A Double Murder in Madrid

that morning. When the Marquis's driver arrived at the chalet, he told the cook how strange it was that they had slept in so late. They called them on the internal line in the house and no one answered. When they went up to the Marquis's room, they found that Maria lords or Quillo and Manuel de la Sierre Torres had been murdered. Aside from the cook, there hadn't been any other domestic workers in the house. Maria and Manuel had encouraged them to take the previous afternoon and evening off.

The cook would later tell the police that she hadn't heard anything. Even more inexplicable was that Bully, the marquess's famously loud poodle, didn't bark even once that night. It seemed like whoever had carried out the murders knew the house well. The killer got in through the indoor pool, using a blow torch to activate the latch and get into the main house. Even though they broke through the glass door in the back of the house, no glass shattered to the ground. They knew where the alarm was

and switched it off. Nothing was stolen. There was no clear suspect. Initially, Maria and Manuel's children, Miriam and Juan, were considered. After all, the nobles had forty three million pesitas that their children could have inherited upon their parents' deaths, but both had alibis. Miriam was with her lover, Richard Rue, a coworker from her office whom the press nicknamed Dick the American, and Juan was in London getting a master's degree in finance. When the police finally did arrive at

the scene, they discovered one even stranger detail. Someone had already washed the blood off of Maria and Manuel's bodies. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood with no suspect in sight. The investigator on the case declared, quote, this case is inexplicable. After spending a few hours at the crime scene. The case would remain inexplicable four months. The police couldn't find any solid evidence that could pin

anyone to the murders. There was no murder weapon, no DNA, just a few bullet casings at the marquess's summer house. This didn't stop the press from speculating about the culprit of course. By nineteen eighty, the Franco dictatorship had been over for just five years and journalists were eager to flex their new freedom of expression. Besides, in the middle of the summer heat, when many Spaniards were on vacation,

there was barely any other news to report on. On August second, nineteen eighty, the only other story making it to the front page of a major Spanish newspaper, El Pais, was government vacations paralyzed political activity. The case would only pick up steam as months passed and the press speculated on potential culprits. Readers devoured stories about the iquios in various newspapers and weeklies, theorizing that the murderer was a

member of the Basque nationalist terrorist group. ETA later that it was a hit man, or even that it could have been a former domestic worker fired for a gay affair with the marquess. A clear suspect finally emerged nearly a year after the murders. One morning in April nineteen eighty one, a child playing in the San Juan reservoir in Madrid found a pistol on the shore. This gun matched the one that had killed the Marquesses of Quillo,

a small twenty two caliber pistol with a silencer. It was registered in the name of Miguel Escobedo, the father of Rafi de Escovedo, the Marquess's estranged son in law, who was married to their daughter, Miriam. Rafi Escobedo was a handsome law school dropout and a known playboy. Like the Marquesses, he was also a noble, as his mom was from the Prada Armeno family, but his parents had fallen on hard times. His family's dire financial circumstances didn't

get in the way of his social life. He spent his teens and early twenties cavorting with Madrid's young elite Miriam de la Sierra, the marquess's daughter, and Raffi, met at their equestrian club when she was twenty. Miriam developed a crush instantly. She wrote in her memoirs, quote Raffi was very attentive, charismatic, friendly, and very affectionate. He was all he's making plans. He took me to parties. He even taught me how to dress differently. Raffi provided a

refreshing contrast to Miriam's strict upbringing. Her father was known for being stingy with his kids, to such an extent that Miriam and Juan were called the poor in their posh circle of friends. She started working at the age of fourteen to earn her own money. With no allowance to speak of, Miriam hoped that with her responsible, practical attitude, she could clean up Raffi's act. She wrote in her memoirs, I love being a mother to everyone. Raffi was like

a child, attractive, charming, friendly. So with Raffi, I adopted the same role of savior. I wanted to transform him. Being so young and sheltered, Miriam wasn't yet aware that an I can fix him. Attitude doesn't exactly bode well

for a couple. The Marquesses were not so naive. They strongly objected to their daughter's marriage, since Raphael had no job or prospects, but Miriam stuck to her guns, and after a year and a half of dating, the couple married at the Church of Humera on June twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, with all members of the high society, from the Duchess of Alba to the Egyptian ambassador in attendance. The marriage deteriorated almost immediately, as soon as Miriam said,

