In 2002, the young woman from Vigo , Deborah Fernandez , was found dead after ten days lying in a ditch in the town of O Rosal (Pontevedra). He disappeared at the age of 22 when he had gone running and ten days later his body was found 45 kilometers from Samil beach.
After years of unsuccessful investigations in 2010, the justice filed the case. But in 2019, 17 years and seven months later, the Investigating Court number 2 of Tui (Pontevedra) agreed to reopen the case. Now, with one year to go until the statute of limitations expires, the investigation is going against the clock and attempts are being made to find out more details to clarify the facts. These are the keys and contradictions that have been found so far in theDeborah Fernandez case.
Keys and contradictions in the Deborah Fernandez case
The appearance of the corpse.Deborah’s body was found naked and washed in a ditch in O Rosal ten days after her disappearance, in a scenario full of false leads. The killer tried to simulate a sexual assault . A condom was found next to the corpse and a semen sample was extracted from inside the vagina. The family has always defended “that this biological rest was introduced there when Deborah was already dead”.
The cause of death. For a long time, the Prosecutor’s Office did not rule out sudden death as the cause of Deborah’s death, despite the fact that her body appeared 40 km away. from the place where it was last seen. After the exhumation of the corpse, the family is clear that the death was caused by asphyxiation due to suffocation.
The ex-boyfriend . Despite the fact that the family is clear that all the signs point to him, and despite the fact that the police requested it on several occasions, Deborah’s ex-partner has never been summoned to testify in court as being investigated . At first he denied having a relationship with the young woman, which he admitted later.
Witness statements.With some proceedings full of contradictions in the statements of the witnesses about the movements of the ex-boyfriend on the day of the disappearance, when the family of the disappeared woman managed to get the judge to question one of the witnesses (friend of the deceased) again because they saw contradictions in his initial statement, he alleged “memory failures” or “lack of memories”. Nor had a cousin of the girl, the last known person who saw her alive and spoke with her before her disappearance, been summoned to testify . Something inexplicable that did not happen until the reopening of the proceedings in 2019.
The ex-boyfriend’s vehicle.According to Rosa, Deborah’s sister, after the car of the ex-partner of the deceased,parked in a public car park the days after the disappearance , gave off a strong odor, the main suspect alleged that “with the mistake, he had forgotten a box of shrimp in the trunk and it had thawed”. To date, it has been impossible to locate the parking employees at that time, who could confirm this clue provided by the family.
Deborah’s computer.The report commissioned by the family from a specialized firm, after gaining access to the young woman’s personal computer, reveals that it was “conscientiously manipulated” to “delete its content.” The hypothesis is that someone with computer knowledge removed all traces of emails, downloads,
The failures in the investigation.The investigation, disoriented by a whole set of false clues placed next to the body of the young woman, ended up being archived to be reopened in 2019, thanks to the efforts of the family of the deceased. An example of the errors or negligence is the appearance, two years after the event, of a bouquet of flowers for 400 euros in the place where the young woman appeared, a bouquet that the family had not ordered. When the police were informed, they tried to find the payer through the florist’s bank payments. What had happened to ‘fail’
They looked for payments between April and July 2002, when the bouquet had appeared in 2004 .
The exhumation of the corpse.Despite the fact that 19 years had passed since her death and that the body was ‘deteriorated’, the exhumation carried out this year, in addition to confirming death by suffocation, allowed the recovery of remains of the young woman’s nails, which could be compared with hairs, ropes and fibers collected from the crime scene.