The man who killed his wife and 3-year-old daughter on Twelfth Night 2020 in Esplugues de Llobregat testified this Friday at the trial in which he faces a reviewable permanent prison sentence. The perpetrators of crimes as monstrous as this have two options when facing trial. Assuming the blame, asking for forgiveness and accepting the sentence that the law provides for these cases or defending oneself, a right that assists everyone, but which then even entails having to stain the name of the victims. Rubén DarÃo Cabezas, 30, has opted for the second option and has tried as he could to justify stabbing his partner 53 times because he wanted to end the relationship, and as many to his daughter who was sleeping just beside.
It is also common for the perpetrators of crimes as heinous as this to present themselves as victims. Rubén DarÃo has denounced that when his wife told him that she wanted to break up with him, no one from the victim’s family supported him, that he felt alone and anguished without being able to discuss it with anyone or feel the support of anyone. The Prosecutor’s Office and the prosecution ask to sentence the defendant also for habitual abuse since the woman had told her surroundings that she had received physical attacks and that her partner controlled her psychologically. The defendant has admitted that she controlled his cell phone and that he discovered that her ex-partner had started a sentimental relationship with another man. “I showed her through her mobile phone a conversation all the lies she was hiding from me and I let her know that he was cheating on me,” he said without blushing.
During the interrogation, he only answered the questions of his lawyer, who focused above all on the stage prior to the crime, in which he wanted to show himself as a mature and dialogue man who knew how to accept his marital breakup and as a good father who cooked dinner. and put his daughter to bed. The defense strategy wants to force the jury to think that a good father and a good husband is incapable of stabbing his wife and his daughter to death. In his explanations, however, he has avoided detailing that he stabbed after discovering a message from the victim with another man and that the days before he followed her to work and plagiarized her Instagram to find out who she was seeing.
To justify the crime, he has limited himself to saying that it was not him, despite the fact that no specialist has indicated that he suffers any mental affectation. “I felt like I was losing control of myself. She couldn’t see, or think, or control what he did. I felt strong tremors and felt like I had lost my mind. I remember turning on the light in the room and that’s when I saw my daughter and Monica on the floor. And I felt like I was going into shock. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I got scared at that moment and felt paralyzed. I was horrified at what I was seeing. I was very upset by what had happened, by everything that was happening.†At no time has he used the verbs to kill, or blood, or knives, nor has he used the first person so that the jury would not relate the facts directly to him. Nor has he ever asked for forgiveness or shown repentance at any time.
After an hour of interrogation focused mainly on the problems suffered by the defendant and not the pain he inflicted on his wife and daughter, the witnesses have taken it upon themselves to remind him of this. The parents and grandparents of the victims, in a heartbreaking story, have recalled how they had the gifts prepared on Three Kings Day waiting for the defendant, his daughter and his granddaughter to eat. They have reported that they let Rubén DarÃo continue living with his daughter after the separation so as not to leave him on the street because he had nowhere to go, that they treated him like a son and that a few hours before the crime they saw the Reyes parade together. The victim’s mother and grandmother have explained to the jury how he feels since the defendant took the lives of his daughter and his granddaughter. “I get up with pills and I go to sleep with pills. I can’t live like this. I am dead in life. And I’m here because I’m with a husband and people who love me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here for a long time. I don’t want this life for anyone. It is very hard. To be knocked at the door and told that your daughter and granddaughter are dead. That’s the hardest thing you can say to a father and a mother.”
