“He opened the gate and invited us to come over inside his home, with the excuse of showing us something related to the fashion show. We refused, we said that we were in a hurry and she tried to convince us that it would only be a moment. Every time I told my friend: ‘let’s go’, he would get upset (…) He spoke in an aggressive tone, he tried to hold us back with his words.”
One year and four months before the 15-year-old girl Malen Ortiz disappeared, two young people aged 17 and 18 denounced who is still the main suspect in kidnapping the teenager in Calviá (Mallorca). José Ruiz, a 65-year-old man from Córdoba who then lived in a dilapidated house in Sa Porrassa, just 260 meters from the nursery where a security camera captured the last image of Malén, accosted and harassed on August 1, 2012 to the two girls when they they passed with their skateboard (like Malén) near his house, near the farm that the Civil Guard has searched this week in search of clues about Malén.
the bait
According to the case documentation, which CASO ABIERTO has accessed, that afternoon the man approached them under the pretext of “promoting a dating website with famous people” and he became violent when they rejected him. “At that time hardly people passed by, so we feel intimidated y terrified. I stayed waiting for someone to pass by to ask for help, but just that day it took time for people to pass by, “said one of the young women before the Civil Guard.
José approached two girls under the pretext of “promoting a dating website with famous people.” When they rejected him, he became “violent”
They were lucky. A 35-year-old neighbor from the area passed through the area at that moment and noticed that the girls “seemed to be disgusted with the man“. The woman asked them what was happening and then they replied that nothing “with a scared face and doubtful voice”, so the woman encouraged them to leave the place if they were not comfortable.
“I am going to kill you”
The two young women took advantage of her intervention to run away and flee from the man, who then rebuked the woman, as she reported to the Local Police shortly after: “Who the hell are you to leave me with the word in my mouth? I am going to kill you“.
After the woman’s complaint, a patrol looked for José Ruiz to question him about what had happened. They found him on a dirt road near his house, inside his car, an old white Mercedes. When officers located him, the man was sitting in the driver’s seat.”watching images of a naked underage girl on his laptop.” Several local police officers then checked his computer and saw different images “of content girl pornographic that they could be minors”
Shortly after, according to the report, José “began to rave, telling them that he had a great project in mind consisting of a fashion show with young girls and pretty with skates”. The Local Police stated in its report that the man was a patient at the Santa Ponça Health Center because he suffered from a “chronic delusional disorder”, although at that time he was “relaxed” and did not need medication.
an eight year old girl
It was not the only incident with minors that Ruiz was involved in before the disappearance of Malén Ortiz. A year earlier, the owner of a nearby bar, where Malén and the old man used to go, expelled him from the premises after discovering that chatted on Facebook with his daughter eight years old.
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In the messages, discovered by the girl’s mother, the old man spoke to her about “friendship and love”. And he asked the baby not to say anything to her parents. Even he gave her a necklace. In her statement before the Civil Guard, after the disappearance of Malén, the father of that girl indicated that, after discovering it, “I began to pressure her so that she would stop coming to the bar.” And Ruiz disappeared.
This week, the Civil Guard searched a farm that Ruiz frequented in search of clues about Malén. The reactivation of the ‘Operation Vans’ coincides with the start of the review of the case by the team of the criminologist Felix Rios, who will appear in the case in the next few days. Consulted by CASO ABIERTO, this expert did not want to comment on the inspections on the farm, although he has qualified that he is surprised that Ruiz, “given his special circumstances, has spent so much time in the background of the investigators’ focus.”
