It is difficult to reproduce the conversation that La Vanguardia had this Thursday in El Prat with one of the brothers of the woman murdered, along with her two children, by the husband and father of the victims. Carlos, along with another of the sisters, went to the family home this Thursday to pick up the cat. With overwhelming serenity and a poise that is difficult to describe, the man started the conversation by warning that his brother-in-law was “a very good person, a good husband and an excellent father.” And then? “He had been suffering from a deep depression for a long time that no one knew how to get him out of. A pathology that put him in a hell to which he dragged my sister and my nephews,” he says.
The entrance to the garage, the scene of the triple crime, is full of letters with drawings, notes, flowers, candles and stuffed animals that have been left since Wednesday by the classmates of the murdered eight-year-old twins. Someone has placed a bouquet of flowers at the door. Carlos and another of the sisters agree to speak with this media with the sole desire that “this tragedy is not instrumentalized nor labeled as sexist violence because it has not been like that,” she insists. In fact, the parricide himself left a note in which he asked for forgiveness and in which he warned that the three crimes should not be labeled as sexist violence.
And then? The brother-in-law says that a few months ago the man already tried to commit suicide. From that moment on, he began psychiatric treatment, which has proven not to have worked. “Someone should have seen the threat that my brother-in-law posed to my sister and my nephews. They should have admitted him to a psychiatric center or done something more than what was done,” he insists.
And his sister? Did she perceive that danger? “I don’t know, but I’m sure something must have sensed that something was wrong.” The man claims that the couple had been together for more than 20 years and that two years ago they had moved into that newly purchased house. “They were an exemplary family, he had a position of responsibility in a gas company and she also worked in an important international company. They didn’t lack anything. But depression is unpredictable.”
In fact, this Wednesday the researchers were already putting on the table the option of an expanded suicide. It’s hard to even write it. It does not mean that the man had agreed to commit suicide with his wife, but rather that in his pathology he thought that since he was not there, the rest of the family would be helpless and the pain would be so much that the best solution, in his indescribable and sick head, everyone die.
He murdered the woman and daughter using a noose, a belt or a handkerchief, while he drowned the son with his own hands. Toxicology reports will determine whether he previously sedated them to neutralize any resistance. The man then drove to the El Prat train station and jumped onto the tracks as a convoy passed by. He died instantly.
Carlos and the rest of the brothers have already testified in the homicide group of the southern police region of the Mossos d’Esquadra and the story is just like the one that the family member transferred this Thursday to La Vanguardia.
