The serial killer of homeless people has accepted a sentence of 63 years in prison after signing an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office and the rest of the charges. The accused, Thiago Fernandes Lages, signed a pact yesterday before the trial began for the murder of three people who lived on the street in April 2020, in full confinement due to covid. The sentence entails the imposition of 21 years in prison for each of the three crimes, for a crime of murder and another against moral integrity, because it is understood that the criminal killed the homeless people by attacking their dignity. The agreement also implies that the effective fulfillment of the sentence will be 40 years, with which the accused, who is currently 38 years old, will be able to leave prison at the age of 78 and from then on he will be subject to 30 more years of supervised release.
“Do you recognize the author of those deaths? – asked the prosecutor, Elena Contreras – “Yes”, answered the accused. “Are you sure? You have no doubts about the facts that are imputed to you and that you recognize them?”. “I agree”, he concluded briefly.
The trial, despite the agreement, will have to be held anyway, since the agreed penalty exceeds six years in prison. The accused sowed panic among the homeless; he committed up to three murders in a matter of eleven days. It ended the life of Imad Allouss, a 22-year-old Moroccan; of Juan Ramón Barberán Giner, born in Teruel and 76 years old; and Jean-Pierre Herbillon, a 32-year-old Frenchman. He killed all of them by hitting them hard on the head with an iron bar while they were sleeping. The accused took refuge in the darkness of the night and took advantage of the deserted streets of confinement to murder vulnerable and defenseless people. None of the dead could call for help as there was no one in the street.
The three people “died because of living on the street. The accused killed them because he thought they deserved to die because they were poor and vulnerable”, lamented the lawyer of the Fundació Arrels, an organization that acts as a public prosecutor.
He killed the first victim on April 16, 2020 when she was sleeping near the Auditori Nacional de Catalunya. He assaulted him with an iron bar that had one end curved like a walking stick. Just two days later he attacked again with the same method. He hit up to six times a gentleman who was sleeping on Carrer Casp at the height of Pau Claris, near the Tívoli theater. And in the third case, when the Mossos had already deployed a device after warning that a serial killer was around the city, he killed again. The victim was sleeping on Carrer el Rosselló, in the Eixample, and was beaten to death. Before all of them, on March 19, there was another murder in which the victim was stabbed to death and the Mossos suspected the accused, but no evidence was found.
