– Did you say you weren’t excited about killing Emilce?
are you asking me seriously
-Seriously.
– Don’t raise your voice to me, no, of course I didn’t say that.
At one end of the table, the lawyer for the mother of Emilce C., an 18-year-old girl murdered and brutally dismembered in Valdemoro (Madrid) in 2019. At the other Leonardo V, a thirty-year-old at whose home the remains of the victim were found, some preserved in brine, as “trophies,” according to several of the Civil Guard investigators involved in the case. In a more than two-hour interrogation, the accused, who worked as a tattoo artist and described himself in networks as a butcher, dumped all the blame for the dismemberment of his ex-girlfriend Celia, also on the bank designated as an accessory afterwards and assured that the death was an accident. “I put a mask on him to fool around, I went for a drink and when I came back he didn’t answer,” he assured without going into detail. The oral hearing of one of the most notorious crimes Madrid has seen in recent times is drawing to a close.
On October 15, 2009, Emilce, the victim, went to Leonardo’s house to be given anxiolytics, according to one of the last WhatsApp messages sent by the girl before her death. Investigators believe he died around 2:00 a.m. when his phone was idle. The next day, at dusk, several Civil Guard agents spotted a scene whose ferocity is difficult to reproduce. After three weeks of listening to investigators, neighbors, forensic experts, witnesses, family members and psychological experts, Leonardo has laid out his version of events. “When I saw that he was dead, I sat there and I looked at the body and I did cocaine, I knew what that was going to look like and I was like, ‘What the hell do I do now? He then texted Celia, as recorded on his phone: “I love you.” “It was to see if she was awake and she supported me in what to do,” he said. According to his statement, he lived with the body for about 12 hours and tried to burn his clothes, causing a large smoke that woke neighbors at dawn. Investigators claim it wasn’t the clothes that burned, but rather that he began discarding body parts on the grill in the backyard of the home where he was perched.
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
In a tense interrogation, Leonardo has assured that he met his ex-girlfriend Celia the next day and that she told him not to worry that they would “get rid of” the issue. He claims that it was then between 4.30pm and the time of his arrest around 9am when they began desecrating Emilce’s body in a manner that was very painful to those present at the hearing. Room. However, the police investigation revealed that Leonardo began this macabre task at dawn. To support this theory, the coroner examining the body said last week that removing a single body part in the condition in which it was found would take at least two hours for someone with knowledge of anatomy.
That’s the main argument Celia’s defense used to discredit that they could have done all that work in such a short amount of time. That afternoon, traffic tickets and surveillance cameras also show that Leonardo and Celia left the house several times to buy cleaning supplies and to visit a man he allegedly sold drugs to. “What happened in this house is the result of cruelty and my selfishness because I was in a process of regularization and that was going to be a problem. I will not justify the unjustified. Despite the lack of humanity, it was the only way out,” explained Leonardo, a native of Colombia who came to Spain at the age of six. He has described Emilce as a “pretty and nice” girl whom he met at a park a few months before her death and gave her a dagger tattoo.
Leonardo’s surprise defense, in which he laid the whole idea of dismemberment on his ex-partner, was the culmination of three weeks of very tough moments in sight. On the day the crime scene images were to be shown, the room’s doors were closed to the public. Only the jury, the lawyers, the accused and the judge could witness the horror that the Civil Guard officers found inside the house. A house where violence flooded every corner. Were his actions the fruit of pure evil? The public prosecutor’s office and the prosecution assume this. Can this macabre night be justified with a drug addiction and a disorderly childhood? That’s what your attorney is trying to defend. Neither party introduced the variable psychopathy in this case.
Homicide detectives found remains of the victim throughout the house, which they concluded the defendant used to satisfy his desire to know what it felt like to kill. A somber decoration of daggers and machetes hanging on the walls, dismembered grotesque figures, photos of shrunken heads, showcases full of skulls, posters of serial killers like Ted Bundy, The Rostov Butcher or BTK (tie up, torture and kill, in English). The investigators who carried out the investigation assured at the trial that this case was apparently not about hiding the body, but about an extraordinary obsession with death and violence. “I had no fucking idea what I was doing, I had never dismembered, you see that in movies, but then when something like that happens to you…” Leonardo defended himself.
Celia’s version is very different. Both agree that they started their relationship in June and she moved into his house. From here the story differs. He claims that they weren’t a couple, that she came and went as she pleased. She points out that she was exposed to him, that they were dating, and that he abused and sexually assaulted her. Because of this, Celia says, the day Leonardo met her, “gruff and smelly,” telling her that “he screwed it up because he killed a girl,” she believed that he was blackmailing her, to go to him and not let him. In a baffling narrative, the woman has admitted she accompanied him to several stores that day to get a shovel, shopping cart, cleaning supplies and clothes, but that she didn’t believe what she was confessing. Minutes later, she also hinted that upon entering the house, he told her that she had to help him or that she “would be next.”
In his first testimony to the Civil Guard, which was much more detailed, he admitted seeing blood in the bathroom, which agents later found to be uncontaminated, and even took a photo of remains in a bucket. She also told agents that Leonardo had explained to her that he tried to suffocate the girl with his arms and a cable, but when he couldn’t, he stabbed her with a knife. “He could also have said that I shot him, and in some cases he would have been right,” said the accused ironically. When Celia related these facts, the Guardia Civil officers interrupted the testimony to inform her that she was in detention and not a witness. After that she didn’t want to speak anymore.
Interview with Celia, ex-girlfriend of the alleged killer named Valdemoro tattoo butcher. Luis Sevillano
In tears this Thursday, Celia recalled the invitation Leonardo had given her when they arrived at the house on October 16, 2019: “Go down to the basement to see my masterpiece.” There were more body parts from Emilce . Finally, in a moment of clarity, or perhaps terror, Celia fled the house and joined the Guardia Civil. Then Leonardo wrote to him: “Don’t tell me.” “She arrived nervous, she couldn’t speak at first. I searched the database and saw that both she and Leonardo were arrested for injuring each other,” explained the agent who received them that day. On the way to the chalet, Celia showed this Civil Guard the Instagram account, who she suspected was the victim, although she claimed not to have met them personally.
The agents found Leonardo back after he dumped some remains into some blood-stained containers. He just got up and said:
did you come to stop me
-Why should we stop you?
– Because of what my ex-girlfriend told you
An officer crouched next to him and asked what happened. “Killing a girl is out of control,” he replied. He later asked to take the dog out of the house, a huge pit bull, to which the agents opened the door and stood next to its owner.
Leonardo has hidden behind a tragic childhood and abandonment of his family to justify the personality disorders he is said to suffer from, which has not been confirmed by any expert. Two of Valdemoro’s social workers have detailed how they worked on his case 15 years ago, when he was a minor and his relatives denounced his father’s negligence in caring for him. “He took me to prostitutes when I was seven and told me if I didn’t I wouldn’t be a man,” he shielded himself. The complicated past of his victim is proven. Emilce was a victim of abuse as a minor and a victim of domestic abuse, for this reason her mother’s lawyer is asking Leonardo to be permanently detained, given the young woman’s extreme vulnerability.
This Friday, jury members will receive the script of the questions they must answer in order to reach their verdict next week. Did Leonardo murder Emilce because he wanted to know what it felt like to kill, or was her death the result of a freak accident? Was such cruelty necessary after death? Was it among his plans to take another person’s life? Was Celia a repentant concealer or was she afraid? The result of a horrific crime that is difficult to find an explanation for comes to a conclusion.
Subscribe to our daily newsletter about Madrid here.