It was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and I could not help thinking of Sheila Barrero, who is still waiting for justice, a justice that is long overdue.
Caso Sheila Barrero, un callejón sin salida
A crime in the fog, in the middle of a mountain pass between Asturias and León, that has remained a mystery for over 17 years. The murder of 22-year-old Sheila Barrero, shot once in the back of the head, as if by execution, on the night of 25 January 2004, is a thorn in the side of a whole judicial system and has driven a family desperate for justice to the point of exhaustion.
The case has been dismissed twice, always freeing the same suspect, a friend of Sheila's, to whom the scant, insidiously rickety evidence obtained by the Guardia Civil is pointing. The accumulation of errors has finally brought this case to what appears to be a dead end.
"We are desperate because it has been so many years, and we are living a mourning that we have not yet closed," according to Sheila's sister, Monica Barrero. The family is also concerned about another issue: "There is a legal time limit for the statute of limitations and it is running out. This is taking its toll, it suffocates you, you wonder if you could have done more". The point is that they do believe that the prosecutor's office and the judges could have done more. They are so disappointed with the senior prosecutor that they are going to file a complaint against her with the Attorney General of the State.
To talk about Sheila Barrero is to enter into a labyrinth with no way out, the typical case that Netflix is producing a series of several seasons. It is necessary to go back 17 years, to try to embody a young woman who, with the passage of time, has become sadly disfigured. It is impossible to bring out her voice, her gestures. If there is one thing that those who knew her say about Sheila Barrero, it is that she was a good student and a hard-working young woman, full of vitality and eager to take on the world. She had studied tourism and worked in a travel agency in Gijón from Monday to Friday. At weekends, in the Peugeot 206 that her father had bought her, she returned to her village, Degaña, to be near her family and to supplement her salary by working as a waitress in the Joe Team pub in the nearby town of Villablino, in León.
On Saturday 24 January 2004, she had gone to work at the pub as she did every weekend. At around seven o'clock on Sunday morning, the pub closed, but the young woman went to have a drink with her colleagues in a nearby bar, the Guei. She didn't stay long, because she was very tired. At about eight o'clock, the young woman decided to return to Degaña, separated from Villablino by the Cerredo pass. Her work colleagues escorted her in their car to the crossroads at Caboalles de Abajo, where the young woman said goodbye to them and headed up the mountain pass.
It was on this climb, at the Alto de la Collada recreational area, that the crime took place. Someone (one person, two at most) stopped Sheila's car by crossing her vehicle in the middle of the road, something that was observed by a group of hunters who passed by the area shortly afterwards, without imagining what was happening. Then, whoever stopped Sheila's car climbed into the back seat of the Peugeot 206 and shot the young woman in the back of the head with a 6.5 calibre pistol.
The bullet went through the girl's head, but exited with so little force that it ricocheted off the front window of the vehicle and fell to the ground. It was half past eight in the morning. A cold-blooded, dispassionate crime, some have even thought it was professional, given the cleanliness with which it was carried out. Sheila's sister, Monica, has even speculated that someone threatened her sister with a gun in the back and fired a shot with totally unintended consequences.
The killer then moved the body to the passenger seat, drove the Peugeot 206 off the road, parked it in the recreation area, returned the now lifeless body to the driver's seat and drove off in his own vehicle. There was no sexual assault or any other violence, except for the shooting. There are even those, like the criminologist Vicente Garrido, who have claimed that the woman's body was treated with the utmost respect and delicacy. The body would be discovered a few hours later, and the mistakes that have caused this case to stall would begin to occur. The bullet left injuries so imperceptible at first glance that the coroner initially thought it was a traffic accident. It was only later, on the autopsy table, that he discovered that the young woman had been shot dead. This slowed down the action of the Guardia Civil, who ended up finding, one day late, the bullet that had killed the young woman.
The officers looked at the people who had had contact with her the day before and carried out a paraffin test on almost ten friends, acquaintances and relatives. Thirty-three hours had already passed since the crime. They discovered that at least three of them had fired shots in the previous days, something not so unusual in this area bordering Asturias and León, with a dense forest and a long hunting tradition.
But in the right hand of one of them, Borja Vidal, who was 19 years old at the time, they found "lead, antimony and barium-based particles, as well as tin", which according to the Guardia Civil had originated from the detonation of a trigger similar to that of the bullet found in the car.
The agents also discovered that Vidal and Sheila had had a relationship in the past. According to one hypothesis, the young man had resumed his relationship with a former girlfriend and felt pressured by Sheila, who did want to continue with him. In addition, a textile fibre was found in the back seats of Sheila's car attached to a scarf. The fibre was determined to be from one of Vidal's jackets. With this evidence, the agents proceeded to arrest the young man, six months after the crime, and presented him before the judge of Cangas del Narcea, Julio Martínez Zahonero.
"With much less, he would have gone to trial", says Mónica Barrero. However, something went wrong. Judge Zahonero ended up closing the case in October 2007 when he considered that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the only person under investigation. The experts pointed out that the particles found in Borja Vidal's hand could be due to a transfer. Nor was it so strange to find a particle belonging to a garment belonging to the young man, given that, as he stated, he had been inside that car. The key piece of information, however, was the statement of the suspect's parents, who assured that, on the day of the crime, Borja had spent the night at home. It was not possible to go any further. This first dismissal was a blow to the family of Sheila Barrero. They received growing public support, given that the justice system had not managed to find the culprit of the crime.
BBM
