The man who killed his wife and three-year-old daughter on Twelfth Night 2020 in Esplugues de Llobregat testified yesterday at the trial in which he faces a reviewable permanent prison sentence. The perpetrators of such monstrous crimes have two options when they face trial. Assume guilt, ask for forgiveness and accept the sentence that the law provides for these cases, or defend yourself in order to get the shortest possible sentence, a right that everyone attends, but which even involves having to tarnish the name of the victims

Rubén Darío Cabezas, 30 years old, chose the second option yesterday and tried, as best he could, to justify that he stabbed the couple 53 times because he wanted to end the relationship, and a few to the daughter, who was just sleeping next to. It is also common for perpetrators of heinous crimes like this to present themselves as victims. Yesterday he reported that, when the woman told him that she wanted to break up the relationship, no one in her family supported her, that he felt alone and distressed, without being able to discuss it with anyone or feel the support of anyone .

The Prosecutor’s Office and the prosecution are also asking for the defendant to be convicted of habitual abuse, since the victim had told those around her that she had been physically assaulted by the couple and that he controlled her psychologically. The accused admitted that he spied on her mobile phone and that he discovered that the ex-partner had started a romantic relationship with another man. “I showed him a conversation on my cell phone with all the lies he was hiding from me and I let him know that he was deceiving me,” he said. During the interrogation he only answered the questions of his lawyer, who mainly focused on the stage before the crime, in which he wanted to show himself as a dialogic and mature man who knew how to accept the marital breakup and as a good father making dinner and putting his daughter to bed.

The defense strategy wanted to force the jury to think that a good father and a good husband is incapable of stabbing his wife and daughter to death, unless he was suffering from some undiagnosed outbreak. He avoided detailing that he carried out the stabbings after discovering a message the victim had with another man. To justify the crime, he limited himself to saying that it wasn’t him, despite the fact that no specialist has so far indicated that he suffers from any mental illness. “I felt as if I lost control of my person. He couldn’t see, or think, or control what he was doing. I felt strong tremors and I felt that I lost my mind”. “I remember turning on the light in the room and that’s when I saw my daughter and Mónica on the floor. And I felt myself go into shock. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was scared and paralyzed. I was horrified by what I was seeing. I was very disgusted by what had happened, by everything that was happening”. At no point did he use the words kill, or blood, or use the first person so the jury wouldn’t associate it with him. Nor did he apologize or show remorse.

After an hour of questioning, focused mainly on the problems the accused was suffering from and not on the pain he inflicted on his wife and daughter, the witnesses took it upon themselves to remember him. The parents and grandparents of the victims recalled in a poignant account that they had the gifts prepared for the day of Kings and that they expected the accused, his daughter and his granddaughter to go to lunch there. They recalled that after the separation they allowed the accused to continue living with their daughter so as not to leave him on the street, because he had nowhere to go, that they treated him like a son and were even looking for a flat for him in an area nearby so he could see the girl.

In addition, a few hours before the crime, the mother and grandmother of the victims was with her son-in-law and the girl watching together the Cavalca de Reis. In front of the jury he gave a chilling account. “I get up with pills and I go to sleep with pills. I can’t live like this. I am dead alive. And I’m here because I have a husband and people who love me, I haven’t been here for a long time. I don’t want this life for anyone. It’s very hard. They knock on your door and tell you that your daughter and granddaughter are dead. That’s the hardest thing you can say to a father and a mother.”