I do she regretted marrying Rafi. They started out living with her parents in their summer home in Sasagas, but they clashed constantly. Once Rafai even called the Marquess his father in law a quote pig, miser and cretan. In response, the Marquess threatened to cut Rafae off without a passetta. Sick of fighting with Raffi, the Marquesses threw the young

couple out of their house. The newlyweds went to live in an apartment in Madrid, where they suffered various periods of financial hardship without Miriam's parents stepping in to support them, which Raffi resented. Raffi and Miriam were so broke that he had to pawn Miriam's engagement bracelet. Soon they began

living completely separate lives. Sometimes Miriam would come home from work and find their apartment full of people drinking, doing drugs, and gambling, things that she recalls she quote couldn't or didn't want to know about. She felt she never fit in with Raffie's friends other rich kidd layabouts when she never drank a drop of alcohol in her life. Miriam wrote, quote, little by little, I realized that my relationship with Raffi

was hopeless. At first we had daily arguments, but later he decided to disappear and dedicate himself to his travels. After just six months of marriage, Miriam and Raffie were separated. Miriam, regretting her union with Raffi, made amends with her parents, who,

to their credit, never said I told you so. The marquess and his deeply religious wife, a member of the Roman Catholic Opus Day Organization, agreed to try and help Miriam escape her marriage by seeking a church annulment by Easter nineteen seventy nine, nine months after she had married Raffi. Miriam was in a new relationship with Dick the America, a coworker at the company she worked at. By the time of the murders, Miriam and Raffi had been separated

for over two years. Initially, neither the police nor Miriam considered Rafi as suspect because he had no financial motive. He didn't stand to inherit anything if the marquesses died because they had signed a separation of property agreement before the marriage. But after finding the pistol at the San Juan reservoir, another motive emerged revenge. Unlike Miriam, Raffi resented his in laws for their stinginess and blamed them for

their financial struggles. They had fought constantly, and Raffi made no secret of his hatred of his father in law. It's true that Raffi's general incompetence seems not to fit the precision of the crime, with not even a shard of glass left at the crime scene, but he was also a loose cannon, unpredictable and reckless. Miriam began to wonder if Raffi's venomous words for her father could have turned into actual violence. In the weeks after the murder,

she remembered a frightening anecdote from her past. After a particularly bad fight with the marquess, Raffi had told her, I have a plan prepared and I am going to kill your family. A few days after finding the gun in the San Juan reservoir in April nineteen eighty one, inspectors went to Raffi's family home with a search warrant. At the shooting range, they collected samples of bullet casings which they compared with the ones from the crime scene.

They confirmed that they were the same, and so they had to the Escobedo family ranch in Quinca, where Raffi had retired with the intention of setting up a pig farm. From there, Raffi was taken to the General Directorate of Security, which at that time was located in Puerta del Sol in Madrid. Raffi suffered through hours of interrogation and humiliation, and at the end of the night he confessed he had killed the Marquesses of Urquillo, and he also said

he had not done it alone. He wrote by hand in a statement, I am guilty of the death of my in laws, the Marquesses of Urquillo, he gave key details. He said that he used tape to break the glass door that led to the pool of the village or wooden chatter. He refused to say who else had been with him that night. The next day, he immediately recanted,

saying that he confessed under duress. Although he did admit to having been in the Samasaguas mansion that night, he said that he was not the one who pulled the trigger and actually killed his in laws. After Raffi insisted

on his innocence, the case suffered even more setbacks. The four twenty two caliber shells that had been found in the marquess's room and the two hundred and sixty five that had been collected at the Raffi's family estate disappeared from court, as did the murder weapon recovered in the reservoir and Raffi's handwritten confession. When the trial finally began, it was a media event. Journalists crowded in the front row, and the courtroom was so packed that people could barely

get in and out. Hossein Maria Stampabroun, Raffi's defense attorney, emphasized that having lost all of the evidence, the prosecution did not have enough proof to convict Raffi. The lack of evidence made both sides cases much more difficult. The defense expert claimed that the shells from the crime scene didn't match the ones from Raffi's house, while the police maintained the opposite. Still, the defense attorney Stampa Braun put

up a formidable defense. When the prosecution brought out an expert witness testifying to these similarities between the two sets of casings, Braun dictated to the Secretary of the court a report in which he qualified and questioned that evidence. The prosecutor interrupted him, saying that he was behaving inappropriately.

Braun responded, quote, if the detailed report of a lawyer made in defense of someone who is risking sixty years in prison is considered inappropriate, then I from this moment resigned from the defense and ceased to be a lawyer because I am not interested in collaborating with justice. The audience in the courtroom burst into applause, and the presiding

judge had to order the courtroom to be cleared. For their part, the psychiatrists who examined Raffi and testified at the trial established that he was quote incapable of killing a fly. They concluded that he lacked the quote capacity, intellect and will to kill with such certainty and coldness.

