The sad end of the businessman who was a key witness in the crime of the widow of the former president of CAM

ValenciaBuried more than two meters deep in the well of a house in the Bacarot district of Alicante. This is how the National Police discovered the body of Valencian businessman Jesús Tavira, 63, who had been missing since March 18. He is a well-known businessman in the scrap and vehicle trading sector, who was also the key witness in the famous trial for the 2016 shooting murder of María del Carmen Martínez, the widow of Vicente Sala, former president of the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo (CAM), acquired by Banco Sabadell.

, the widow of Vicente Sala, the former president of the Mediterranean Savings Bank (CAM), acquired by Banco Sabadell.

Although the discovery of a medal and other personal effects recognized by Tavira's family already indicated that it was the businessman, for his identification it was necessary for forensic teams to conduct tests and fingerprint comparisons, which confirmed that the prints belonged to the well-known Alicante businessman. According to investigators, the victim's body was in an "advanced state of decomposition" and had "multiple stab wounds all over the body" and was wrapped and buried under two meters of concrete.

A suspicious worker

From the first moment, agents ruled out a voluntary disappearance and focused their investigation on one of the businessman's company employees. After giving a statement at police premises, the employee maintained he had seen Tavira leaving the business accompanied by two people. However, various checks refuted this version.

According to the National Police, the collected evidence regarding the worker's alleged involvement proved "decisive" for agents to reinforce the belief of a "possible fatal outcome." This hypothesis placed the employee's family home, in the district of El Bacarot, at the center of the investigation, with the conviction that this was where the body was hidden. Nevertheless, a search of more than ten hours was necessary to confirm the initial suspicions.

Links with the accused in the CAM crime

One of the elements that has most caught the attention of the case is that the victim was one of the witnesses in another of the most famous crimes that occurred in Alicante in recent years: the murder of María del Carmen Martínez. During the investigation of what has been dubbed the Sala case, it was documented that, in the days leading up to the crime, Tavira had more than 200 communications with the main suspect, Miguel López, who was the victim's son-in-law, and who was ultimately declared not guilty by a popular jury.

During the investigation of Martínez's murder, the businessman – who, according to information from the newspaper El País also dealt in auctions and lent money to individuals – was interrogated on several occasions by the National Police, without any link to the events being proven. Everything suggests that both had commercial ties for years related to the sale and purchase of vehicles. In fact, López was the manager of Novocar, the dealership where the woman's murder took place, and Tavira managed a vehicle dismantling company.

López's acquittal was definitively validated in 2025 by the Constitutional Court, which annulled the Supreme Court's decision to revoke the sentence acquitting the defendant of murder and ordering a new trial with a different jury. During the process, the popular jury adopted the defense's arguments, which stated that "there was no direct evidence" that López was at the crime scene at the time of the murder, despite the 23 indications pointed out by the public prosecutor's office. This is because no DNA evidence, fingerprints, gunpowder residue, or the weapon were found. Thus, the murder of the widow of the former president of CAM remains unsolved.