If there is a morally reprehensible act in our society, it is taking the life of another person. The reasons why some people are capable of committing an act of this magnitude are not only studied from Forensic Psychology, but from multiple social sciences.
Either way, There have been absolutely dramatic cases in which a single person has been responsible for brutal murders that have shocked an entire country
In this article we are going to review the most dangerous criminal murderers of recent decades in Spain For one reason or another, his actions have been reported in the media and have aroused the interest of multiple experts in Criminal Psychology.
1. Manuel Delgado Villegas, “El Arropiero”
It is possible that Manuel Delgado Villegas – known as “El Arropiero” – was the greatest murderer in the history of Spain. His nickname, Arropiero, comes from the fact that his father was dedicated to selling arrope and he helped her.
This man confessed to the murder of 47 people, committed between 1964 and 1971, among the victims was his partner. According to the investigators of the case, he practiced necrophilia with some of his victims.
His modus operandi was a deadly karate blow to the front of the neck, just at the level of the Adam’s apple, which he learned in the Legion Other times he used blunt objects, such as bricks, or knives. Some of his victims were strangled to death. It was said that the choice of his victims was totally random and indiscriminate, without any planning.
It appears that he showed no remorse for his actions; The investigators of the case called him egocentric and megalomaniacal, with a total lack of empathy towards his victims. El Arropiero has the record of preventive arrest without legal protection in Spain, being imprisoned without a lawyer for 6 and a half years.
Due to suffering from an alleged mental illness, he was never tried and was ordered admitted to a psychiatric prison hospital.
El Arropiero died in 1998 a few months after being released.
2. Andrés Rabadán, “The Crossbow Killer”
Andrés Rabadán (Premià de Mar, 1972) He killed his father with a medieval crossbow that he had bought for Kings After the homicide, he turned himself in to the police, and admitted being the author of three suburban train derailments, which he carried out a month before killing his father. It was a sabotage that caused no injuries, but a lot of fear. He could have been deadly to hundreds of people.
He murdered his father, apparently, over an argument over the temperature of a glass of milk. He killed him with three arrow shots. Rabadán declared that he loved his father and that he killed him without knowing what he was doing, guided by the voices he heard. Realizing what he had just done, he shot her two more arrows to end his father’s suffering.
It seems that Andrés Rabadán’s childhood was not easy, as he had to deal with the suicide of his mother and the fact of staying a long time alone with his father, without his brothers or friends.
During the expert tests for the trial he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. By court order, he was placed in a psychiatric penitentiary center for 20 years. According to the forensic experts, said mental illness was not enough to not be aware of his actions while he was manipulating the train tracks, but it was during the commission of the patricide.
There is still much speculation today about whether Andrés Rabadán poses a danger to society or if he is socially rehabilitated: some professionals claim that he faked his mental illness in order to be immune from the conviction of patricide, and others maintain that he is a psychopath. narcissist who knew what he was doing at all times, and who currently maintains his self-esteem through the artistic and literary creations he made from prison.
In 2012, he served the maximum amount of time he could remain incarcerated, and was allowed scheduled and controlled releases.
3. Alfredo Galán, “The murderer of the deck”
Alfredo Galán Sotillo, known as the “killer of the deck”, put the entire Spanish society in suspense in 2003. He is one of the most dangerous serial killers who have circulated in Spain.
He belonged to the Spanish Army from 2000 to 2004, so he had military skills. Curiously, it seems that he had a tendency to suffer from anxiety attacks, something not very common in people with a psychopathic profile.
He killed his victims with a very powerful weapon, a Yugoslavian Tokarev pistol, which he took with him to Spain from his military passage through Bosnia. He started killing in February 2003, and his first victim was a 28-year-old young man. Next to his victims he left a playing card, the ace of cups, which became his “signature” and he became known as “the murderer of the deck.”
According to a witness who testified at the trial, the card killer always said good morning to his victims, and then asked them “please” to kneel He then proceeded with the shot. She did it this way because according to him, “education is the first thing in life.”
