The Civil Guard profiles a Pedro Nieva capable of doing anything to get rid of his wife’s lover, whom he controlled and humiliated
Could Pedro Nieva feel such animosity towards Javier Ardines as to commission his crime? For the Civil Guard investigators and for the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution, the answer is clear and forceful: yes. “He is a cellopath,” declared the head of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of Gijón, who took charge of the investigation. Celopathy is a psychopathological trait, not a psychic illness, which leads those who suffer from it to control their own life and that of those who accompany them with constant and intrusive ideas about deception and who act in an extreme way to find a solution. Your solution. And even more so if that cellopathy is sustained not only with imaginary thoughts, if not with a reality base. The recording that he made with his mobile phone of his wife and his alleged lover could mark a turning point in a future already marked by jealousy and the control he maintained over his wife.
Pedro Nieva appeared on Wednesday in his statement before the popular jury that is trying him for a crime of murder (along with his three alleged cronies) as a man of dialogue and understanding after discovering that his wife Katia Blanco, with whom he has two children, she was in an extramarital relationship with her cousin’s husband. With Ardines, with whom he himself had shared years of partying, hiking trails, lunches and dinners. Far from blaming him publicly for the infidelity, Nieva claimed responsibility “for the failure of the marriage.” “I devoted many hours to work and less to my family,” he said. In that measured account he gave as an example that he had had “a long conversation with Ardines, without a threatening tone or anything, normal, he himself said that the four of us could meet to talk and that he would give the appropriate explanations.”
But this self-diagnosis contrasts radically with that of the researchers who for six months studied in detail his movements, his conversations and telephone messages, his movements and also his thoughts. Because even if he did not verbalize it, Pedro Nieva did Internet searches about what tormented him: not being the father of one of the two children he has with Katia, due to the little resemblance he has with him. “I never doubted my paternity,” he said at the trial. But his trail gives him away. On the internet they found numerous searches for devices and services to take DNA tests. “He was jealous even of his own dog,” said the head of the Civil Guard. And it was not a saying, since, according to Katia revealed to her sister in a telephone conversation that was heard in the hearing room, she believed that she had hit the dog and was certain that her husband had urinated on a shirt that she had premiered the day before. “We were having dinner with some friends and he told me: ‘There are whores who charge and there are whores and whores who do not charge.’ I asked him if he was saying it for me and he said yes, I can’t take it anymore, I want to separate, even if I end up in misery later, “he told his sister. To this day, they are still married.
Those were the months after he discovered the infidelity and just a few weeks before Javier Ardines was assassinated. «She left Amorebieta to Llanes on the 5th as every summer and Pedro Nieva appeared there an hour later. He followed her, he didn’t want her to stay there because of the possibility of her meeting Ardines. They argued, he returned to Bilbao a few hours later and it was there when he sent the recording to Ardines’s wife and daughter, “said the captain of the Civil Guard. Pedro and Katia’s house and that of Ardines and his wife, Nuria, are located just 300 meters away. Nieva would not have endured that closeness and that he was not there to avoid a new intimate encounter.
A few days passed until, supposedly, Djillali Benatia and Maamar Kelii, the alleged hitmen whom he hired through his friend Jesús Muguruza, made a first attempt to ambush the United Left councilor. It did not work out. They put up a fence in the middle of the way that Ardines left his house in the direction of the port of Llanes, although he managed to overcome the obstacle without getting out of his van. Pedro Nieva returned to Llanes on August 14 (after that first attempt) and was with his wife. They argued again and on the 15th he returned to Amorebieta. Javier Ardines was killed in the early morning of August 15-16. When Katia learned that it was a violent death, she sent the following message to her husband: “Pedro, what have you done?” “I have nothing to do with it,” he replied.
In the first statement that she made before the Civil Guard the day after the murder, she denied having any relationship with the victim. “We had a fool, because we are both very outgoing, but nothing ever happened,” he said. Months later, and with the evidence that the Benemérita showed him, he ended up confessing. They had had their first intimate encounters when she was 18 years old, even before she married Pedro Nieva. That hidden relationship had lasted almost thirty years.
The commission
As the captain of the Civil Guard explained in the courtroom of the Second Section of the Provincial Court, in Oviedo, the motive for the crime is clear: jealousy, having a motivation to end the life of his adversary after discovering infidelity, Nieva only needed the people to help him execute the plan. One of the prosecution tests is the trip that Pedro Nieva made on July 27 with Muguruza and a third man: the accusations and the Civil Guard maintain that it is Benatia and that it was a reconnaissance of the area to show him where they had to lay him the ambush of Javier Ardines, under payment of 25,000 euros.
Benatia’s mobile was positioned in Cantabria with the other two companions, but the Civil Guard considers that, like the night of the crime, he turned off the phone and removed the card from the terminal to avoid leaving a trace. In the statement at the trial, Nieva and Muguruza assured that they had traveled “with a certain Julián” who was an expert in roof repair and that he was going to solve a problem he had on the roof of his house. But what Nieva needed to solve was another problem, according to the investigators and the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Civil Guard investigation
Crime motive. For the investigators the motive is clear: the jealousy that PedroNieva felt when he found out that his wife had a relationship with Javier Ardines.
Preparation. He would have organized a plan to liquidate his adversary. To do this, he would count on the mediation of Jesús Muguruza, who put him in contact with two Algerian citizens, Benatia and Kelii, alleged perpetrators of the murder of the councilor, all four of whom lived in Bilbao.
Calls The hours after the crime consist of more than 100 calls from Djillali Benatia to Muguruza. They would have been to ask for more money for the death result of their plan.
Positioning. Maamar Kelii’s phone was positioned early in the morning of the crime in the Belmonte de Pría area. Benatia’s car was located on the A-8 highway after the crime and at the entrance toll to Bilbao.
Flight. Maamar Kelii traveled the day after the crime to Algeria and in November to Switzerland, after publishing THE COMMERCE that the Civil Guard was investigating in the Basque Country.
Preparatory trip. On July 27, 2018, two weeks before the crime, Muguruza and Pedro Nieva travel, supposedly, with Benatia to Belmonte de Pría to show her on the spot where she would have to execute the plan. He provided him with a photograph of the target and told them the dates of greatest influx in Llanes, coinciding with the holidays in the surroundings.
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