On the 18th of April, Cuban citizen Alexander Reyes, who was sentenced to 29 years in prison for the murder and illegal detention of businessman Raimundo Toledo, took his own life at the Topas penitentiary centre in Salamanca, almost eight and a half years after the incident in the south of Tenerife.
Toledo owned, among other businesses, the PCan gas station located near San Isidro, but on the road to El Médano. In December 2015, he was kidnapped near the door of his house in downtown Santa Cruz de Tenerife and taken to the south of the island.
He was beaten to death, and then the perpetrators placed the body in the trunk of his own car, a Honda CRV, which they set on fire and threw down a hillside of the Montaña de La Centinela, on the slope of San Miguel de Abona.
Alexander Reyes took his own life after attempting to slit Sandra Pentón’s throat, the Cuban woman sentenced to 26 years in prison for also being involved in Raimundo Toledo’s murder. Reyes and Pentón were in a romantic relationship before the businessman’s death and during their imprisonment.
The case was solved thanks to the intense coordinated work between the Team of Crimes against Persons of Guardia Civil and the National Police Homicide Unit.
One of the hypotheses is that Reyes, known for being very violent, according to sources, believed he had killed Sandra. This woman was even attributed with the intellectual authorship of Toledo’s violent death.
Why? Sandra was dating Carlos, a biological nephew of Raimundo, whom he protected and regularly provided financial support to, as he also participated in business ventures controlled by Toledo.
A company owned by Toledo managed to sell a plot of land to a franchise of a well-known fast-food chain in the La Jurada partial plan, very close to the South highway (TF-1) in 2015.
It appears that Pentón, through her relationship with Carlos Toledo, was aware of this real estate transaction. And, according to one of the hypotheses considered by the investigators of the case, Sandra contacted Alexander Reyes to involve him in Raimundo’s kidnapping, with the aim of obtaining a large ransom.
And Reyes sought an accomplice to assist him, of Latin American origin. These three individuals were convicted of the violent death of businessman Toledo.
Toledo’s body was found charred inside his own vehicle, on a road leading to the Montaña de La Centinela and towards Valle San Lorenzo.
On the 18th of April, Sandra Pentón sustained injuries, but they were not serious. However, “Alexander Reyes didn’t know this; he thought he had killed her,” explained lawyer Gisela García, who defended Reyes during the jury trial at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2019.
And shortly after, he hanged himself in a solitary confinement cell.
According to the lawyer, “he did not have mental health problems; I sincerely believe he was madly in love with Sandra.”
However, during the trial, Pentón tried to distance herself from Alexander’s actions, attempting to disassociate herself from the murder.
Allegedly, both Alexander Reyes and Sandra Pentón had requested a transfer to a different penitentiary to leave Topas.
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The only person who allegedly took the responsibility to visit Alexander Reyes in prison was a former lover who assisted him in any way she could.
