A couple arrested for killing a 90-year-old man to appropriate his assets in Ávila

The Civil Guard has arrested the caretaker of a 90-year-old man, whose body was found inside a drum covered in lime in Sotillo de la Adrada (Ávila) as the alleged perpetrator of his death, and his wife as an accomplice for hiding his body. supposedly to appropriate his assets, valued at half a million euros. The armed institute has closed the investigation into the homicide that took place in this municipality of 4,700 inhabitants, located in the southeast of the province of Ávila, near the Community of Madrid, after the report of the disappearance of the elderly man in September, reported in press release from the Civil Guard.

After activating the search device, his body was found days later inside a drum covered in lime inside the vehicle of the alleged perpetrator of the homicide, the man who was taking care of him, while he was trying to hide the body on a farm in this town in Avila. . At that moment, according to the armed institute, the detainee accused himself, stating that he was returning from the hospital with the victim whom he cared for and attended to, and an argument broke out during which “he strangled him with the seat belt.”

The alleged perpetrator's wife indicated that her husband was in charge of caring for the elderly man and that in July, on the way home, when she picked him up from a hospital, the elderly man began to feel unwell and died in the car. The woman declared that her husband hid the body in the storage room of an apartment that the couple has in the nearby Madrid town of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, and that she demanded that he tell what happened to the Civil Guard, something to which he refused. He denied, moving the body to another place.

After several months of investigation, the Civil Guard has completed Operation Dolomía with the arrest of the caretaker's partner, after being able to verify that this woman participated as an alleged accomplice of the perpetrator of the homicide, having helped him hide the body to try to evade Justice. The search for the old man bore fruit days after it began, when the investigators went to a rural property located in the Zarramudo area of ​​Sotillo de la Adrada. There they found the suspect and caretaker of the elderly man, next to his vehicle, with a wooden box inside, inside which was a plastic drum with the body of a person covered in lime, who at that time could not be identified, although He was an elderly man who probably matched the identity of the missing person.

Subsequently, the body was transferred to the Forensic Anatomical Institute of Ávila, with the aim of performing an autopsy and determining “the causes and circumstances” of death, as well as its identity. As a result of what happened, the agents searched the detainee's home in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, where they seized more than 64,000 euros in cash. The Civil Guard discovered that numerous ATM withdrawals had been made from the victim's bank accounts after he had died.

Furthermore, the agents have concluded that the couple had access to all of the victim's bank accounts and cards and that, taking advantage of the fact that the elderly man lacked family and emotional ties with other people, they allegedly appropriated all of his assets through deception. Likewise, his caretaker and his wife had purchased two vehicles with the 90-year-old man's money, whom they even managed to convince to put a property he owned in his name. According to the Civil Guard, it is estimated that between the cash and the assets that they had appropriated, the couple would have gotten around 500,000 euros.