More than twelve years after the murder , the disappearance and murder of Marta del Castillo continues to be an unfinished puzzle that the young woman’s family is trying to solve, who continue to search for the “material truth” of the events that happened in that apartment in Leon XIII the night of January 24, 2009 , and that are back in the news with the premiere of the docuseries about the case on Netflix.
For this case, Miguel Carcano continues to serve his sentence, who throughout all these years has offered up to seven different versions. In the last one, the one he maintains until now, he has unsuccessfully blamed his brother Javier Delgado for the crime, a version that Justice has rejected, although the family remains hopeful that a pending appeal will prosper in the Seville Court. The murder and disappearance of Marta, which in its day shook the entire country, still has various fringes and unknowns pending that can be summarized in ten keys.
1. Does Miguel Carcano know where Marta del Castillo’s body is
Carcano’s lawyers, Paloma Perez and Monica Gallardo Bejarano, assured in their day that the young man knows where he deposited the body at the time, so if after all this time it has not been found it may be because “someone moved it”. The lawyers pointed out that experience shows that the first statement before the Police is the one that usually has “overtones of veracity” and in this first version the main people involved pointed out that they got rid of the young woman by throwing her body into the river. For the lawyers, there was some truth in each of the statements made by Carcano and many doses of invention.
2. The credibility of the latest version of Carcano after seven different versions of the murder.
In these more than 12 years, Miguel Carcano has offered up to seven different versions of the crime. The seventh and last version of Miguel Carcano was included in the statement he gave to the Police on February 22, 2013, when officials from the Group of Minors (Grume) went to the Moron de la Frontera prison, where he was then serving his sentence. 21 years and three months imposed by the Supreme Court. The story of how the events occurred, according to this version of Carcano, begins on the afternoon of January 24, 2009, when Miguel Carcano and Marta del Castillo arrive at Leon XIII’s apartment . His brother, Javier Delgado, is at that moment finishing his shower and getting ready to go to work.
When Javier sees Miguel, an argument begins between the two for economic reasons, because supposedly Miguel had acquired some bank products when he mortgaged the flat and had spent another 800 euros on the motorcycle , so the account was overdraft and not there were funds to pay the monthly installment of the loan.
The discussion escalated and Miguel went to his room, where Marta del Castillo was waiting for him, who intervened in the fight to mediate between the two brothers. It was then that, Carcano continued, his brother took out a pistol that he used to carry with him .when he went to work at the bar and what he would have in his possession due to his profession as a security guard. According to Carcano’s statement, compiled in handwriting by police officials in a total of ten pages and which took six hours to complete, her brother dealt Marta only two blows with the butt of the gun.
The young woman fell to the ground inert and Miguel verified with the tensiometer that, indeed, she had died. It would be approximately nine o’clock at night. After an initial bewilderment, Javier Delgado decides to go look for his ex-wife’s car, to proceed to get rid of the body.
3. The investigation that is still open in the courts of Seville.
In February 2020 there was a new turn in the investigation in the investigation, advanced by this newspaper. Marta’s parents, Antonio del Castillo and Eva Casanueva, asked the Investigating Judge number 4 of Seville to reopen the homicide investigation against Francisco Javier Delgado , Miguel Carcano’s brother, which was archived in May 2013, after Carcano accused her brother for having killed Marta with two blows with the butt of a pistol , after a strong argument for economic reasons.
The family provided new evidence in court with which they sought to prove the “veracity” of this latest version of the crime offered by Carcano –the seventh since he was arrested as the main perpetrator of the murder–, and which would reveal that the reason for the discussion that would have ended with the death of the young woman was not a “simple non-payment of the mortgage , but the cover-up of a crime of false documents and fraud in which not only the two brothers would be involved, but also third parties who facilitated or participated in the hiring of the mortgage” of Leon XIII’s apartment, where Marta’s murder took place.
4. The judicial file of the last hope of the family.
In April 2021, Judge Alvaro Martin shelved the last line of investigation opened for the falsity of Miguel Carcano’s documents to obtain the mortgage on Leon XIII’s apartment, thus confirming the position of the Seville Prosecutor’s Office.
The instructor points out that the alleged participation of Javier Delgado was already valued in 2013 by the player’s previous owner, Francisco de Asis Molina, who filed the investigation against Javier Delgado. Thus, the judge says that those arguments given eight years ago now “retain their full validity after the investigations carried out, which have not provided any element that leads to verifying the location of the victim’s body, nor to establish the possible participation of third parties in the facts under investigation , without the mere statement of the convict Miguel Carcano, whose credibility is totally destroyed by the various changes he has been making in his versions, in which he has displayed the greatest contempt for the suffering of the family and towards the truth, can maintain the proceedings by themselves”.
