The murder of Javier R.H., alias “El Bolas,” the drug trafficker whose dismembered body appeared in February 2015 in the trunk of his own car in the parking lot of Los Arcos del Mar Menor hospital (San Javier, Region of Murcia), has, for the moment, no culprits. The Provincial Court of Murcia acquitted late this Friday the only accused of the crime, Jesús Ángel M.J. The popular jury considered that there is no conclusive evidence that he was the one who shot the victim, so, eleven years after the event, there are no answers about what happened that February 11. The trial, which began last May 8, was already expected to be complex: the prosecutor acknowledged that there was no direct evidence of who committed the murder of El Bolas: during the investigation, no fingerprints, DNA, or biological traces of the accused were found, nor were there recordings or witnesses of the crime. Only a large number of “circumstantial” or indirect “evidences,” which have not been enough to convince the popular jury.
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The accused’s lawyer, Eduardo Romera, even recalled in the last session of the trial, held this Thursday, the case of the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof in 1999, and the conviction of her mother’s ex-partner, Dolores Vázquez, who was imprisoned for almost two years, although her innocence was finally proven and she was even recognized this past April by the Ministry of Equality. “The matter feels very familiar to me. Dolores Vázquez had, forgive the expression, a nasty face, she reminds me a lot of my client,” he said. Not in vain was the accused presented during the trial as an aggressive and impulsive person, with enormous animosity towards the victim, whom he had known since youth and with whom he had drug trafficking-related business.
Javier, El Bolas, according to his own admission, supplied him with cocaine that he sold, and they had some disputes over payments for the substances. The main one, an alleged debt of 50,000 euros that the victim wanted to collect from the accused, although that money had already been paid. The collection of a debt was the main motive considered during the police investigation of this case, which was at a standstill for almost a year until an anonymous call put the police on Jesús Ángel’s trail. Following that tip-off, recordings were made inside his vehicle, which were one of the main pieces of evidence for this trial, as the accused spoke with total contempt about his partner and even claimed he deserved his end because he “pressed” a lot in drug business.
“If he extorts me and starts screwing me, if he tells me I have to pay him, what do I do, give him what I don’t have? (…) Two shots and I clean it up (…) They’ve killed him for sure, he was asking for it,” he is heard saying in those recordings. “I’m very sorry for what I said,” the accused said several times during his testimony, in which he insisted that he was a good friend of Javier and that the recorded conversations are taken out of context, since in the months he was monitored he spoke “800 times well of him.” “Those 14 minutes (the duration of the recording in which he utters those phrases) will cost me my whole life. I lose my mouth, it’s my way of speaking and, when I hear myself, I’m ashamed,” he said. Another piece of evidence used by the prosecution was the study of the positioning of the victim’s and accused’s mobile phones in the same place on the day Javier disappeared.
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The accused had a property just over a kilometer from the parking lot where the body appeared, and the report, based on telephone antennas, could not specify the exact place where each phone was, only the area of influence. According to Jesús Ángel, he was at his property, feeding his animals and unaware of the crime. No biological traces of the victim appeared on that property, nor were there fingerprints or DNA of the accused in the car where the body was found. Regarding the weapon, the accused had a revolver deposited in a shooting club, with ammunition compatible with that used to shoot the victim, but investigators only acknowledged that “compatibility,” not that the weapon was undoubtedly the one.
Regarding the dismemberment of the body, the forensic experts pointed out that it had to be done with some kind of saw, and precisely this tool was missing from the toolbox at the property. According to Jesús Ángel, he had it at his house and never brought it to court because it was not requested. During his final argument, the accused’s lawyer pointed out that “the culprits are not sitting on the bench,” and placed them in the realm of international drug trafficking. During the investigation of this murder, as police chiefs explained during the trial, several important cocaine trafficking operations involving the victim were uncovered, and numerous people were arrested, although none of those lines revealed clues about the murder. “I feel like I’m in a Hollywood movie,” Jesús Ángel summarized in his final statement, in which he asked to be acquitted, as has happened, so that the security forces can resume the investigation and “shed light” on the case and “so that justice is done, for some people who don’t have it, and for others who need it.”
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