In early October, the president of the residential community of building number 70 on Calle Zamora in Vigo received a handwritten letter from one of the building’s oldest tenants, Pablo P., 63, an electrician who took early retirement due to his chronic high blood pressure, in which she clarified the disagreements with her neighbor María Jesús Cruz, 56, who works at a cleaning company. “He couldn’t take it anymore, the noises make me nervous,” the letter said. Two weeks later, the woman was found dead on the landing of her apartment, with multiple stab wounds to her chest, and he, her molested neighbor, confessed to the crime.
The alleged assailant has been jailed on a charge of murder with treason after testifying before the acting judge charged with ordering the preliminary investigation. The first hypotheses police are considering as to the motive for the attack is that the arrestee was obsessed with the victim, whom he has been harassing for the past four months with insistent notes and placards accusing him of the noises he was making inside caused home made him nervous.
The victim, who was born in a small town in Ourense and is a mother of one daughter, worked practically all day with a job as a cleaner and most recently worked at the Alcampo supermarket in the city. He had lost sight in one eye, so he asked Eleven for help. His alleged attacker lived alone for years after separating from his wife, with whom he had two children. He was on long sick leave and close to retirement, he said in bars, where they commented that he was “something weird and lonely”.
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In a one-floor office building where most of the tenants are transient (many are immigrants), few knew the true relationship between Pablo and María Jesús since they changed apartments and settled into the floor about a year and a half ago where her potential attacker lived. The victim had told a neighbor that he kept leaving notes under her door telling her that the noises he made while cooking or listening to music bothered her.
The police are continuing to investigate the motive and have asked the neighborhood, where there are all sorts of opinions as to what the real trigger could have been. Even some witnesses point out that the two didn’t always have a bad relationship and that Pablo could feel rejected by María Jesús because they were seen together in the street and in a cafeteria for a long time.
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I was obsessed with her
Almost a week has passed since the sirens of multiple police cars disrupted a calm and rainy Sunday afternoon night. In the building on this central Vigo street, life is apparently still the same, although neighbors in the neighborhood are still dismayed by María Jesús’ crime. “We still don’t believe it,” says María del Carmen while waiting for the bus with two other women. “I knew them both and he didn’t strike me as a murderer, but you see, the violence is sudden and it hits this poor woman who didn’t expect it either if she hadn’t walked away by then,” she says.
“He was waiting for the return of María Jesús; It was after nine o’clock at night and she must have just left the garbage in the dumpster. Then he attacked her with a kitchen knife,” says another neighbor. “You saw him leaving the poor girl’s apartment as if nothing had happened.” “What do you have to have in cold blood!” he adds.
Pablo frequented several neighborhood cafes before returning home the night he committed the crime, although he was not known to be a drinker in the neighborhood. It was 8:30 am when she went upstairs and waited for her neighbor María Jesús to enter her apartment. About an hour later, calls for help were heard, alerting the nearest neighbors. One of them, who was the first to reach the hallway, saw the woman on the floor and the alleged killer as he walked out the door of his home with blood on his hands. “She sucked her finger and said she was dead,” he told agents.
At the scene, police found the victim’s sneaker near the door where the keys were still. Inside was the body of María Jesús, face down, with several incisions on the body, mainly on the chest. Investigators believe the attack came from behind as the victim opened the door, giving her no time to react or defend herself.
Next, Pablo P. was arrested without resisting or denying responsibility for the crime. The next day, he returned handcuffed to the apartment he was living in, along with the court train and Science Police agents, to search his belongings and gather evidence, such as the clothing the defendant was wearing at the time of the attack wore.
For the crime of murder with the aggravating circumstance of treason, the arrested person faces a prison sentence of 20 years. Investigators are trying to determine whether the harassment the alleged killer subjected the victim to could have sexist connotations, as according to the sources consulted, a sexual assault does not need to be conveyed to be considered a case of gender-based violence.