Twenty years have passed since that afternoon of February 16, 1991. It was five o’clock when the little nine-year-old from Huelva, Ana María Jerez Cano, was seen for the last time. She was going to visit her friend Raquel of hers, something she did frequently. She never got to her destination. I’m not going home either.
Hundreds of volunteers and members of the State Security Forces and Bodies searched for her by land, sea and air. Unsuccessfully. Her family always kept the illusion of finding her alive. Her dream was cut short 69 days after the day of her disappearance.
The Judicial Police found her in the waters of the Tinto estuary, four kilometers from Huelva capital. The news shocked the people of Huelva immediately, they took to the streets to mourn the death of the little girl, along with teachers and classmates from the school where she was studying, who staged a rally to condemn the murder and ask for justice, while the City Hall declared a day of mourning.
The pain and indignation became even more palpable during the funeral of Ana Maria, which brought together hundreds of people in the La Soledad cemetery.
The little girl had died violently, probably from a blow to the head. The coroner Luis Frontela – who also examined the lifeless body of Mari Luz Cortes – participated in the investigation to clarify the case. On April 29, 1991, José Franco de la Cruz El Boca was arrested as the main suspect in the death of the little girl. It was Raquel’s uncle, the friend of the little girl she was going to visit when she disappeared.
Boca was sentenced to 44 years in prison for the death of Ana Maria Jerez. A fiber from his tracksuit that Frontela found led him to jail. When he leaves, he will not be able to return to Huelva until six years after completing the sentence. He always maintained that he was innocent.
In Huelva gossip it was always kept in mind that, at least, he had not acted alone. On March 29, 2008, days after the arrest of Santiago del Valle in Cuenca for the crime of Mari Luz, his sister Catalina told Huelva Informacion that “my brother and El Boca were quite good friends.”
The youngest of the Del Valles observed then that “it is extremely rare that there are things in common in the two cases”, such as the place where the inert bodies of the two girls appeared (the Huelva river). In addition, he explained to this newspaper that his brothers Juan del Valle, now deceased, and Santiago “had to go and testify before the police quite a few times at that time.”
Ana Maria Jerez’s own mother, Adoracion Cano, considered the possibility of requesting an investigation to reopen the case as a result of these statements, although in the end she gave up.
The truth is that now that twenty years have passed since Ana Maria’s disappearance, if there were any accomplices in that crime there would be no possibility of convicting them, since for them the crime would have prescribed.

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