It had been almost a month since anyone in the Madrid town of Morata de Tajuña had seen the siblings Pepe, Amelia and Ángela, but when their bodies appeared this Thursday morning with signs of violence, the signs pointed in one direction: a scam. love, a debt and a reckoning.
The bodies of the three deceased, aged between 70 and 80, were found burned, piled up and with traces of blood around 11.30 am by the Arganda del Rey Judicial Police of the Civil Guard, close sources have added to EFE. to the investigation.
The Homicide agents of the armed institute, who have assumed the investigation, are handling, among other hypotheses, that of a possible settlement of accounts for the debts that these relatives had contracted with some acquaintances, as the sources consulted have informed EFE.
This afternoon the judicial committee proceeded to remove the bodies, which have been transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine, where autopsies will be performed tomorrow morning that will shed some light on the causes of their death.
At the moment, people close to the three brothers and neighbors of the town, with nearly 8,000 inhabitants, claim that the two women were victims of a love scam in which they had lost thousands of euros.
According to what Enrique Velilla, a friend of the family, told EFE, both Amelia and Ángeles contacted two US soldiers years ago through Facebook.
One of them, who said his name was Edward and was stationed in Afghanistan, told them that the second had died and that, in order to collect an inheritance that they would enjoy together, he needed them to send him money periodically.
The sisters agreed and invested a good part of their pension in it, which soon left them bankrupt and led them to repeatedly ask neighbors for money. When his friend told them that they were victims of deception, they, convinced of his story of love and fortune, ignored the warnings and broke off their relationship with him.
While they asked Enrique for around 18,000 euros, they asked Mari, another neighbor with whom they barely had any contact, for 15,000. They even tried their luck with Pascual, the town priest, as he himself explained to EFE. None of them know that anyone acceded to his requests.
To justify themselves, the two sisters used an argument very similar to that of their alleged scammer: they were going to receive a million-dollar inheritance from a relative residing in the United States, but they needed to cover the inheritance expenses.
With this sequence repeating itself in recent months, as investigated by the Civil Guard, the hypothesis that the brothers contracted debts that led to their death gains strength. The case has fallen on the Investigative Court of Arganda del Rey and is under summary secrecy.
Since the end of last year, no one knew anything about the three brothers, natives of a town in Ciudad Real, Torre de Juan Abad, but residents in Morata de Tajuña for decades: the green blinds of their house were drawn, none of them answered the phone.
Many thought that they had gone to one of their other homes, until a strong smell began to come out of the home, a two-story chalet located at number 3 Travesía del Calvario street.
The residents of the neighboring houses, explained a neighbor who has asked not to be identified, were calling the Local Police for days alerting them of the stench, but they did not check it until this morning. The bodies were already in a state of decomposition.
The three brothers, all single, had always lived together and went everywhere in a group. Pepe had a disability and Amelia, the youngest and “savvy” – as many define her – was in charge of taking care of him.
“We were fond of them and right now we are, well, with loose tears,” said, in statements to the media, the mayor of the town, Fernando Villalaín, who has called for three days of official mourning and a minute of silence for tomorrow.