5. The conclusions of the police report and the appeal to the Court.
The report that the Homicide Group presented in courtconfirms the new facts provided to the court by the family of Marta del Castillo and in which Javier Delgado is again in the spotlight of what happened on the night of January 24, 2009 in the flat on Leon XIII street , whose mortgage takes on a special role in this new research line.
The police report, dated February 2, 2021 and consisting of 211 pages -with the corresponding documentary annexes- is forceful in stating that the proceedings carried out have allowed to know “in greater depth” the economic situation of Javier Delgado in the year 2008 and his “personal interest” in the sale of Leon XIII’s apartment to “pay off his debts.”
This is the reason why, according to the chief homicide inspector, Javier Delgado “convinces” Miguel Carcano to apply for that mortgage with false documents.And for this, the investigators continue, the brother “has not hesitated to engage in criminal behavior, including attitudes that completely contradict the version that he has been maintaining over the years when he was questioned about the reason for the sale of the house. ”. Javier always said in this regard that the flat was sold so that Carcano “had responsibilities and matured”.
And although Javier “always disassociated himself from the sale operation, arguing that this was in any case his brother’s business”, in reality “he was the promoter of it and the main beneficiary”, say the researchers.
The Police are aware of the credibility of Miguel Carcano, after seven different versions of Marta’s murder, but agree with the family that he may now be telling the truth, at least in part of what he claims. “It is true that Miguel Carcano has been characterized by the constant change of versions, both in police and judicial headquarters, about how the investigated events unfolded, thus having exhausted his credibility, but this does not mean that all his comments should be ignored, especially when part of them is corroborated, as is the case with us on this occasion with regard to the aforementioned documentary falsity”.
For this reason, the Homicide investigators asked the judge, because it was “of interest”, to take a statement again from Javier Delgado and his ex-wife, Rosa, in order to “gather as much data on the loan request as possible.” ” that Carcano’s brother made to a private lender and the documentation that was used to grant Carcano the mortgage on the apartment where Marta was murdered.
But the Police prefer to save their opinion for a moment after these statements , which for the time being will not be practiced as the instructor has agreed to file this last line of investigation . The Police explained it in the following way to the Investigating Judge number 4 of Seville, Alvaro Martin.“If Your Honor agrees that said declarations be made, once they have been taken, they will be put into consideration with the rest of the actions carried out by this Group, making available the conclusions reached by means of an extension letter to the present” , it announced the head of the Homicide Group.
6. The cloning of Carcano and Marta’s mobile.
Although the judge closed the investigation against Carcano’s brother, he has authorized, in the separate room opened for the search of the body, the practice of a test that the young woman’s family had requested: the cloning of Miguel Carcano’s mobile phone to try to reconstruct the geolocation of these devices and learn about the movements made on the night of January 24, 2009, in a new attempt to find the body of Marta del Castillo.
The judge’s decision, which took place in April 2021, thus responds to the request made by the lawyer Inmaculada Torres, who represents Marta’s family, and who had requested the analysis of Carcano’s mobile phones to try to determine the “path I took the night of the crime”. The judge has also ordered that an official letter be released to the Seville-II prison, in Moron de la Frontera, to try to locate another telephone number that, according to Carcano, would have been “retained” in this prison , according to a letter sent by Carcano himself to the lawyer.
The judge has also authorized that the telephone companies be required to report on whether they keep “raw” telephone data from the telephone numbers of Miguel Carcano, Marta del Castillo, Javier Delgado, his girlfriend, Francisco Javier Garcia, the Cuckoo, and Samuel Benitez.
The instructor has agreed to the practice of all these tests requested by the family, after the Scientific Police confirmed that it was possible to practice that cloning of mobile phones to try to locate the body, taking into account that the Court of Instruction number 4 of Seville maintains since the murder was investigated a separate room open for the search for Marta’s remains. “What should be considered as the object of this procedure is none other than the verification, if possible, of the place where the body of the victim Marta del Castillo is found , which is the sole reason for maintaining this piece. , without being able to reach areview of what has already been prosecuted, nor to the expansion of the investigation, which exceeds the framework of this procedure” .
7. The different searches for the body and its high cost.
What cannot be denied in these 12 years that have passed since the murder These are the enormous searches that have been carried out on the body of the young woman. The Police have searched for Marta in more than 100 different places, they have inspected wells, vacant lots, canals, collectors, abandoned houses and parks since before Miguel Carcano’s arrest. The agents took the tracking to areas of Cadiz and Huelva.
The best-known areas where the surveys were carried out were the Guadalquivir river, the Alcala de Guadaira landfill, two ditches in the Cano Ronco neighborhood in Camas, the Water Route, and the Majaloba farm in La Rinconada. Even in 2017 it was searched again in the Guadalquivir, also without success. It was even searched with the help of seers, after searching more than a hundred places without finding any trace that could help find the body of the missing teenager.
