Óscar Tarruella is a former agent of the Judicial Police with a degree in Advanced Investigation and Analysis of Criminal Behavior. He joined the Mossos d’Esquadra in 1992, has been part of the Homicide and Organized Crime Unit, has worked as an instructor in police intervention and has specialized as a criminal profiler. Some four years ago he selflessly offered his expertise and experience to the family of Italian camera operator Mario Biondo, husband of presenter Raquel Sánchez Silva, when he was found dead in his home under strange circumstances on May 30, 2013.
Tarruella has just published Diary of a Homicide Agent (Plaza
The proceedings on Mario’s death were closed in a month and a half with free dismissal, that is, the shelving was closed, closing the path to further investigations or the provision of unforeseen clues.
That’s right, something unlikely in our country in cases of this type. That is to say, when a judicial death occurs, of whatever type, in which the family doctor or the doctor who comes with the ambulance will not certify a natural death. Well, that death must be investigated and when the court considers concluding it, it not only has to communicate it to one party, in this case to the widow, but to all the relatives. Because the rest of the family has the right to appear in that investigation. The Biondos were never offered this action. The door was closed on them before they knew there was a door.
Mario’s family complains that the Spanish justice has made it very difficult for them to try to open an investigation in Spain.
The police report was never provided to the family, the only party that has requested the investigation of this death, but only loose parts such as the widow’s statement before Homicide Group 6 of the National Police. By the way, you will tell me why a homicide group intervenes if there is no suspicion of a possible homicide. Where is the full report? I guarantee that a judicial group does not make an individual statement and send it to the court, but rather send it with a complete statement. Why was this certificate not delivered by letter rogatory when so requested by the Italian Prosecutor’s Office? In addition, they were not sent the autopsy photos that they requested, they only received nine out of a total of almost 50.
You talk about planning a ‘black hand’ on this case. Whose hand could that be? A case can only be handled in such a way from within the Administration.
Or someone from outside with enough power to put pressure on the parties that make up the judicial entourage. If the Police did not do their job well, I am the first to harshly point it out –for example, the cases of Débora Fernández and Cristina Ortiz, ‘la Veneno’– because above all I am a police officer and I will be until I retire. And that forces me to be critical and recognize whether there has been malpractice or something more serious. But in this case, we don’t know what the Police say because we don’t have their report. All there is is an appearance before the Local Police and then a voluntary statement from the widow – contradicting her previous version – before Homicide Group 6. But who believes that there is no report, a technical-police visual inspection, that there is no complete photo album?
In the autumn of 2013, certain information related to the early morning of Mario’s death appeared in the press. There is even a chronology – which does not appear in any official document – ​​according to which he watched porn on the internet, left home, went to an American bar, had two drinks, etc. Curiously, this list of alleged facts coincides with the fact that Mario’s family had requested an official investigation into his death.
I found out about this “information” about Mario from the press, as all of Spain found out. Who could be interested in divulging ugly things about that kid, who has died a few months ago? And that in addition, they are false, as I found out later. Once I got involved in the case, several journalists contacted me to explain that Raquel Sánchez Silva’s manager had summoned a few media outlets to give them this information. He did not come from a case or from a report, but from the environment.
You also explain that his widow gives two contradictory versions about Mario’s character: that on one occasion Mario had confessed to her that he had had suicidal thoughts, although when faced with homicides, she said no, that her husband was a very vital person.
It is not the only contradiction, before the Italian prosecutors it is also contradicted, as we well know, and that there were as many contradictions as a minimum means that this death was investigated. That’s why they came to Spain twice.
Why was Mario Biondo’s laptop tampered with?
While Mario’s parents and siblings were at the Forensic Anatomical Institute, the access password was changed. In her first statement before the Italian prosecutors posted to Madrid, in June 2014, Raquel says that the computer has not left her power, that only she had access, and that she deleted photos and personal videos of her. Two years later, in the February 2016 statement, she acknowledges that her cousin also had access to her but that she is someone so close that it is as if she were herself. Well, the difference is quite notable because the cousin is a high-level computer engineer, he is not the guy who will repair your computer at the corner store. He also states and they explain again that they did wipes but everything else is the same. AHA. Well, for that you don’t need to install remote control spyware, a usual procedure of hers for the maintenance of Raquel’s equipment and her own.
Mario’s body was exhumed at the family’s request for a second autopsy to be performed in Palermo. At this point and after the report by Dr. Paolo Procaccianti, no one doubts that the one carried out by Dr. Abenza Rojo in Spain was very deficient. However, neither the Italian doctor nor the team that carried out a third and definitive autopsy concluded that homicide was the cause of Mario’s death.
There are also many shadows here. For example, Procaccianti makes no mention of the mark on the back neck, a laceration incompatible with the pashmina with which he is supposed to have hanged himself; it is clearly seen in the autopsy photos but he ignores that matter. It seems a bit strange to me. Also the subdural hematoma [Mario’s brain had a blow], for which he does not give a logical explanation. Finally, the family denounced at the time that Mario’s biological samples had been altered. The reference numbers of various receptacles, test tubes and/or physical supports of those samples were amended. Would anyone accept a modified will with pen? That is to say, tipex brushstroke and new writing on what was there. The third autopsy did not consist of a new examination of the corpse but an assessment of the previous two for which Procaccianti’s samples were used.
With all this, Judge Aiello closed the file, believing that Mario had died at the hands of other people, even acknowledging that after such a long time, it would be practically impossible to find the perpetrators.
It is that in that file there are the signatures of ten experts, ten professionals from different disciplines and who have nothing to do with each other, pointing in the same direction: homicide. Judge Aiello closes the case with a reprimand to the Spanish Justice for his negligent investigation and pointing out the contradictions of the widow, without understanding why they were not investigated. As a very good friend told me, a criminal investigator who uncovered a very important case of pedophilia in the Church and of which I will not reveal the name, a gift-wrapped feces seems something else. And this matter was clouded from day one with the aim that the truth would never be known: it is the black hand that I refer to in the book.
Why did you title the chapter about Mario Curiosity kills the cat?
That on the same day that his body was taken to the Forensic Anatomical Center, such a quantity of information was deleted from his computer, is something suspicious, striking and highly indicative. With everything I know about this case, I dare to affirm that Mario was able to discover something that he shouldn’t have known or that bothered him to discover and that led to his violent death.
