Francisco Javier Almeida was out of prison the day he killed nine-year-old Álex, against the criteria of the professionals who treated him inside the prison, who did not trust his reinsertion or his rehabilitation. The report prepared by the technicians at the El Dueso prison (Cantabria) in February 2020 was clear: there was a risk of recidivism. This is how they expressed it in a dossier known in part after the tragedy but to whose textuality EL MUNDO has had access, for the first time.
If the report prepared by a jurist, psychologist, educator and social worker had been followed, the person today known as Lardero’s monster would not have been in third grade when he committed the crime on October 28, 2021, but Penitentiary Institutions, integrated department in the Ministry of the Interior, he ended up choosing the side of the prisoner, who was not serving a sentence until 2023.
The specialists insisted on its dangerousness and bet on its continuity within the penalty. They attribute, verbatim, “a medium-high recidivism prognosis.” And they expose their warning: «The seriousness and criminal recidivism motivate that there are not enough guarantees for the proper use of the semi-liberty regime (third degree)».
The dossier was put to a vote among the nine members that make up the prison treatment board. Six voted against Almeida’s departure and three validated his partial freedom. As it was not a unanimous decision, the inmate appealed to the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions, which decided to grant him the third degree because, objectively, Almeida had the law on his side: 23 years in prison, good behavior, 38 leaves enjoyed without incident and excellent disposition in prison life.
His background was not well calibrated, which made sense of the content of the report that advised against the third degree: a conviction in 1993 for raping and attempting to strangle a 13-year-old girl and the murder of a 26-year-old woman in 1998, fresh out of prison. The technicians recalled it in the section entitled “Assessment of alternatives and motivation for the proposal”: “Inmate serving a sentence for sexual assault (repeat) and murder (treachery).” Next, they report his behavior in prison and comment on him: “Good behavior and proper use of leave. However, seriousness and criminal recidivism mean that there are not enough guarantees for the good use of semi-liberty.
After the approval of Penitentiary Institutions in February 2020, Almeida was transferred from the Cantabrian prison to Logroño. It was March 2020. His was a restricted third degree far removed from standard technique. He could not go out on weekends and had to stay at the Center for Social Insertion. The confinement imposed by Covid-19 on March 16, 2020 played in favor of Almeida since, in general, it was ordered that all third-grade inmates not return to prisons.
On April 8 of that year, he agreed to parole after the Logroño Penitentiary Surveillance judge agreed and the Prosecutor’s Office did not oppose. He settled in the new area of ??Lardero (La Rioja), where Álex lived with his family. Until then, the prison system had always been wary of him.
Francisco Javier Almeida was able to access the third degree in 2017, three-quarters of the sentence that the La Rioja Court imposed on him for treacherously murdering a real estate employee in 1998. He also had good behavior. But he ran into the judgment against the El Dueso prison treatment board. The committee was not clear about his transition to freedom. The follow-up offered no guarantees and those doubts of the professionals about returning him to the street caused the prison to delay his release for three years.
During the trial, the different professionals who have taken the stand have woven a profile of Almeida that allows him to be classified as a monster. Especially heartbreaking was the testimony of the agent who investigated the proceedings, who detailed that the marks presented by Álex were “extremely violent.” The child, he added, had bruises in the mouth, on the upper gum and the inner lip, some marks of “high violence.” He also had it on his neck, the result of suffocation caused from behind, with his arm, even going up. Something that made the child “absolutely” have no means of defense. Forensics ruled in the same direction. They declared that the child died of suffocation after an attack carried out with extreme violence and brutality.
The doctors who studied his mind concluded last summer that Almeida is capable of distinguishing between good and evil, that he knew what he was doing and that he has no regrets. “We can conclude that there is no psychiatric diagnosis or psychopathological alteration,” indicated the forensics.
Francisco Javier Almeida is facing a request for a reviewable permanent prison for a crime of murder; and 15 years in prison for a crime of sexual assault, both in the crime of Álex. Today the last session of the trial is held and it will be then when the president of the jury delivers the object of the verdict to the people’s court so that its members can retire to deliberate. In his statement at trial, the only one since he killed the child on October 28, 2021, Almeida assured that it was not his “intention to attack and kill him” and even went so far as to allege that Álex did everything “voluntarily”. His attempt to mitigate the facts by attributing his behavior to alcohol consumption was disassembled.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
