| Murder of Helena Jubany | |
| Date: | 2 December 2001 |
| Type: | Murder |
| Deaths: | 1 |
| Target: | Helena Jubany i Lorente |
| Cause: | Murder |
| Website: | http://helena.jubany.cat/crim/ |
Helena Jubany Lorente (Mataró, 27 February 1974 – Sabadell, 2 December 2001) was a 27-year-old librarian found dead in Sabadell, Catalonia on 2 December 2001 after being thrown off a terrace into an inner courtyard. She was found stripped naked and with several burns on her body.
The case was dismissed and a trial did not take place. The circumstances, motive or material perpetrators of the murder were never completely clear. The proceedings were marred by irregularities and the only person charged with the acts never admitted responsibility and committed suicide while in prison. On 23 March 2020, TV3’s programme CRIMS broadcast a double feature on this case.
Helena Jubany was a journalist, librarian and writer from Mataró who was integrated into the cultural and social activity of the region. She began her professional career as an intern for El Punt in Maresme, for the local TV and at the Robafaves local bookshop.[1] In 2000 she worked as a librarian in Sentmenat, where she was in charge of the children's section. As a result of this new job, she moved to a flat and lived alone in Sabadell. From then, she began to collaborate with the Nature Section of Unió Excursionista de Sabadell, a local hiking association.[2]
On 17 September 2001, Helena found a bottle of horchata with some small cakes on her doorstep with a hand-written note.[3] The note said:
Horchata was her favorite drink, so the author of the note had to have known this.[4]
On 9 October, she found a new gift on her doorstep. This time, a drink of Granini peach juice,[5] accompanied by a second note which indicated that she should accept the gift with good humour, and that soon the mystery would be revealed. The note said:
This time Jubany tasted the juice, but in doing so she found it strange and didn't finish it. Intrigued, she commissioned an analysis in a laboratory in Sabadell, where the juice was found to contain benzodiazepine, a somniferous, anxiolytic drug.[3]
Helena Jubany left home at noon on Friday, 30 November, but never arrived at the Sentmenat Library where she worked.[6] According to the investigation, on that day she received a telephone call in the morning, and at noon, she reportedly left the house and drove to 48 Calvet de Estrella Street in Sabadell. There, in the apartment of two acquaintances, Montse Careta, a teacher, and Santi Laiglesia, a criminal lawyer, someone drugged her, left her unconscious and restrained. She remained in that condition on Saturday, according to the investigations,[7] and elaborated by two forensic scientists, who explained that it takes many hours until the body eliminates a substance like benzodiazepine in the urine.[8]
Later, while still alive, she was taken to the roof of the same building, and from there she was thrown off between three and five o'clock in the morning of 2 December, with a somniferous dose 35 times higher than normal, but not enough to cause death. She died at the age of 27 after being thrown off the terrace and the subsequent impact on the ground. The autopsy confirmed that when she was thrown she was in a semi-coma.[3]
The body crashed through the clotheslines, into the back yard of an adjacent building at 91-97 Guell i Ferrer Street. A neighbor found the body at 9 o'clock in the morning of 2 December, stripped naked, and with burns on several parts of the body. Her head was disfigured as a result of the impact on the ground, which made immediate identification impossible.[9]
On Saturday 1 December Helena had arranged to have lunch with her father, Joan Jubany (Mataró, 1945). When she did not appear, he decided to call her but there was no answer. On Sunday she had arranged to meet a friend but she didn't appear either. On Monday, her father called her workplace where he was informed that she had not been to work on the previous Friday. Her father then reported her missing.
The case was taken by Judge Manuel Horacio García, of the Tribunal de Instrucción No 3 in Sabadell.[10] The first police investigations indicated that the victim "fell" from the communal terrace of the property at 48 Calvet de Estrella Street, where the Jubany's hair and clothes were found on the terrace. The burns were presumably caused before the victim fell into the yard located at the confluence of Calvet de Estrella and Guell i Ferrer. A whitish substance was also found in her vagina, but the investigation did not clarify what it was.
Jubany's death caused a strong impact in Mataró, where the victim was well known in cultural circles.[11] The first interrogations of family members, workmates, neighbors and friends allowed the police to determine that Montserrat Careta i Herrera was the one person who had a connection to the place where the body was found. Montserrat Careta i Herrera, who lived on Calvet de Estrella street, in the building which had the terrace from which the victim was allegedly thrown. The investigations then identified a connection among Montserrat Careta, Santi Laiglesia, a criminal lawyer and Careta's sentimental partner,[12] and Ana Echaguivel Rad who were all associated with the hiking group Unió Excursionista de Sabadell.
