by Federico Ferrero
He suffered from schizophrenia but was able to build an independent life thanks to the medication. That’s since September 17, when his body was found in a fjord near Stockholm. Only later, after the exhumation, did it turn out that the corpse was mutilated
El hombre sin corazn, the heartless man, the bitter pun chosen to symbolize a murky tale, of an ordinary man and a death that has no why, no when, yes no where. And that it could happen to anyone. At the end of April 2005, Miguel ngel Martnez, 45, a restless soul and hungry to see the world, according to Bruce Chatwin in his reports, left his family – father and two sisters – in Getxo and began traveling alone, heading north. He had been suffering from schizophrenia for some time, but in a form that could be curbed with drug therapies, in fact he had worked for a long time without any problems; Friends and relatives remembered him as a gentle person. Traces of bank withdrawals recorded him in Switzerland, then in Germany. He has been in Sweden since the end of May. Until his credit card was blocked: On June 1, he went to the Spanish consulate to ask for help to withdraw money again. However, something went wrong: the authorities could not help him and he disappeared, only to reappear on August 1, 2005 in Karlstad, the place where he was last seen alive.
The Secret of the Swedish Police Station
He went into a bank and attempted an emergency wire transfer, but was denied because he did not have sufficient documents to support his request. He argued with the store manager, who called the police and officers took him into custody for clarification. With what methods, not known. At the police station, of course, they contacted their Spanish colleagues to identify Martnez. The Spanish police calmly faxed a photocopy of Miguel Ngel’s ID. All we know is that the log gives the time the man was released at around 4.30pm that afternoon. Finally disappear. On September 22, 2005, the body of a man in an advanced state of decomposition was found in Liding Fjord, Stockholm County. It was floating between two rocks. No one thought of rummaging through their pockets for three days, until the nurse at the facility where the autopsy took place checked his jeans and found the intact photocopy of his ID. After receiving the autopsy report, which spoke of a probable suicide by drowning, Swedish authorities forwarded the news to the Bilbao Police, who took care of informing the family. End of the story of Miguel Angel Martnez, who died for his own business and also for reasons that remained locked in his soul.
The sister’s intervention
His last wish, granted, was to be buried in a cemetery in London, Gunnersbury, because he had been happy in that town, working as a warden in a hospital, making many friends and getting to know Amelia, perhaps the wife more importantly as her life, she too was buried there. But no. In 2013, Blanca, the more combative sister of Miguel Angel Martnez, approached an El Mundo journalist, Ferran Barber, who was then covering immigration in Scandinavia, and broke a painful silence of years to confide all her fears to him. Her brother did not die by suicide. Maybe he had been killed. Certainly things hadn’t gone the way they had been told. Barber trusted, seeing in this outburst not just a victim’s frustration but solid elements of doubt, and began to confirm the oddities of the case. The date of issue at the police station was initially hours before the date of transmission of the document: if the Swedish file were correct, Miguel Ngel could not have had this photocopy in his pocket. What’s more, how could a paper document remain virtually intact despite the body lying in the water for a long time? And why the autopsy revealed notable trauma to the man’s body, justifying it with a body impact on the ice sheets, completely absent by the end of summer? But it was worse. The Westminster coroner, as is usual with all bodies to be buried on British soil, had carried out a second post-mortem. Which showed the lungs weren’t those of a drowned person. And the heart was completely missing, so the doctor said he couldn’t determine the cause of death.
To many questions
Thanks to Blanca’s determination, her brother’s body was finally exhumed in the summer of 2021, after years of attempts and opposition from various authorities, including the Basque Parliament in Vitoria, and analyzed by Aitor Curiel, a respected coroner and criminologist. The never-before-seen DNA test initially established with certainty that the body was exactly that of his brother. Apathetic Swedish authorities refused to show the body to relatives in 2005 for a classic acknowledgment. Despite the condition of the body, it could be determined that the man was almost certainly not drowned and ended up in the water long after his death. And sure enough, the heart wasn’t there. Why? who made it disappear And how did you die, Miguel Angel Martnez? Alone or at the hands of others? Perhaps he ended up like another man, Osmo Vallo, the Swede Stefano Cucchi, who died of abuse in 1995 – as it happens – in the same police station that Miguel Ngel left just before his disappearance. Or maybe not. But that’s the one question, the most troubling of all, that the two-episode documentary, which airs on Discovery+ from April 29, has been unable to answer.
04/24/2022 (Change 04/24/2022 | 07:53)
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