His story went around the world. El Caníbal de Ventas or La Guindalera, due to the area of Madrid where he lived, became famous six years ago after being arrested for a crime, that of his mother, which the National Police itself described as “the most atrocious” that had been known in recent decades. It was no wonder: the Spaniard Alberto Sánchez Gómez, now 32 years old, killed, dismembered and put his mother’s remains in different lunch boxes and ate them. As is. In May 2021, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the death and desecration of the body of María Soledad Gómez, 61. His mother.
The popular jury believed the experts who testified in court and did not consider partial or total defense due to mental illness. And this was confirmed by the Fifth Section of the Provincial Court. All of this was very surprising at the time, given the characteristics of the patricide, but also due to many peripheral details, which showed an altered personality.
Now, ABC has had access to a letter that Alberto has sent from prison to his new lawyer, Julen Martínez, from Valmaseda Abogados, in which he requests that he be admitted to a psychiatric center, so that he can leave prison and not return. to commit a crime when, not in many years, he is released on prison leave or achieves total freedom. «I suffered a temporary mental disorder motivated by cannabis consumption and I did not live reality as it is, but I was delirious and had psychosis, as well as paranoia. “I ended up doing to my mother what the voices told me and what I saw in my visual hallucinations,” the prisoner says in his letter.
The young man went to Julen Martínez before this Christmas and the lawyer has taken charge of his defense. In statements to this newspaper, the professional explains the reasons why his client must go from prison to a specialized place. To do this, he will demand expert reports from the prison treatment board, where, now, he is being medicated for schizophrenia, an illness that was denied to him at trial: «Alberto must serve his sentence in a mental health center. It is not just about serving a sentence, but about addressing the serious mental disorder he suffers from, guaranteeing his treatment and protecting society. The prison has a reintegrative function, but this case requires a specialized approach. If you don’t act, in a few years you could be on the streets, representing an obvious risk. For this reason, his transfer to a prison psychiatric hospital is essential as a responsible and fair measure. The idea, furthermore, is that, when he completes his sentence, “he will be forcibly detained until determined by a psychiatrist.”
Neither Martínez nor Sánchez himself talk about being released; What it is about now, they say, is that, when you have permits or move to a level that allows you to spend part of your life on the street, you will not commit a blood crime again. Because he does not seem recovered and insists that he is a patient in need of treatment.
Drugs in prison
Alberto Sánchez has access to drugs in prison, and that aggravates his problem. In fact, he already had a very problematic consumption of joints when he lived with his mother in the apartment on Francisco Navacerrada Street, a short distance from the bullring. The Police arrived at the home on February 19, 2019 after a friend reported to the police station that she had not seen or been able to speak on the phone with María Soledad for about a month. He opened it and told them that their mother was dead and that she was inside. They knew he had been identified for smoking joints and he had a restraining order against his mother.
The scene was terrifying: the head was on the bed; the scalp, on the side; next to the bed, the hands (they still had the nail polish on them) and part of the arms, and the trunk inside the doghouse. On the kitchen table, on some plates, the legs. Such was his delirium, that he had even fed part of the woman’s remains to the animal. Other remains were kept frozen in several containers, one of them open and with a fork inside. The agents found a knife in the bathtub and a saw in another part of the apartment. And lots and lots of blood. In the accounting room, in garbage bags, there were more viscera.
The investigation showed that the young man killed his mother between January 27 and February 21, 2019, dismembered her and, for at least fifteen days, ate the cadaverous remains. Despite everything, the verdict of the popular jury denied insanity or any other mental illness and this was reflected in the subsequent sentence: “Neither from the documentary evidence in the record nor from the statements of the witnesses at the oral trial, it has been found “It has been proven that the accused suffered a psychic alteration that made it difficult for him to correctly process general information that would determine a serious alteration in his awareness of reality in a way that would nullify his volitional and cognitive faculties.”
In his letter from prison, Alberto states the opposite: “To begin with, after my arrest, they did not take me to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.” […]. They took me to the police station [la calle del] Prince of Asturias, where I called my brother and didn’t tell him anything about what happened.”
The rap of crime
He claims that, “before the trial began,” his lawyer told him: “Say you don’t remember anything.” At another point in the manuscript he states: «One of the coroner’s questions was if I heard voices and I answered no, because the Xeplion [ansiolítico para la esquizofrenia] It worked on me for two years. I had to go back to smoking joints in [la cárcel de Valdemoro] to remember what had happened with my hallucinations and my delirium. Just one puff of a joint is worth seeing visions and hearing voices for a year. “When the Xeplion takes effect, it takes away my voices and visions while I am injecting it.”
It wasn’t just what happened on the day of the crime. Alberto himself, who had 12 criminal records (among others, for mistreating his mother), uploaded his songs on social networks: “Walking the dog like a cowbell. I don’t know the shit I’m saying but if I want to sink you I’ll bury you”; «cooking beef to lose my sanity; There is no cure for my madness.
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