The horrifying murder of three siblings; Amelia, 67, Ángeles, 74, and José Gutiérrez Ayuso, 77, who were found at their home last week has taken a new twist this week as a Pakistani national turned himself in.
He was arrested immediately and is being held in custody.
The triple-murder took place in the municipality of Morata de Tajuña, a village of around 5,000 people, in the southeast of the Madrid region. The victims were found, partially burned in their home.
According to a police statement, the suspect, a 43 year-old Pakistani man, turned himself in on Sunday night, confessing to “his involvement in incidents related to the triple murder”. The police are investigating a possible online romance scam that led to them falling into debt to the scammer.
Neighbours had raised concerns after not seeing the two sisters and their disabled brother for some time, prompting an investigation that revealed their deaths were being treated as murders linked to the debt.
The detained individual, refrred to only as D.H.F.C, was the ‘main suspect’ in the case as he had ‘previously injured one of the female victims last year’, the police said.
Spanish media reported that there is a connection between the murders and a fraudulent online romance, and that the two sisters had engaged in what they believed to be a long-distance relationship with two alleged US servicemen.
The scam involved convincing the sisters that one of the servicemen had passed away and the other required funds to send them a multi-million-dollar inheritance, causing the sisters to rack up significant debts.
Initially they began borrowing money from neighbours with the town’s mayor Francisco Villalain telling Spanish media they had rented out a room in their home to the Pakistani suspect for several months.
During that time, the suspect had reportedly lent them €60,000 which they had never repaid, prompting his violent attack on one of the sisters for which he was briefly jailed.
‘They weren’t asking for €100 or €20, they were asking you for €5,000 or €6,000,’ one neighbour had told Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Friday.
Enrique Velilla, a local man who was a friend of the siblings, told the BBC that the women’s insistence on sending money to their supposed boyfriends had caused them to sell a property they owned in Madrid.
He also said that their requests for money had caused their bank to warn them about a possible scam.
“We told them that it was all a lie, that it was a scam,” he said. “But they didn’t want to hear the word ‘scam”.
They were ordinary people who fell in love.”
The investigation continues.
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