It was also suggested that the handwritten notes may have been written by Montserrat Careta, and part of the second written note by the other defendant Ana Echaguivel. None of the defendants could verify where they were on the night of the events, nor why they had not gone to work on the morning of 3 December.[3] Both Careta and Laiglesia participated in a trip with the Sabadell Hiking Group on 2 December, although they were not previously registered.[7]
On 12 February 2002, Montserrat Careta was arrested as the alleged perpetrator of the crime. She was detained on remand at Wad-Ras prison in Barcelona.[13] Found in her flat were two pots of Noctamid, a psychopharmacological drug with hypnotic effects that contains Benzodiapezine, the same substance found in the body of the victim. The national police also located a box of matches like those found on the roof, which were allegedly used to burn Helena.[5] During her time in prison, Careta always protested her innocence through letters she sent to family and friends.
While Careta was in jail, the judge indicted Santiago Laiglesia and Ana Echaguivel. On 23 March, he arrested Echaguivel, then 32-years-old and a neighbor of Sabadell, when a calligraphy test determined that she was the author of the first half of the second anonymous letter that Jubany had received in the weeks before her death.[9]
On 7 May 2002, Montserrat Careta was found dead hanging in the bathroom of her cell in Barcelona's Wad-Ras prison, according to her lawyer, Joaquim Escudé. She left a note in which she claimed that she was innocent of the murder attributed to her.[14] Ana Echaguivel, also in pre-trial detention, was released on charges a few days later, in June 2002.
The secret of the summary proceedings was lifted in the autumn of 2002, and Helena Jubany's relatives held a press conference on 3 October, where family lawyer Pep Manté reported a possible hypothesis of the murder attributable to a "role playing game".[11] The legal representative of the family argued that under no circumstances did the young woman suspect that she was part of a macabre game that would lead to her death. He claimed that Jubany had commented that she had received anonymous notes, but was not afraid, only intrigued and curious.
The investigation remained open to determine the events that occurred between noon on 30 November and 9am on 2 December, when the body was found. Santi Laiglesia, who was considered the co-author in the murder did not appear in any of the almost 1,000 pages of the investigation. Laiglesia's lawyer, Joaquim Escuder, declared: "See? We will never really know what happened"[15]
The case was finally closed in October 2005, when the judge considered that the "solidity of the evidence" was not "sufficient" to sustain the accusation, against Careta's sentimental companion, Santiago Laiglesia Pla, or Ana Echaguivel, both members of the UES.[5]
In 2017, two journalism students, Anna Prats and Iago García, tried to gather all the information so that the facts could be clarified. Both the families of the victim as well as Montserrat Careta consider that the perpetrator or perpetrators of the murder "remain free".[5] Careta's relatives point out that Laiglesia, a lawyer and criminologist, almost always slept in the same building as the events and, according to the Careta family, had the keys to the flat. In addition, according to the family, the box of matches and Noctamid were perfectly positioned to draw quick and easy conclusions two months after the event. Also the results of the first calligraphy test were discarded after later studies.
The relatives of Jubany and Careta demanded the reopening of the case, arguing irregularities in the investigation. They question why investigators didn't take fingerprints from Helena's car, the flat or the terrace, and why the police waited for hours before searching Montserrat Careta's flat when she was arrested.[11] They also argue that the evidence seemed "prepared", because if Montserrat Careta had actually administered the drugs to Jubany and burned her, she would not have left the incriminating evidence at home for more than two months.[13] [7]
Another argument they add is that even if Careta were guilty, her small stature would not have allowed her to commit the crime alone, since, as detailed in the investigation, she wouldn't have had the strength to carry Helena Jubany's unconscious body up the stairs. She lived on the third floor and would have had to carry the body to the roof, located on the fourth floor of a building without a lift. Nor would she have had the strength to lift her up and then throw her off the terrace.[13] A language study was published in December 2018, ruling out the theory that the anonymous letters had been written by Montserrat Careta.[16] [17] In fact, a national police officer strongly believes that the killer is Santiago Laiglesia.[4]
The perpetrator and motive of the crime are still to be solved, and in 2025 the crime will become unprosecutable in accordance with the law.
In 2007 the Helena Jubany Cultural Association was created to keep her memory alive. An annual literary prize for short narratives or a collection of stories is held each year in the capital of Maresme.