“We are without a doubt before the personification of the vilest of evils. We are before a predator and before a guy that every time he has set foot on the street he has sexually assaulted, raped and murdered.” With these words, the lawyer Alicia Redondo, who has represented the victim’s family and the Clara Campoamor association in what is known as the trial of the Lardero crime, has defined the last session of the trial of the defendant Francisco Javier Almeida, who has made Use your right to the last word.
The lawyer reminded the jury court that the accused of the sexual assault and murder of nine-year-old Alex was sentenced in 1993 to seven years in prison for the rape of a minor. After being released from jail for this crime, in 1998 he was again arrested and convicted of the rape and murder of a young real estate agent. “He wanted to do what he did, he is a sexual predator who satisfies his most disgusting desires. He wanted to kill Álex and he killed him, she said in reading her final accusation, in which both she and the prosecution have reaffirmed their reviewable permanent imprisonment petition.
“Alex met his death in a hasty manner, with an extreme violence that has torn us all apart during the trial and that has probably made us hold back our tears once and for all. I ask that once and for all, please, do us a favor to society, let’s protect ourselves once and for all. Have no doubt that this individual, the moment he sets foot on the street again, will do it again. For Álex and for all the victims of this barbaric , of this heartless, of this ruthless being, I ask you please, forcefully, that guilty verdict”, the lawyer concluded her speech
The prosecutor has defined Almeida, 55, as a “remorseless predator” and “an extremely cold person.” And so, without shaking his voice or showing any kind of emotion, he has made use of his right to the last word in the final session of the trial that has been held against him in the Provincial Court of Logroño. He had not testified until now, explained his lawyer, so that the media could not “distort his testimony.”
“I did not want to say anything while the hearing was held because everything was leaked to the media and things were misrepresented or invented,” began his version of what happened on October 28, 2021 in Lardero (Logroño). “On the day of the events, it is true that he had been drinking, it is true, drinking does not affect all of us equally,” he insisted on excessive alcohol consumption, which the defense argued during his defense trial.
“I went down to the park, it’s true, but not just to look for boys or girls or minors, no, I went down to the park because sometimes I went down to smoke. Sometimes a child would talk to me, well I would talk to him, but not He spoke for no hunting purpose, as is being said in the media and has been exposed in this room”.
Almeida has wanted to dismantle in his story the version of the minors in the neighborhood, who told the Police that they were constantly looking at them and watching them from a window of their building. “They are coming to insist that it overlooks the park and it is not true. From the window you cannot see the park or the minors.”
And this is how he recounted how he approached Álex: “On the day of the events, it is true that I went down to the park, I had no intention of anything, it is true that I saw Álex out there wandering and such, and well, I told him, I It came out like this: ‘Do you want me to show you a bird that I have at home, so you can see how beautiful it is?’ I didn’t say anything else, nor did I force it, nor did I force it, nor did I grab it.”
Also impassive, without his voice breaking, he has narrated how the alleged sexual assault occurred, which he denies, and the death of Álex. “Once we were on the floor, Álex saw the bird, it was very pretty, you liked it a lot. At that moment I began to have a certain fantasy. Let’s see, they are saying that if I put my penis in or if I didn’t put my penis in , what if so … The only thing I did was show him my penis and pass it over his face, “he said, denying that he had ejaculated in Álex’s mouth, as the prosecutor and the private prosecution maintain based on the analyzes of the National Institute Toxicology, which detected sperm inside the child’s mouth. “There is no proof that I have ejaculated on Álex. What is found is seminal flow. Since I did not have an erection or anything, the seminal flow came out. There could not have been sperm because I did not ejaculate, I did not ejaculate.”
At that moment, Almeida continued his version, he began to hear a ruckus in his building. It was about the police officers and Álex’s relatives who were looking for him. “Noises began to be heard, like ringing. I don’t know for sure, but I know that [Álex] wanted to run away and I grabbed him by the shirt from behind, it’s true. With one hand I covered his mouth and with the other, it’s true , that I put it like that on his neck, but without pressing it, because I had no intention of killing him, none, and he was moving and that’s why he has those scratches on his neck,” he said about the marks on the boy’s neck, which, according to specialists, is due to a violent strangulation that caused her death by suffocation.
Without changing his gesture or his tone of voice, absolutely calm, he explained that when he realized that the child had lost consciousness, he went out in search of help. “Not as they say around here, that he still wanted to put it in the car, that he still wanted to hide it. No, I went out to ask for help. I went out with the zipper down and I didn’t put on my coat either. I wanted to ask for help,” he told the court . “I went down the stairs with the child in my arms, I didn’t cover him, I didn’t put a sheet on him, I didn’t put him in a sports bag…”, he insisted in his defense and in line with the defense of his lawyer, who asks for the free acquittal and, in case of conviction, requests that the mitigating mitigation of recognition of the facts and reparation of the damage be applied.
He has also referred to the request that he presented in the Logroño prison and in which he recognized himself as the author of Álex’s death: “I am the one who killed Lardero’s child,” he said in the letter. “I filed the case in Logroño because I regretted it, I regretted it, it was not pre-calculated, I really regretted it,” he concluded before asking “forgiveness to all those who have hurt and to the family.”
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