Tabernacle Ortega and Laura Camacho |
Madrid (EFE).- This Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the kidnapping of Anabel Segura, the 19-year-old girl who was jogging in the exclusive Madrid urbanization of La Moraleja when she was kidnapped by some “bottleneck” criminals to whom the word “bolo ” caught thanks to a new police voice analysis technology, cutting edge three decades ago.
Two years and five months. That is what the Spaniards believed the kidnapping of the girl lasted, the longest in history, longer than that of the Olot pharmacist. But not. Anabel Segura was barely kidnapped for four hours because her captors, inexperienced criminals, did not know what to do with her, did not plan her action well and immediately ended her life.
But all this became known 29 months after that April 12, 1993 in a country that mobilized like never before.
Thus, citizen platforms were set up to demand the release of Anabel, in a movement that was identified with a yellow ribbon that thousands of people wore on their lapels.
“They have taken my daughter. They have kidnapped my daughter.”
“They have taken my daughter. Han be my daughter.” This is the sentence that lawyer Rafael Escudero heard that day when he picked up the phone shortly after seven in the morning and answered the call from Anabel’s father. He reminded EFE, just now ten years old, who served as a spokesman for the family during the “ordeal” that it lived through.
It was in the Intergolf de La Moraleja urbanization where Anabel was kidnapped by some “fans” who had not planned anything.
The kidnappers put the young woman in a white van with which they fled while two sports clothes and the “Walkman” that Anabel wore to listen to music while she ran were left on the road.
A gardener from the Scandinavian school near the place heard the young woman’s screams and for a few moments saw the vehicle and the two men: Emilio Muñoz and Cándido Ortiz, as it was later learned, helped by the former’s wife, Felisa García. The gardener was the only witness.
Sexual or economic motive?
When the captors were arrested, they confessed that they kidnapped Anabel for an exclusively sexual motive. No one believed them, not even the investigators.
Because either before the kidnapping or after, the criminals learned that Anabel’s father was CEO of the firm Lurgi SA, dedicated to industrial engineering processes.
And if the motive had been sexual, why would they choose La Moraleja and not another neighborhood? those in charge of investigating the case wondered.
The truth is that for more than two months the kidnappers demanded a ransom in amounts that increased until they demanded 150 million pesetas from the family.
A family, precisely, that spared no resources and came to offer 15 million pesetas, which came to quadruple, to whoever provided a valid lead. He also came to hire companies specialized in solving kidnappings.
At least twice, family representatives went to the point agreed with the kidnappers to pay the ransom. The extortionists never came.
Where was Anabel? Amateurs as they were, the kidnappers had neither a plan nor an infrastructure to keep the hostage alive. So, in a kidnapping that can be called extortion -a “specialty” little “used” in Spain-, the captors went too far and killed Anabel, whose body ended up in an abandoned brick factory in Numancia de la Sagra (Toledo).
Three months after the disappearance of the young woman, the kidnappers sent the family a recording tape in which the victim’s voice could be heard, saying that she was fine while crying out to be taken out of there. But later it was found that it was not her, but Felisa.
Until that July 24, 1993, the kidnappers maintained up to twenty telephone contacts with the family, but that day was the last.
“Bolo”, the Toledo term that helped surround the kidnappers
The audio recordings of the calls reached the hands of the four specialists who had been part of the Forensic Acoustics area of the National Police since 1987, immersed in the application of innovative scientific techniques that still aroused misgivings among the judges.
But the voice studies paid off in the case of Anabel, because the investigators managed to prepare the “voice passport” of Emilio Muñoz, one of the kidnappers, and put on the table a fairly exact profile of the person who demanded in those tapes the ransom.
Because a “voice passport” can reveal the geographical area of residence, the approximate age, the educational level, if that person has habits such as smoking or define features such as a prominent jaw or short neck.
In this way, the Police determined, for example, that Emilio Muñoz resided in the province of Toledo, adjusted his age quite a bit and even concluded that he could be a drinker.
Although it was just one more element in this complex investigation, the truth is that the word “bolo”, a very Toledo term, used by the children who could be heard in the background in one of the recordings, also contributed to determining the area where they could be found. the kidnappers and the missing young woman.
On September 28, 1995, the Police arrested Felisa García in the Toledo town of Escalona; in Pantoja to her husband and in Madrid to Cándido Ortiz.
Before the agents, the three collapsed and confessed their crime, as well as the place where they had hidden the body, recovered the next day in the abandoned brick factory in Numancia de la Sagra.
They were sentenced by the Provincial Court of Toledo and later by the Supreme Court, which raised the sentences to 43 years and six months in prison for the two men and to two years and four months for the woman, who had been sentenced to six months for the Court of Toledo.
The end of the Parot doctrine released Emilio Muñoz in 2013, when he had already spent 18 years behind bars. Cándido Ortiz died in prison in 2009.