Ismael Fuente and Camilla vele Quantos, who covered the trial for L Payes, wrote on June twenty fourth, nineteen eighty three, quote, with the exception of Escobedo's confession of guilt, which he later retracted, and which is the central issue of the trial, from the point of view of the criminal procedure law, none of the alleged evidence could be proven to the end accused, but it seemed like the judge ban Venito Guevara had already decided Raffi was guilty from the beginning

of the trial. According to a journalist who covered the case, one of the sessions of the trial began with the judge saying to Raffi guilty, one get up. On July seventh, nineteen eighty three, Guevara's sentence was released to the public in a decision that only took up a page and a half. Raffi Escobedo alday was sentenced to twenty six years, eight months and one day of imprisonment for each of the crimes. For committing two crimes of murder with the

aggravating circumstances of premeditation and nocturnality. Upon hearing the sentence, Raffi said, I didn't think I was going to be convicted. What can you do in spite of the shaky evidence. With the trial over and a verdict reached, it would seem that the Archio case was closed, But in his sentence, the judge included a phrase that would fuel decades of

further investigation by the police and press alike. He stated that Escobato murdered his former in laws, either alone or in the company of others lo and Behold No more than Two days after the verdict had been reached, a bombshell article dropped in Spanish magazine Interview that promised to reveal who those others might have been. On July ninth, nineteen eighty three, Interview magazine introduced a new suspect into the Arquio case, Mauricio Lopez Roberts, fifth Marquis of Torre Amosa.

Lopez Roberts was a close friend of Raffi's and ran in the same circle of Madrid socialites. The magazine alleged that being a good shot and an inveterate hunter. He had ordered a silencer for a gun from a workshop days before the crime. The silencer, which they alleged, was then used on the gun that killed the Marquesses. Mauricio Lopez Roberts was taken into police custody, where he clarified that the silencer he had ordered was for a rifle,

not a pistol, disproving the allegations from the magazine. Still, he admitted that he was connected to the case. Lopez Roberts told the inspectors that on July thirty first, nineteen eighty, after having dinner at Ls Bejo and a few drinks, Raffi arrived with his friend Javier and Aastasio. Anastasio was another boy from a well off family, a flirt and a party animal who spent his nights out at famous Madrid clubs. Anastasio and Raffi had been friends since they

were six. Anastasio did not belong to a family of ancient lineage, nor did he have a noble last name, but his father owned a gas station in the center of Madrid, with which he amassed a considerable fortune, which made him a rich kid. According to Lopez Roberts, after dinner, Anastasio did not accompany Raffi to the chalet to kill

the marquesses. That said, on August third, nineteen eighty, Raffi met Anastasio in Madrid's Placa del Conde del Villa Asuchil, where he gave him the bag he had taken two somasaguas on the night of the crime. It contained guns, gloves, a blow torch, and the hammer that had been used to gain access to the inside of the house. Apparently, Raffi asked Anastasio not to look at what was inside the bag and just to get rid of it, and Anastasio was the one who threw it into the San

Juan reservoir the next day. Lopez Roberts warned Anastasio of the danger if he were arrested, and recommended that he flee to England and from there to South Africa, a country with which there was no extradition treaty. Since Anastasio had no money on hand to escape, Lopez Roberts lent him twenty five pesetas. The police confirmed this information and also confirmed Lopez Roberts' alibi for the night of the murders.

It might seem strange that Lopez Roberts would confess to helping an accessory to the crime escape, but he declared that Raffi's sentence was indefensible and that he just wanted to help the police find the true culprit. I say this now because I want justice to be done, he told the police, while assuring that his friend was innocent

and was paying the price for others. After Lopez Robert's revelation, both he and Anastasio, who hadn't actually fled, were arrested and both spent three and a half years in provisional prison awaiting trial. They were released on March twenty first, nineteen eighty seven. Nine months later, a lawyer went to Anastasio's house to notify him that the Madrid Provincial Court had set the date for the oral hearings for both his and Lopez Roberts's trial, but Anastasio was nowhere to

be found. It turned out he had escaped. He took a bag with some clothes and the money from an apartment he had sold, and drove across the border into Portugal with one of his eight brothers. From there, he took a direct flight to Brazil, a country with no extradition treaty with Spain. Meanwhile, Rafi Escobedo was in prison. He had been transferred to al Duezo prison in cell number four on the second floor. He decorated it with photos of Miriam and paper airplanes in every corner of

the room. Raffi also kept in his cell a collection of letters stored in cardboard boxes and a canary. While in prison, Ralfi agreed to an interview with the journalist Jesus Quintero, who had the nickname the Madman on the Hill. Raffi spoke of his depression in prison and his alleged unfair treatment by the justice system. There has been no investigation and there will be no investigation because nobody interested in investigating it, he said to Quintero, I am nothing

any more. On July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, fourteen days after that interview, Raffi Escobedo was found hanged at the age of thirty three in his cell. He had

hanged himself using a sheet. Later that year, Lopez Roberts was taken to court where the judge, who happened to be the son of the judge who had originally tried Raffi, presided over the case, Lopez Roberts was accused by the prosecutor of covering up the perpetrators of the murders and of having had news of the event both from Raffi and from Anastasio. The case was much less of a media event than it had been in the early eighties.

