In May 2003, Spain held municipal and regional elections. Some elections that went off without incident until tinged with mourning at the end of the campaign. Patricia Maurel, candidate of the PP for mayor of the Turolian municipality of La Puebla de Alfindén, had been assassinated. The crime was not signed by ETA terrorism, but by macho. It was her husband José Javier Salvador Calvo who shut him out 11 shots, two of which to the temple. The man was tried and convicted, served prison time and when he was released he killed yet another woman: the lawyer who was defending him in court and that made him regain his freedom. She was Rebeca Santamalia from Zaragoza. I was “obsessed” with her.
A born killer whose criminal profile, according to specialists from the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Aragon (IMLCFA), responds to that of a Manipulative, self-centered, demonstrative, extroverted person, little tolerant of social and environmental pressure, as well as a marked simplistic, primitive and aggressive character. At 34 he had enough self-control with his problems. Relevant was the statement Salvador made before the popular jury that found him guilty: “I am willing to be punished for the result of my actions, but it is not true that I had planned to kill her. Today I am a killerbut first I was a father who loved my children and my family”. He ended up sentenced to 18 years in prison.
His first crime occurred on May 23, just before 21:00 in an agricultural field one and a half kilometers from the town centre, on the Samper road and next to an irrigation ditch. Up to there he arrived with the victim inside his Citroen C-12 van e He killed her with eleven shots at point blank range. It was in a place near where the couple were building a chalet.
a matter of jealousy
Half an hour before he had gone to look for Patricia at the bar where she was with the rest of the popular candidacy. He didn’t enter. She honked her horn and she got out. He told his companions that he would be right back, but he didn’t come back. Since you’re late, they tried to contact her via cell phone, but did not answer. They didn’t think about the tragic ending, since he never told them he had family problems.
Once the crime is committed, the murderer He called his sister at 9:00 pm to tell her what he had done and to announce that he was turning himself in. On the other hand, Patricia’s mother reported by telephone to the Guardia Civil that her daughter had received husband’s death threats. Little did she know yet that the threat had already been carried out two hours earlier and that her 29-year-old daughter was dead.
Meanwhile, Salvador has changed cars. He took another he owned by him, a BMW, with which He went to Teruel to turn himself in. He stopped first at the Parador La Panolla, near Alcañiz, from where he called a friend to take him to the Aragonese capital because he was not feeling well.
He did not tell her that he had ended his wife’s life, but on the contrary that he would look for her in Teruel. When he arrived in the city, Salvador suffered a fall and ended up in the Obispo Polanco hospital, where He explained that he would turn himself in to the provincial prison because he had killed his wife. The toilets alerted the national police and he was arrested without leaving the hospital.
The report of the investigators ascertained that the defendant loaded the carbine used, 22 caliber and loaded with 12 bullets. He managed to empty the magazine into a murder that Patricia would fight for her life.
“Today I’m a killer, but before I was a father who loved my children and my family”
In the reconstruction of the crime and during the trial, Salvador assured that he committed the macho crime because he was jealous of his wife. “He locked himself in his room to chat with other men and didn’t allow my 9-year-old son to use the computer to draw,” he said at the hearing in which he also assured that the woman spoke “on a cell phone with others men and sent our three sons into the street so that they would not listen to him”.
It was his line of defense, the one that he could not control his impulses due to infidelities. His lawyer José Antonio Ruiz Galbe supported him in the investigation and his lawyer Rebeca Santamalia in the courtroom. Indeed, they have come to provide the testimony of a Valencian resident who said that they had raised conversations with the victim and that the popular jury came to evaluate as proven fact. However, They ruled out that the murder responded to an outburst. Hence the sentence to 18 years in prison.
another crime
In prison he participated in a specific program to which prisoners undergo voluntarily gender violence with a view to their reintegration. This, together with the fact that he could be controlled abroad by his relative, did the Penitentiary Surveillance judge granted him his freedom. His lawyer also pointed out to the magistrate that he had “established” habits as a bricklayer which allowed him to obtain a salary to pay the civil liability.
In 2016 it was released after having served three quarters of the sentence. Salvador moved to Zaragoza to live. An apartment was rented, albeit weeks earlier killing whoever his lawyer was and who he was having an affair with moved into an apartment via Pradilla. It belonged to her sister. There Rebeca Santamalia was found dead. Anyone who had defended him so much had been a victim of him. He had slit her throat.
Simplistic, primitive and aggressive
The agents found his body after the filing of a complaint of disappearance by the attorney’s partner. It surprised him that he hadn’t come home. It was January 17, 2019. The Homicide Group of the Aragon Police Headquarters traced the whereabouts of the main suspect, finding the victim.
He, after the crime, as he did in the first, He traveled to Teruel. It wasn’t giving up, but jumping off the aqueduct into the void. According to a 47-year-old friend of Rebeca’s, they broke off their relationship a month ago, but Salvador was “obsessed with her.” She couldn’t bear it when Rebeca and Patricia said no. He ended up killing them.
