The jury declares guilty of murder the man who killed his partner with 66 stab wounds in Palma

PalmaThe Jury Court has declared the man who, on December 10, 2024, killed his partner with 66 stab wounds while driving along the Camí de Can Pastilla, in Palma, with their daughter, a baby of a few months old, in the back seat of the vehicle, guilty of murder.

The Public Prosecutor's Office and the rest of the accusations are requesting that he be sentenced to 27 years in prison. After more than 24 hours of deliberation, the jury has considered it proven that the defendant went by car with his ex-partner, despite having a protection order in force, to pick up their daughter from nursery school. At a certain moment, the man took out in a “sudden and unexpected” way a knife that he was carrying hidden in his clothes and inflicted up to 66 stab wounds on the victim.

The woman, María del Rosario, died a few minutes later, mainly due to the wounds that perforated her jugular and lungs. According to the jury, the man murdered her “driven by her condition as a woman and by the context of domination” to which he had subjected her. After killing her, the accused continued driving with the corpse inside the vehicle until he caused an accident in which his daughter was also injured. Shortly after, he was arrested. The jury has also rejected that drug use could have conditioned the acts of the accused. Although admitting that he could have had occasional consumption, it has not considered it proven that he suffered from an addiction that altered his behavior.

“A brutality” that impacted the investigators

The jury trial has been held this week at the Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands. During the hearing, the head of the National Police Homicide group declared that, in his entire professional career, he had never seen “such brutality.” The doctor who performed the autopsy confirmed that the attacker had used “considerable and significant” force, which caused María del Rosario to die “in a matter of seconds or a few minutes” due to massive blood loss.

The victim's relatives also testified during the trial that the accused kept the woman “subjugated” and “annulled” and that he had already made death threats against everyone. In his final report, the family's lawyer, Carlos Portalo, maintained that the man considered the victim an object. “She was an object to him and, if she was not an object to him, she would not be to anyone. He killed her because she wanted to be herself,” he stated. In the last session of the trial, the accused read a written statement of his own in which he claimed that he had acted in a moment of impulse and that he was out of his mind. “I had the devil inside me,” he maintained. The jury's guilty verdict clears the way for the Provincial Court to pass sentence. The Public Prosecutor's Office and the other accusations are requesting a 27-year prison sentence for the accused.

At the end of the session, the accusations requested the extension of provisional detention, the term of which ends on December 11, 2026. The request is pending resolution and the trial is adjourned for sentencing.