The courtroom was not even half full. In court, Lopez Roberts tried to downplay his knowledge of the crime, saying, Raffi told many things, some were true and others were not. I did not believe absolutely everything he told me because he had changed his version about two hundred times. But Lopez Roberts admitted to having met with Anastasio the day

after Rafi's arrest at a cafe in Madrid. Quote, I found him very worried about the arrest, and I advised him to go to London, where his girlfriend was, so that she could console him. He told me that he had no money, and I lent him twenty five pisetas if I knew that Anastasio was actually involved in the affair, I wouldn't have lent him that money so he could

go anywhere. Lopez Roberts maintained almost to the end that in his conversation with Anastasio, the latter made no reference to having gotten rid of a bag containing the gun used in the murders, the hammer, the blowtorch, and abutane cylinder used to break into the quio. He knew from Rafi that Anastasio had taken care to get rid of these objects, but at the cafe they didn't mention it quote as Lopez Roberts says, although I imagine he was worried

about it. On February twenty sixth, nineteen ninety, Lopez Roberts was sentenced to ten years in prison for being an accessory to the crime, lending Anastasio money to escape the country. While Lopez Roberts served his prison sentence, Anastasio was still missing. It wasn't until twenty fifteen that Vanity Fair finally found

Javier Anastasio in Buenos Aires. The charges against him have been dropped, and he insisted on his innocence, alleging that Juan de la Sierra, the marquess's son, was actually the one behind the murder. He poked holes in Juan's alibi that he was in London at the time, saying that none of the journalists who had waiting for Juan at the airport to see him arrive back to Madrid, had actually seen him, and that Juan denied a judge's request

to show his plane ticket and passport. Most damningly, he said that the Knight Raffi, told Anastasio to take him to the Marquess's house. Raffi had said it was because he had an appointment with Wan. It's still unclear what exactly happened on the night of July thirty first, nineteen eighty and who killed the marquesses. Even if you believe that Raffi did pull the trigger, Javier Anastasio buried the

evidence and Mauricio Lopez Roberts helped Anastasio escape. It remains murky what Raffi would have had to gain from such a gruesome murder and why his friends were so willing to help him with such a high profile crime. It's even less clear if there were even more people were involved in the crime. It was the case's ambiguity that so captivated the Spanish media. Their Quio murders were the first parallel trial in democratic Spain, creating a media circus

and a slew of conspiracies in its wake. Every aspect of the case was up for debate, even the smallest detail, like why the marquess's poodle didn't bark when an intruder arrived that night, or why the bodies of the marquesses were washed before the police arrived, making a forensic autopsy impossible.

We still don't have answers for those questions, and police mismanagement only made things worse, given that the most crucial evidence in this case, the murder weapon, the bullet casings found at the scene of the crime, and Raffi's handwritten confession all went missing. This allowed the media to pick apart and speculate about every detail and let conspiracy theories proliferate. As a journalist who covered the case put it quote, it had all of the ingredients of a good soap opera.

Two dead marquesses, Raffi's morbid gang, well off guys who spent their time drinking gin and tonics at the country club. There was also a divorce, an American lover, a guy with no job or prospects, strange moves in the jet set. This case had everything everything, perhaps except definite answers. That's the end of the story of the murder of the Marquesses of her Quio, but keep listening to hear even more about some shady behavior that happened in the house

on the morning of the murders. The day after the murder, the marquess's financial administrator, a man named Diego Martinez Herrara, arrived to work wearing black clothes as if he were already in mourning, even though it was a sweltering August in Madrid. As soon as he found out what had happened, he went immediately to the Marquess's office. He took some documents from the table and went out to the garden

to burn them. He asked for help from the butler to burn the documents, but the butler kept many of the papers and then handed them over to the police. This detail continues to confound those investigating the crime what documents were burned and why. While we don't have an answer and the police never considered the administrator nor the butler prime suspects, the act was suspicious enough to raise

questions about the involvement in the case. Raffi, for example, did accuse Diego Martinez Herrera of collaborating with Juan, their son in murdering the Marquesses for the record, The butler, who took every opportunity to talk to the press about the murder, also blamed Juan and Diego for the horrific crime. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Nobel Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,

Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin andrima il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.