In November 2022, a scrap dealer, while rummaging through trash, discovered a man’s torso in a suitcase in a container. This incident occurred in the Eixample district of Barcelona. On Monday, the defendant, who pleaded guilty to killing and dismembering his landlord, accepted a ten-year prison sentence for the murder, taking into account the mitigating circumstance of mental alteration. He was also sentenced to an additional three months in prison for desecrating a corpse—also taking into account the same mitigating circumstances. The trial, which was scheduled to begin this morning in the Provincial Court, was ultimately shortened by a plea agreement.
Prosecutors had originally sought a sentence of twelve years and three months for the defendant, W.M.A., an Irish citizen. According to their indictment, the defendant had rented a room to the victim just two days before the killing, on November 23, 2022. A few days after the crime, he dismembered the body to cover up his crime and disposed of the remains.
He placed the remains in various bags and packages, which he then took out of the house. Almost a week after the crime, the scrap dealer found the man’s torso, A.R., covered with a T-shirt, along with irrigation equipment and gardening tools that also belonged to the victim, in a container at the intersection of Aragón and Casanova streets, near the apartment where they lived.
It was around 11:00 a.m. on November 29 when the scrap dealer, a regular customer of a tobacco shop in the Eixample district, alerted the shop’s manager. “He told me there was something in the trash,” the manager told ABC at the time. “He said it trembling.” The boy accompanied the man to the container and, despite the warning, was skeptical. “Don’t you smell it?” asked the scrap dealer.
The young man didn’t smell anything while his customer held his nose. At the scrap dealer’s urging, he used a cane he carried to examine the trash. Initially, they discovered a fur coat, but as they searched further, they found the torso of a corpse in a black suitcase with wheels. The tobacco shop employee, who reported this to the newspaper, was still deeply affected by the incident. He was one of the witnesses scheduled to testify at the trial, but due to the settlement, this will not be necessary.
A few days after the discovery, the Mossos d’Esquadra arrested two suspects. Both had sublet rooms to the victim, who was the official tenant of the property. One suspect, of Ukrainian origin, was released, while the Irishman, who was eventually provisionally detained, confessed to the murder. In addition to the prison sentence, his sentence includes five years of supervised release and the reservation of civil lawsuits in favor of the victim’s sister, who lives in Iran and with whom no contact has been established despite diplomatic efforts by the consulate, according to the prosecutor’s office.
