Inspector Antonio Roldán, head of the Homicide Group of the National Police, when the body of the murdered woman appeared in the Padrón pension, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, assured this Wednesday at third trial session that the accused today, José Antonio Luis Aguiar, did not collaborate with the agents during the investigation process and instead he dedicated himself to articulating his alibis based on the information that the officials transmitted to him when they asked him questions about the case. The aforementioned police command clarified that the person involved was smart enough to detect where the police wanted to go and was always looking for an explanation to avoid his participation in the death and concealment of the corpse of Adoración de la Cruz.
But, on one occasion, he was careless when speaking. The sole suspect of the violent death of the woman He pointed out that the last time he saw her was when she was going to live with an ex-boyfriend. And that she accompanied her to a supermarket of a well-known food chain located on Benito Pérez Armas Avenue, in front of Los Gladiolos. Although the agents had not mentioned to him where they had found Adoración’s skeletal remains, José Antonio affirmed that from the pension he took “a rucksack”. And, until then, only bags or suitcases had been discussed. This expression was followed by a few moments of doubt and silence, as Luis Aguiar was aware that he had said something that was not convenient for him. But, seconds later, he continued his story.
Inspector Roldán made a lengthy statement in the face of numerous questions asked by the prosecutor, José Miguel Castellón, during the third session of the trial. This command of the National Police admitted that, after the complaint made by the victim’s daughter (four years after Adoración died), they considered three possibilities: that she had been captured by a sect, her admission to a drug detoxification center and that He would have died and his body would not have been found.
Based on the data collected, the victim served about three years of imprisonment for drug trafficking and was released from prison on June 19, 2009 and, three days later, it was the last time he took money from his bank account, in which he entered two Social Security pensions. Four years later, when the daughter’s complaint was formalized, there were some 32,000 euros accumulated in said account. Luis Aguiar’s criminal record included the assault on Adoración, for which he served a prison sentence between 2006 and 2009. However, in the early stages of the investigation, the accused today was considered a witness to the event.
According to Roldán, before entering Tenerife II and in the three years that coincided in the penitentiary center, both maintained their sentimental relationship. This is how the nearly 50 meetings would prove it vis to vis that they developed in prison. This approach was confirmed by up to three prison officials. One of the workers at the center clarified that, according to Adoración and the reports on her, she had the intention of marrying Luis Aguiar once she was released from the prison.
In fact, the couple asked the Prison Surveillance judge to suspend the restraining order that weighed on José Antonio to be able to have intimate encounters once both were in the prison. The police command also confirmed that, during the investigations into José Antonio, it was detected that Adoración made a total transfer of more than 7,200 euros to his partner’s money account when they were both in jail so that he could buy different products.
Before coming to the Homicide Group in 2012, Antonio Roldán worked in the Immigration and Borders Brigade of the National Police. For this reason, he knew the transfer of people and the operation of the Padrón pension, at number 114 of the Islas Canarias avenue. The inspector knew the owner of the establishment and her children, who helped her at the reception and in registering clients. In his opinion, at the time of the murders of ex-military Ángel Bermejo (January 2010) and Adoración (June 2009) in said building, the owner was already affected by Alzheimer’s. Roldán made a detailed description of the building. He clarified that the building had three floors in total. The first two were intended for a clientele normal in this type of accommodation and that he paid on time for the services. In this part of the building the rooms were better equipped.
And then there was the third floor, where the units were not as well cared for, and where people with limited economic resources stayed or who went there to consume drugs, among other things. According to Roldán, control over who used this part of the building was more lax. In fact, at some point, he defined the third floor as “chaotic” and “disastrous”. In addition, at that time, the Padrón pension did not keep a computerized and exhaustive record of all the clients that entered and left. In 2009 and 2010, the annotations were made by hand.
Once she was released from prison, Adoración stayed on the second floor of the building, specifically in room 207. According to her family background, the woman was a drug addict, “but she maintained a certain level of dignity with herself” and, in addition, , received a pension with which to pay for the accommodation. However, it is recorded in the pension record that on June 21, she moved to room 306, where José Antonio Luis Aguiar was staying.
