A love triangle ends in crime: a man's body is found in a septic tank two years later

BarcelonaIt was a love triangle. She, who was not yet fifty, had been leaving that man for two years because he abused her. In fact, she had even filed a police report against him. Since then, she explained that she only saw him on rare occasions, always in a bad way. She would find him sleeping in cars with an empty wallet, and she felt empathy because he didn't have an easy life. This led her to let him shower at her house, to take care of him. But that was it: the relationship ended there, because she said she was happy with a new partner. He was her boss at a restaurant in an industrial park in Sant Jaume dels Domenys. When was the last time she saw him? The woman said it had been about a week.

The missing man was this woman's ex-partner, whom she had reported two years earlier for abuse. He was a 50-year-old man who vanished without a trace in July 2024 in the Baix Penedès region. It was his family who filed the missing person report. The first part of the investigation was handled by the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) in El Vendrell. However, the evidence did not point to a voluntary disappearance, and the case was transferred to the Central Missing Persons Unit of the DIC (Criminal Investigation Division), specialists in possible homicides involving concealment of the body. This week, two years later, police investigators arrested the woman and her partner—the 69-year-old restaurant owner—for the murder of the missing man. The Mossos gathered sufficient evidence against those involved even before discovering the man's body, a common practice for this specialized unit: they must find evidence even if the body has not been located, and in this regard, they have obtained several convictions even when the victim has never been found. Following the arrests, the police located the body hidden in an underground septic tank at the house where he lived, in Sant Jaume dels Domenys. Police had to use a drill to blast their way through an underground passage leading to the pit.

The plot twist

But how did the police get here? According to sources consulted by ARA, experts from the Central Missing Persons Unit spoke again with people close to the victim. And his ex-partner was one of the chosen witnesses. It was at that moment that he explained that he saw him little and that he only helped him occasionally because he was unwell. He also added that he hadn't seen him for a week before his disappearance. However, investigators were able to verify that this wasn't entirely true. According to sources from the Unit, the romantic relationship between the two hadn't ended. They continued to see each other, although at that time his partner was the man who ran the restaurant, who had a complicated past: he had been in prison for armed bank robberies in the 1980s. A bank employee was even wounded by gunfire. According to the Mossos d'Esquadra investigation, the motive for the crime emerged from this love triangle. The locations

Investigators have been able to confirm that the woman saw the victim on the very day of his disappearance—the day his cell phone went dead and never turned back on—and not a week earlier as she claimed. In fact, they were also able to place her partner in the same location at the same time. What was that location? The restaurant he managed and where she worked. This is considered the moment when, allegedly, they both ended the victim's life. They then allegedly transported the body to their home and hid it in the septic tank. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) consider them co-perpetrators of the crime, and the murder weapon is still not entirely clear due to the state of the body, although a firearm was found at the suspects' residence. The woman and the man were still together when the Mossos arrested them this week, just as they were leaving their home. This Thursday they appeared in court, and the man, hoping to exonerate the woman, revealed the location of the body. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) knew it was in that area after a long and complex investigation that led to the resolution of the crime, but not its exact location. To locate the body, a team was formed, comprised of investigators from the DIC (Criminal Investigation Division), the Scientific Police, the Mobile Brigade, and the Underground Unit. This type of operation carries significant risks, especially due to the potential lack of oxygen and the presence of toxic gases, so it was carried out by specialists equipped and trained to work in confined spaces with hazardous atmospheres.