This text belongs to ‘Dossier Negro’, a newsletter inspired by the podcast of the same name, which Enrique Figueredo will send on Wednesdays on a biweekly basis. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
There are people who distrust criminal justice and when faced with a serious or especially repugnant episode, with homicides in the case, they proclaim with a certain fatality things such as “her lawyer will plead temporary insanity and she will be released immediately, it is an injustice.” The reality is that on certain occasions there are homicides or murderers who are not tried because they are determined not to be responsible. This bombastic expression is summarized as follows in common language: the accused was not the owner of his actions and, therefore, he cannot be blamed for what he did, no matter how bloodthirsty it was. In most cases, admission to a psychiatric center is determined. The courts, in any case, do not make these decisions lightly and their assumption is the result of the examination of forensic experts from the world of psychiatry and psychology. The case of Manuel Delgado Villegas, better known as El Arropiero, a matter dealt with in the latest installment of Dossier Negro, is one of those files in which crime and mental disorders go hand in hand. He was affected by psychopathy, schizophrenia, necrophilia, alcoholism, epilepsy and drug addiction. He was never tried for the seven crimes that could be proven out of the 48 that he confessed to. Until his death, he wandered from psychiatric hospital to psychiatric hospital.
A very similar case is that of Francisco García Escalero, El Matamendigos. This is another schizophrenic highly prone to necrophilia, who killed and burned eleven homeless people. He was brought to trial and found not guilty of mental insanity. However, due to his high dangerousness, the judges admitted him in 1996 to the Fontnivel prison psychiatric hospital, where he died in 2014.
Deadly manipulation. There are situations in which the mentally ill are tried to be used as a tool for evil. This is what was thought to have happened in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona) in the summer of 2019. It was assumed that the virtual girlfriend of a young schizophrenic forced the boy to kill his own father. Despite the tragedy, the boy’s mother and sister have always supported him despite having lost a husband and father. The accused was acquitted of all charges.
Collective psychosis. In the La Mancha city of Almansa, in 1990 there was a case of a girl murdered by her mother and her friend, with the help of the latter’s sister, because they believed that the 11-year-old girl was pregnant. of the devil The court determined that they had experienced together an induced delirium in conjunction with a psychosis that had led them to commit the atrocious crime. Two of them spent time in a psychiatric hospital and have been free for years.
Play dumb? In 2013, Marcelo Ruíz Ospina told the court that he judged that if he beheaded his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter it was because “the voice of Satan” ordered it. He also asked the Girona Provincial Court that was judging him to perform an exorcism on him. His plea did not convince prosecutors or judges and he was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
In Sam’s warmth. Between 1976 and 1977, David Berkowitz killed six people randomly with a revolver on the streets of New York. He said that it was ordered by his neighbor’s demon-possessed dog, but then he changed his version and spoke of a satanic sect. The court condemned him and did not appreciate any alienation. He is still alive and imprisoned. The American film director Spike Lee directed Sam’s Summer –trailer- in 1999; an urban tragedy with the Berkowitz crimes as a backdrop.