And a day later the last extraction of money that the victim made from his account takes place, about 400 euros. From that moment on, the woman’s movements are only known by what José Antonio recounts. Supposedly, after taking out said money, both went to buy drugs from Cuesta Piedra. And, once they were back at the boarding house, she hit him with the mobile phone and he reacted by hitting her with “four or five punches”.
In the opinion of the inspector, the woman had multiple fractures typical of a homicidal death, as she had broken ribs, one leg and the hyoid bone. She clarified that this last injury is typical of a strangulation, “either with a rope or with the hands.” Regarding whether the author of her death performed the “mataleón” technique on the woman, Roldán clarified that, originally, this is a technique of control over another person, which can leave her unconscious for a few seconds, but that, if wrong or press too hard, it can end in a strangulation and the death of the affected.
If José Antonio presumably ended Adoración’s life in June 2009 and in January of the following year he did the same with Ángel Bermejo, in August 2010 another episode occurred that caught the attention of the national police. A woman reported that José Antonio, her partner at the time, had asked her for money, but she refused to give it to him. Then, the individual decided to lock her up and attacked her. In fact, she did the aforementioned “mataleón” technique on him. That victim was left unconscious and, when he regained consciousness, the defendant today told him something similar to: “You’ve already seen what I’m capable of doing; next time, I’ll kill you, put you in a blanket and throw you in the trash. “. For the former head of Homicide in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, this shows that the accused “had practice” in carrying out such an act.
From the afternoon that the skeletal remains were found, the agents of the Homicide Group began to work with the hypothesis that it could be Adoration. Among other things, the woman had a piercing on the abdomen with two little balls. That object was found in the bag where the bones were. And the same appeared in an X-ray that was done to the victim when in 2006 she was attacked by José Antonio. In addition, other elements coincided, such as long and abundant hair, her height (less than 1.50), some bone remains typical of a thin person, as well as a hip typical of a woman.
DNA tests
And once the DNA was extracted, it coincided with that of a very small drop of blood that the Scientific Police agents found on the headboard of one of the beds in room 306 when the skeletonized corpse of Ángel Bermejo was discovered between mattresses. in said pension.
For Inspector Roldán, it is entirely possible that a man like José Antonio would be capable of carrying Adoración’s body in a petate, which weighed about 47 kilos at the time of death, and moved it about 600 meters to the Santos ravine.
The now accused, upon entering prison for the death of Ángel Bermejo, left his mobile phone in the Security area of Tenerife II. The Homicide Group of the National Police recovered that terminal and discovered that on June 25 a photograph was taken and then it was intentionally deleted. That image was captured in room 306 by a person who, sitting on a bed, captured a scene, at least, curious about what was in the other bed. In it appeared a woman’s long hair, a piece of nose and the arch of the eyebrow, as well as a blue blanket, a petate, the mattress, a headboard and a door.
Roldán explained that there was only a thumbnail of the deleted photo on the mobile. In the Scientific Police of Madrid, it was possible to recover only the lower part of the image, in which it was intuited that a blue blanket appeared. The rest were not recovered in that process. The Homicide inspector turned to a doctor from the Instituto de Astrofísico de Canarias (IAC), who promised to help the agents. The first thing that scientist did was to know the process of erasing the photo, and then carry out the reverse process. And, in that way, the IAC researcher recovered a very small image. To such an extent it was so that, in order to reach conclusions, the police asked for collaboration from the owner of the Yelmo en Meridiano cinemas to be able to see the photo on the screen of one of the rooms. And so they managed to identify the elements mentioned previously. Next, the scene in the padrón boarding house was recreated, in room 306, for which a mannequin with a wig, a former inmate’s mat, a blue blanket, a mattress and a headboard were used. And a photo was taken with a mobile of the same model as the one used by José Antonio. In this way, another of the documentary evidence that appears in this process was configured. And the similarity between both images is considerable, according to the police command.