In 2003, Alfredo Galán burst into a national police station while drunk and confessed to being The Card Murderer. He was sentenced to 140 years in prison for 6 murders and three attempted murders, although following the sentences applied according to Spanish criminal laws, he would only serve 25 years of sentence.
The conviction did not recognize the existence of any psychiatric pathology in the murderer of the deck, so he was fully aware of his actions and carried them out with planning.
4. Javier Rosado, “The crime of role”
In 1994, a 22-year-old Chemistry student, Javier Rosado, and a 17-year-old student, Félix Martínez, murdered Carlos Moreno, a 52-year-old cleaning employee who was returning home at night by bus, by stabbing him 20 times.
Javier Rosado invented a very macabre role-playing game called “Races” and convinced his friend Félix to follow the instructions he himself devised.
The big mistake that the inducing murderer made was recording everything that happened that morning in a personal diary, which the police seized during the inspection of his home. Rosado proposed to be the first of the two who would kill a victim, and it had to be a woman: “I would be the one to kill the first victim,” “It was preferable to catch a woman, young and pretty (the latter was not essential, but very healthy), an old man or a child (…)”, “if it had been a female it would be dead now, but at that time we continued with the limitation of not being able to kill only women.”
He openly acknowledged that they wanted to kill without previously knowing the victim, as this was established by the rules set by himself: “our best asset is that we did not know the victim at all, nor the place (at least I did), nor did we have any motive.” real to do something to him (…)”; “Poor man, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. It was a disgrace, since we were looking for teenagers, and not poor, hard-working workers.”
During the trial, it was stated that Javier Rosado had a cold and calculating mind, that he lacked remorse and empathy, and that he fit the profile of a psychopath who liked to feel admired and be obeyed. In the following extract from the diary, the lack of empathy and contempt for the victim can be seen, and even a sadistic component in his way of proceeding: “I put my right hand through his neck in an exploratory task that I hoped would end up causing his death. Wow!, that guy was immortal”, “(…) making him bleed like the pig he was. He had pissed me off quite a bit,” “How long does it take for an idiot to die!” “What a disgusting guy!”
The media soon gave role-playing games negative sensational connotations that fueled criminal actions.
Javier Rosado was sentenced to 42 years in prison, and was awarded the third degree in 2008. During his stay in prison it can be said that he took advantage of his time, as he graduated in Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Engineering.
5. Joan Vila Dilme, “The Warden of Olot”
Joan Vila Dilme, caretaker of a nursing home in Girona was sentenced to 127 years in prison for murdering 11 elderly people at the nursing home where he worked between 2009 and 2010. He poisoned the elderly with cocktails of barbiturates, insulin, and caustic products, causing their death.
At first, Olot’s guard claimed that he thought that in this way he was “helping” his victims to rest and stop suffering; they made him feel sorry for them and he wanted to give them “fullness.” He was convinced that he was doing good, since he could not bear to see the conditions in which his victims lived. When he became aware of what he had done and the method he had used (ingestion of abrasive substances, something especially cruel and painful for the victims) he felt very guilty.
According to him, he had been taking many psychotropic drugs for years because he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder with depressive episodes, and he tended to drink alcohol simultaneously during his work shifts.
Later, the expert psychologists and psychiatrists who examined him maintained that with his crimes he sought the power and satisfaction that came from controlling the passage from life to death, like a kind of God, and that he was aware of his actions at all times. moment. One of the most powerful sources of suffering and anxiety for Joan Vila was that she always felt like a woman locked in a man’s body, and she lived it secretly until he committed the 11 murders.
The final conviction proved that in the 11 crimes Joan Vila had the objective of killing and that he acted without the elderly being able to defend themselves Furthermore, it highlights that in three of the eleven cases there was cruelty, as it unnecessarily and deliberately increased the suffering of the victims. Olot’s guard was not considered to have any psychological problem that affected his cognitive and/or volitional abilities, and he is currently serving his sentence in a Catalan prison.
