatriz went to hear one of her daughters. In the message, Olivia asked him to come look for them at nine o’clock at night and then take some paintings with him. The mother arrives at the house shortly after nine o’clock and no one is 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.
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The two murders had to take place after that message and before five past nine, when Tomás Gimeno drives his Audi A3 car from his house and heads to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He arrives there at 9:13, stops at his father’s house and drops off his dog, Otto, as well as two credit cards with their keys and two sets of keys to his latest car, a black Alfa Romeo.
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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 various packages on his boat before going out to sea at 9:40 p.m. There is no trace of Anna and Olivia, who are inside two large tennis bags.. The preliminary autopsy of Olivia’s body indicates that she has no water in her lungs, which shows that she was thrown into the sea already dead.
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Between 9:51 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tomás Gimeno talks to his ex-partner Beatriz and informs her that he is off 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.
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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 dumps Olivia’s body and, presumably, that of her other daughter, Anna. The two were tied to an anchor by means of a chain and a rope, both bags remain 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. His mobile runs out of battery and returns to the port
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When he is reaching land, a patrol boat from the Maritime Service intercepts him. It’s 11:21 p.m. 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 the port. Buy tobacco, a bottle of water and a mobile charger. Then, at 00.27, goes out to sea again. It will not return.
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Between 1:30 and 2:11, Gimeno speaks three times more with the mother of the girls and returns to say goodbye to her. 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 he writes to his father and tells him that he is sorry, but that at last “I will be fine”.
- Gimeno’s boat is located in the sea, adrift, at 5:37 p.m. on April 28. The lifeless body of his daughter Olivia, after a titanic search, was found 43 days later.
