The provincial court of Zamora has sentenced a Portuguese man and woman to 22 and 17 years in prison for the death of a 70-year-old man in 2019, who they drugged to tie him up and throw him into Lake Sanabria (Zamora) to get his pension. The case remained suspended for several years until the investigation managed to follow the trace of a tobacco packet found on the body, identify the deceased and observe which members of his environment could be linked to the crime. The subject drowned and, according to the Guardia Civil, the people involved “made him disappear” to collect his pension of 35 thousand euros. The deceased’s daughter reported the facts and will receive 120,000 euros in compensation.
The woman was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the crime of manslaughter and for facilitating the commission of another crime, while her henchman will spend another 17 years in prison for the crime of manslaughter. In turn, there is a third person who was arrested at the end of 2023 together with these two individuals, but who was cleared of the complicity of which he was accused. The events occurred on December 27, 2019, when the two convicts were traveling with the victim. The two transported the deceased, 70 years old, whom they had previously drugged to make him drowsy and “nullify his chances of defense”, according to the ruling. Together they took him to the right bank of the Tera River, at the mouth of Lake Sanabria, in the place known as Pozo Muerto. “In execution of the previously conceived plan, they tied a bag of quicklime for agricultural use to his body and introduced the lower half of his body, together with the bag, into a sack. They covered his eyes and mouth with a piece of adhesive tape, and deprived him of any type of documentation that would make his identification difficult in case of discovery”, reads the judicial edict, and then threw him into the river and caused his death by “asphyxia by immersion”, i.e. drowning.
The woman “acted motivated by the desire to obtain an illicit economic advantage and to incorporate it into her assets, since after his death she continued to receive and make her own in full the sums coming from Portugal and the United Kingdom which, as a pension, were paid into the bank account” of the victim, approximately 35,000 euros according to the investigations. The suspect has been in provisional prison since 2023 while the man was already detained for other reasons. Both must jointly pay 120 thousand euros to a daughter of the deceased, resident in the United Kingdom, who reported her father’s disappearance and promoted the investigation. The body was spotted by some passers-by on Lake Sanabria a few days after the crime and only the discovery of a packet of tobacco allowed the Guardia Civil to more easily get closer to the subject’s identity and to know that he had a criminal record in the United Kingdom for various crimes, although he lived in Verín (Ourense).
The officers reported at the end of 2023, when they reported the arrest of the three suspects, that the case was very complex because it coincided during the pandemic and it was a trial with the international police, Portuguese on this occasion. The officers focused on a person who cared for the deceased and his roommate in Verín. Then it turned out that the victim had bank accounts in Portugal with the suspect and that another third person could be involved, who allegedly had a romantic relationship with the detained woman. Together with the Portuguese agents they confirmed the “economic motive” of the crime: “It was particularly difficult due to the administrative issue to put everything together, very complicated since he was a foreigner, because it requires authorizations, international orders and a lot of travel.” The sentence is not final and can be appealed to the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León.
