The murder of Valentina Chirac has no end. This woman was murdered in her home in 2017. She was found strangled and wrapped in blankets on the floor of her bedroom in Collado Villalba, Madrid. Her husband, David Arellano, was arrested for the crime three days later after the funeral. He was then sent to prison awaiting trial, which took place in 2020. This year, for the first time, the defendant heard the guilty verdict from the chairman of a popular jury. This president continued his speech as he walked down the stairs of the Provincial Court of Madrid, saying that he had changed the direction of his vote so that he could go home earlier. For this reason, the verdict was overturned and a new trial was ordered. In 2023, another new jury concluded Arellano was guilty of the murder of his partner with aggravating circumstances relating to kinship and gender. The verdict was announced that same week: 22 years in prison. But the court has not found the convicted person for a month.
The local police of Collado Villalba and Galapagar are trying unsuccessfully to find the man, convicted since the end of September, to inform him of the measures taken regarding his underage daughter that he had with Valentina. But it was impossible to find him. Now the judge must decide whether to issue a search and arrest warrant for Arellano so that he can go to prison to serve his sentence. In a ruling accessed by EL PAÍS, the judge first asked the prosecutor and lawyers to explain what they think about the defendant’s “personal situation” and then a decision will be made.
Arellano attended this year’s hearing as a free man because, due to the cancellation and rehearing of the trial, the maximum legal term for a provisional prison sentence without penalty had expired. On September 27, the jury unanimously found him guilty of murder but not guilty of sexual assault, excluding him from the possibility of being sentenced to a permanent, non-contestable prison sentence. The verdict states that the police have not been able to locate him at his last address since the 28th.
According to the facts proven by the verdict, in May 2017, the defendant and the victim went to dinner with their friends and when they returned home at dawn, Arellano hit his wife in the head and choked her until she stopped breathing. “After suffocating Valentina, the defendant manipulated the crime scene to suggest that her death had occurred during a robbery at the family home,” the verdict states. To support this version, the now convicted man went to a motorcycle racetrack that morning to drink coffee at a bar and passed a gas station. When he got home at lunchtime, he called emergency services and reported that they had broken into his house to rob him and murdered his wife.
The Civil Guard did not believe this version because they found no signs of forced entry into the hut, the alarm system had not been tampered with and, as they explained at the trial, this was not the modus operandi of a thief. The jury also evaluated the reports of the court’s forensic experts, who concluded that the woman died at dawn, not in the morning, and was “fighting for her life.” The specialists also concluded that the asphyxiation occurred when the woman had reduced abilities due to the head trauma.
For all these reasons, the verdict sentenced Arellano to 22 years in prison, a decision that his lawyer Manuel Alonso had already announced that he would appeal. The judge also banned him from communicating with his daughter for 30 years and took away his parental rights. It is these measures that will be discussed in a separate article and that the police could not officially hand over to the convict, since they have not been able to locate him for a month. The girl is in good condition and is being cared for by relatives, sources close to the case say. A decision will be made on the legal status of the convicted person in the coming days.
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