The cost to the public coffers of the different search operations for Marta’s body amounted to 616,319.27 euros, an amount for which Miguel Carcano was held responsible for refusing to reveal where the young woman’s body was hidden.
8. The firm conviction of Miguel Carcano and the acquittal of the other defendants.
In January 2012, the Seville Court sentenced only Miguel Carcano to 20 years in prison for the murder of Marta del Castillo and acquitted the other three defendants : his brother, Javier Delgado Moreno, his girlfriend, Maria Garcia Mendaro, and the that he was a close friend of the confessed murderer, Samuel Benitez Perez.
A year later, the Supreme Court slightly modified the sentence of the Seville Court to increase the sentence of Miguel Carcano, who was sentenced to one more year and three months in prison for a crime against moral integrity.The Supreme Court’s ruling overturned the time sequence of the crime that had been established by the Seville Court, which had set theMarta’s body left the apartment of Leon XIII around 10:15 p.m. on that January 24, 2009.
For the Supreme Court, this time sequence supposes an “arbitrary and illogical” assessment because, according to it, establishing that time is “fruit of the intuition or speculation of the Court” , which has dispensed with “direct and peripheral” evidence, referring to the two witnesses who saw the wheelchair in the early hours of January 25, 2009.
The ruling argues that the Court has dispensed “without sufficient justification” dthe testimony of the neighbor who saw Carcano in the doorway of Leon XIII shortly before two in the morning, manipulating a wheelchair with which the body was removed from the home, and also the statement of the owner of a bar that At the same time, he observed two young people -neither of whom was Carcano- pushing “a bundle” that they threw into a garbage container.
The fact that Miguel Carcano received a call from Marta’s mother at 01:37 and she was located in Camas does not disprove, according to the Supreme Court, those testimonies because “although the satellite signal places a mobile in a certain place, not because Therefore, its user will necessarily have to be next to it at all times”. And to all this, add the“blackout” of the mobile phones of those involved between one and three in the morning.
9. Carcano will remain in prison until May 8, 2030.
Miguel Carcano (04/14/1989, Seville) will finish serving his sentence on May 8, 2030. This is the date of his hypothetical release from prison, in case that he does not receive any penitentiary benefit –such as the third degree– during the sentence of 21 years and three months in prison.
The defendant will be 41 years old when he is released from prison, but he will not be able to return to Seville until February 19, 2043 -at the age of 53- , since the sentence includes the prohibition of residing in the same town or city where the defendants do so. Marta’s parents and sisters for 30 years, as well as approaching less than 500 meters and communicating by any means with them during that same period of time.
During the first ten years of his sentence, Carcano requested more than twenty exit permits, once he had served a quarter of his sentence. All these permits were rejected by the treatment board of the Herrera de la Mancha prison (Ciudad Real).
Miguel Carcano is classified in second degree , the most common regime among the prison population. According to article 154 of the penitentiary regulations, inmates have the right to enjoy ordinary exit permits of up to seven days “as preparation for life in freedom”, up to a total of 36 or 48 days per year. The requirement to be granted a permit is that you have served a quarter of the sentence– something that Carcano has already overcome – and did not observe “misconduct” during his stay in prison.
For the granting of a permit, a prior “mandatory report” from the prison’s technical team is necessary , and this report will be unfavorable when, “due to the peculiar criminal history, the anomalous personality of the inmate or the existence of unfavorable qualitative variables, it is likely the breach of the sentence, the commission of new crimes or a negative repercussion of the exit on the inmate from the perspective of his preparation for life in freedom or his individualized treatment program “, according to article 156 of the penitentiary regulations .
10. The trial for false testimony to Cuco and his mother.
Parallel to the search for Marta’s body, the case has another fringe derived from the trial of Carcano and the other adults. The Seville Prosecutor’s Office has requested eight months in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros for Javier Garcia Marin, el Cuco, and his mother, Rosalia Garcia Marin , for the crime of false testimony, in relation to the statement that both gave in the trial for the murder of Marta del Castillo, in which both “hatched a plan to deceive the court”, according to the indictment issued by the Investigating Judge number 2 of Seville.
In the brief of provisional conclusions presented in court, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that on October 25, 2011, Cuco and his mother -together with his father, now deceased- “previously arranged a concordant and coherent statement in order to give coverage of Javier’s performance during the night and early morning of January 24, 2009 -when the crime occurred-, knowing that the truth was missing and without caring about the damage that this could cause to the family of the deceased Marta del Castillo.
For its part, Marta’s family has demanded two years in prison, a fine of 1,800 euros and 20,000 euros of compensation for “moral damages”. This trial is pending to be held in the Criminal Court number 7 of Sevilla.