A crime without a body uncovers plans to transport 9,000 kilos of cocaine in a submarine

BarcelonaMay 11, 2020, was the first day of the easing of lockdown restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the day Diego Vargas disappeared, while on semi-release for a conviction for driving without a license. His body has never been found, nor has his cell phone, and there has been no match in international databases with the DNA samples provided by his family for comparison with unidentified victims. His car has also never been seen again, nor has it been detected by any radar or police checkpoint, not even those in place during the pandemic restrictions. The man accused of killing Diego and hiding his body, Luis B., was his partner in a marijuana plantation.

The fact that there is neither a body nor a murder weapon—and therefore no information that these could provide—forces the prosecution to piece together all the evidence to understand how the homicide occurred and explain it to the jury, according to judicial sources. The prosecutor in the case, Teresa Yoldi, has experience in other trials of crimes without a body and has already obtained three unanimous guilty verdicts in other cases. In questioning witnesses this week, she has emphasized aspects that would likely not have been mentioned in a trial where the victim's body had been found. For example, when asked about Diego and whether there was any possibility that he had voluntarily disappeared without warning, the mother's response was: "I know my son very well; I know he wouldn't have gone anywhere leaving his daughters."

The investigation has revealed that, unlike the victim, the accused was involved in much more than small-time drug dealing. Police describe Luis B. as a "high-ranking professional in organized crime" who, among other activities, had been involved in transporting a submarine from Latin America to the Cantabrian coast loaded with approximately 9,000 kilos of cocaine. Investigators suggest that the motive for the crime was the possibility that Diego would expose Luis B.'s criminal activities, as he kept around twenty firearms at home. Among drug trafficking groups, he was known by the nickname... General

A few hours before disappearing, Diego had discovered that Luis B. had been deceiving him for months and was behind a robbery at his marijuana plantation that had left him ruined. He had two young daughters and had been struggling to make ends meet for months. Diego and Luis B. exchanged threats over the phone before meeting at a warehouse in San Andrés de la Barca, and the last sign of life from the victim was a missed call he made to ask his partner to open the door. After that meeting, Diego never responded to or read the messages his friends and family sent him in an attempt to reach him.

The main suspect has never confessed to the murder of Diego Vargas. This week, from the dock in the Barcelona Provincial Court's jury room, he listened as nearly thirty witnesses laid out the evidence that increasingly implicates him. For now, he has limited himself to saying that he does not recognize the accusations against him—the murder of Diego, for which he faces 15 years in prison—and next week, in the final phase of the trial, he will have the opportunity to give further explanations.

Investigating without fundamental information

Investigating Judge Zita Hernández—who has not been assigned to this specific case—states in the ARA that a crime in which the body has not been found forces the investigation to proceed without a "fundamental" source of information, which presents an added difficulty. However, she emphasizes that this in no way prevents the perpetrator from being tried and convicted of homicide or murder. In fact, she asserts that there are many other crimes in which direct evidence may be lacking for a variety of reasons. "The victim may have been drugged and unable to explain what happened, or there may be a robbery in a house with no security cameras... circumstantial evidence is common and accepted," she clarifies.

In fact, it has been a decade since the Supreme Court upheld the conviction for a double murder against Ramon Laso, the first in which no bodies or biological remains had been found, and the body of has never been located either. Marta del CastilloIn cases like this, evidence is formed based on circumstantial evidence, and the judge warns that it would be impossible to reach a trial like this with only one piece of evidence: "They have to be multiple and interconnected following a rational logic."

The interconnection of the circumstantial evidence pointing to Luis B. in the death of Diego Vargas occupied a good part of the three hours that the sergeant who leads the central missing persons unit of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) spent testifying this Friday. He is the last person who saw Diego and had "well-founded reasons to get rid of him": to prevent him from exposing his drug trafficking activities. Furthermore, Luis B. gave a false alibi when he explained what he had done in the hours following Diego's disappearance and deleted some of his WhatsApp conversations—those that showed the argument and threats from that day—before handing them over to the police. By cross-referencing data from his mobile phone and street surveillance cameras, the police confirmed that after the meeting at the warehouse, Luis B. left his phone and drove to Gavà with Diego's phone. He also drove with it to Viladecavalls, where he had another warehouse, to leave the phone and make the return trip in a taxi. He changed vans the day after Diego disappeared, when his family demanded to be allowed to enter the warehouse to search for him.