When the agents of the investigation unit and the scientific police of the Mossos d’Esquadra were able to access the first floor of number four Xile de Amposta street (Montsià) this Easter Monday, they verified that it would not be easy to identify the eighth woman murdered in Spain, victim of sexist violence. Thais was 34 years old, of Spanish nationality and had two children, although they were not minors who were in her care.
The alleged murderer, Jesús F., 47, dismembered the victim’s lifeless body and distributed several pieces between the apartment where the crime is believed to have been committed and several garbage containers in the same municipality, as investigators suspect. His plan, after ending the life of his ex-partner a week ago, was to hide the body, make it difficult to identify the victim and avoid being discovered by the police.
His ploy was thwarted on Monday morning, after a friend of his suspected the crime and reported the alleged murderer to the local Amposta police. The officers arrested him shortly after on the street, where he was wandering disoriented. He was well known to the police because of his background.
The man accused of the sexist murder had attacked Thais on several occasions, with whom he had had a tortuous romantic relationship. With a history of mistreatment, the judge had signed a restraining order to prevent him from getting close to his ex-partner. Even though the restraining order was in force, apparently they continued seeing each other.
A highly toxic relationship, with constant verbal and physical fights and problems surrounding drug addiction. The victim had suffered several attacks and even responded with a knife to one of the attacks.
The alleged murderer was living poorly on the first floor of block number four on Xile Street, without electricity, according to several neighbors. In the building he was also well known for his terrible behavior. He was even reported a month ago after threatening his neighbors to burn down the entire building if they kept calling the police.
“It was coming” was one of the repeated expressions yesterday among the neighborhood. The man accused of killing and dismembering Thais had placed cardboard and a mattress in the main window of his house to prevent prying eyes from discovering his movements from outside. Apparently none of his neighbors saw or heard anything strange in the last week. Some say that they were tired of calling the police reporting fights and shouting in the apartment.
The Amposta City Council yesterday decreed three days of official mourning, suspended the public events planned in the municipality and called for a minute of silence at seven in the afternoon in the square in front of the Town Hall. Neighbors, acquaintances and friends of Thais expressed their pain and indignation.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, and the Government delegate against Gender Violence, Carmen Martínez Perza, expressed in the morning, once again, their “most absolute condemnation and rejection” of this new sexist murder and conveyed “all their support” to family and friends of the victim. Both the minister and the delegate ask for “all efforts” from institutions, administrations and society as a whole “to avoid more deaths.”
The Department of Equality and Feminism of the Generalitat also condemned the new feminicide and expressed its condolences to the victim’s environment, as well as to the local residents. Councilor Tània Verge attended the concentration in Amposta.
The City Council has called an extraordinary meeting of spokespersons for today at one in the afternoon. Its mayor, Adam Tomàs, also expressed his rejection of sexist crime.
The alleged murderer was still at the Mossos d’Esquadra police station yesterday waiting to testify before the judge. The results of the autopsy, very complex due to the state of the body, should help determine how Jesús F. ended Thais’s life.
