The judge lifts the summary secret on the interrogation of the third investigated, who assured the UCO that if the young woman “had gotten out of the car” at the El Romeral intersection, “she would have gone to my house”
“Oscar’s attitude after Esther’s disappearance at no time seemed normal to me due to the lack of interest and initiative in her search, especially when he has been a great friend of his sister.” This is how Lucio Carlos G, ‘Carolo’, commented to the Homicide investigators of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) in the last statement held at the Valladolid Civil Guard Command. It was just a month after Óscar S., the main investigator in the case, insisted before the judge that he left the young woman alive at the El Romeral intersection without being able to explain, among other things, the reason why the devices cell phones ‘gutted’ by Civil Guard technicians question their claims. The UCO agents in charge of the case, after carefully analyzing these statements made by the travel agent at the courthouse, decided to question Carolo.
“If Esther had gotten out of the car, she would have gone to my house,” says this researcher. Carolo faced an intense and calculated interrogation of fifty very precise questions in which she reconstructed the last hours that she shared with her friend and her perception of what happened in the days following her disappearance. Esther López, 35, was with him and Óscar S. partying in the early hours of January 13 until she disappeared and her body was found on the side of the road to Traspinedo 24 days later by an amateur ‘tracker’ after massive raids with drones and dogs that were unsuccessful.
The waiter, whose testimony has been kept secret until now, is increasingly out of the focus of suspicion because he is the only one with an alibi: He got out of Óscar S.’s car in the parking lot of the La Maña restaurant, at kilometer 342 of the N-122 around three in the morning and went to sleep at his house, which is behind the restaurant, where his children were waiting for him. The older one opened the door for him because it was locked from the inside. He didn’t wake up until a little after eight in the morning to take his son to school. He then went back to bed and around half past one in the afternoon he began to send Esther whatsapp to see how she had woken up. He got no response. It was when he began to worry and wrote to Óscar S. who, in his opinion, was quite indolent, above all, he points out, when he downplayed the fact that he had left the young woman alone, at dawn, with that intense cold, in the access road to the El Romeral urbanization. He put “how did you finish” in the message, without sexual connotation, but in reference to how they had finished the night, explains Carolo. Then Óscar called him and said “there will be a mess for you” and when her interlocutor asked her why she replied that she had been angry for not wanting to party in Valladolid and that she had gone to the house of she. Carolo told him that he had not gone to her house and the other speculated that she “had gone with someone, because she left her at the entrance to El Romeral.” As the waiter highlights in his statement, all the successive contacts she had with Óscar “were strange” until, finally, he distanced himself.
The investigated insisted that his relationship with Esther was exclusively “close friendship” and never told anyone that they had “a sentimental relationship”
At the beginning of his statement, the Homicide agents showed him two images in which a telephone terminal can be seen charging the battery on a recreational machine. A device that Carolo recognizes as hers and points out that she put it on charge while Óscar S. was playing slots at the bar on car night, before the party ended in tragedy. The researchers then asked him to describe Esther’s personality, and he described her as a woman “very open, trusting, nice, very friendly with her friends” who when she drank “her character changed, she got angry and a little impulsive, you had to know how to wear it». She also indicated that on occasions she “could party for several days in Traspinedo or Valladolid and join one day with another, up to two or three days.” The young woman, as he knew, worked for the last time at the Vega Sicilia winery in September-October 2021 and until she disappeared she lived in her father’s home.
Waiter by profession, the second of the three investigated in the case of the disappearance and death of Esther López, Lucio Carlos GD, alias ‘Carolo’, 42, is the only one who has not yet been called to testify by the investigating magistrate in court after five months of investigations. Now, the head of the Court of Instruction 5 of Valladolid has lifted the summary secret of the statement made by this suspect before members of the UCO on May 26, an interrogation in which Carolo insisted that his relationship with Esther was « of close friendship”, that there was never sex between them nor did he ever tell anyone that there was “a sentimental relationship” and that the young woman, in addition to being a foosball and bar partner, shared intimate confidences with him.
The investigators also asked her if she knew if her friend had any problems and Carolo pointed out that the last thing she told him, on January 3, (ten days before her disappearance) was that a boyfriend with whom she had lived for three years He accused him of having stolen a kilo of cocaine (“drug use between them was daily and very high”) and beat him up. This brutal attack was also reported by Esther to Ramón G., the only one of the three investigated who was detained for five days on suspicion of concealment, before the lifeless body of his neighbor was found. During her questioning before the judge, he assured that, one night when she slept in the living room of her house, Esther told him that her previous partner had beaten her with a baseball bat.
Carolo reported that Óscar got 500 euros in the slot machines and that while he played, Esther and he drank shots and beers, to which the winner invited
Later, Carolo began to rebuild the car day. From La Maña, where they had a few beers, after eight in the afternoon on January 12, he and Óscar decided to travel to Traspinedo and at the Tuduero industrial estate they stopped Óscar’s Volkswagen T-Roc to consume two lines of cocaine. Then they were at the Teyo bar (El Castillo) while they broadcast the game and, as there were no people from their circle, they walked to the James Dean pub, where they met Esther and three of her friends. Óscar began to play slot machines and the young woman criticized them for playing with the machine. When she finished the game she left the bar with the two friends she was with and they stayed until it closed and then they went back to El Castillo. There, the principal under investigation continued to play and asked Carolo if she had any more cocaine left and if she could get some. That is why he sent a message to Esther in which she told him that they needed “one”, referring to a gram of that substance. She told him that she didn’t know where to get it. She also tried it with Ramón G. (the third investigated in the case), but he did not respond. That’s when Esther arrived and while Óscar continued playing (he got 500 euros, which he spent on a second machine), the two friends struck up a conversation while having shots and beers. Óscar was the one who drank the least and paid for all the drinks. They decided to leave the bar around half past two in the morning.
The intention, says the witness, was to leave her friend at her house with the car, but, as they still had drinks, she proposed to smoke a few cigarettes and finish them in the cellar area. They got out of the vehicle for a moment but, as it was very cold, after spending about ten minutes inside the passenger compartment, they finished their beers and left, again in the direction of Esther’s home. Once again, when they were level with her house, she asked “what were they going to do?” Carolo, who by then was half reclining and dizzy in the back seats of the car, replied that “the children were at home and that he was staying there.” Then, she assures her, «Óscar suggested that he go to her chalet and that if she wanted to go to her house she should get off with him and at eight in the morning he would leave her at her house». Up to three times the driver of the car asked her “if she was sure” and she agreed. They headed to La Maña and stopped in the parking lot, as close to her house as possible. Carolo said goodbye to Óscar and Esther without leaving the vehicle. It was the last time she saw her friend alive.
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