Raúl Díaz Chacón admitted this Friday before the Jury Court and the judge that he killed, dismembered and disposed of the remains of his wife Romina Celeste during the early hours of New Year's Day 2019.
The case judging the accused Raúl Díaz as the alleged perpetrator of a homicide against Romina Celeste during New Year's Eve 2018 and New Year's Day 2019 in Costa Teguise and four other crimes has started this Friday in the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas.
After forming the Jury Court, the Public Prosecutor intervened in the hearing to announce that the defense of Raúl Díaz and the public, popular and private prosecutions had reached an agreement in which the defendant recognized all the crimes he is accused of.
After that, Raul Díaz himself has recognized each and every one of the crimes presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office. The accused faces a total of five crimes: habitual abuse, injuries due to gender violence, injuries due to domestic violence, homicide, desecration of a corpse and the simulation of a crime.
Díaz has already served the maximum sentence contemplated by Spanish law for provisional imprisonment: four years. Now the confession must be added to the evidence offered by the prosecutions, which will be presented next Monday to obtain a verdict from the Court.
The man will be sentenced to a penalty of 15 years, 9 months and four days in prison. In addition, he has already consigned to the victim's family "a good part" of the 300,000 euros requested by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
The events date back to New Year's Eve 2018, when Raúl Díaz allegedly killed Romina Celeste. According to the Public Prosecutor's Office and ratified by the accused himself, he habitually abused her and that day he ended her life, placed her corpse on a grill and dismembered her, throwing her remains into the sea in two attempts between Los Ancones and Los Hervideros in Costa Teguise.
After that and due to pressure from family and friends, Raúl Díaz reported the disappearance of his wife at the police station, knowing that she was not missing. Of her remains, only a lung appeared, which was found by the lifeguards in the Los Hervideros area and was initially thrown away. Upon learning of Romina's homicide and the hypothesis that she was dismembered, the workers went to the police and reported the finding, so the evidence could be recovered.
Accusations
The Canarian Institute of Equality, appearing as a popular prosecution, was the only prosecution that maintained the classification of murder on the crime committed against Romina Celeste, being able to change to homicide throughout the procedure. Meanwhile, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution, for their part, revealed that the lack of evidence to prove that there was treachery or cruelty leads to classifying it as homicide. This type of crime implies fewer years of imprisonment than murder.
Episodes of gender violence
In the reconstruction of the events and to defend the theory of habitual abuse that Romina Celeste suffered from Raúl Díaz, the Public Prosecutor's Office has relied on two events: one that occurred on August 8, 2018 and another on December 28, 2018.
The first aggression of which the Prosecutor's Office and the family's lawyer have obtained evidence took place on August 8, 2018, two days before the wedding of Raúl and Romina at the Gran Hotel de Arrecife.
The second occurred only three days after the now confessed perpetrator of the events ended her life.
"I am beaten all over, I can't take it anymore," Romina Celeste lamented after the episode of abuse on December 28, 2018, three days before the homicide, according to the accusation of the Canarian Institute of Equality during the first session of the trial.
A couple of Romina's friends, who were witnesses on her wedding day and will appear in the trial, were able to witness the injuries that the victim had. "This time he went too far, this time he almost killed me", Romina related in text messages to her friend during December 28 and 29, according to the family's defense lawyer, Emilia Zeballos. In addition, Romina then conveyed her wishes to divorce.
After the episode of December 28, Romina went to the emergency room and confessed that she was a victim of gender violence, they made her wait in the waiting room. Raúl went to pick her up and took her away. "She was voluntarily discharged without activating the gender violence protocol. If the system had worked for the second time, Romina would be here," Zeballos asserted.
At the same time, she defended the position that Romina Celeste was in a position of vulnerability as an immigrant since her papers were about to expire.
Romina Celeste lived in Madrid at the time she met the accused Raúl Díaz, while practicing prostitution, a job she exercised "to support her two children." On August 27, 2018, her residence papers in the country expired, although until now she was legally in Spain. "The need to legalize her situation before the papers expired, made her dependent on him," stressed the lawyer Emilia Zeballos.
In the middle of these two violent episodes, Romina Celeste spent a month living at the home of the couple of friends, who will testify as witnesses in the session on next Monday. After that month, Romina Celeste tried to take her own life because they had withdrawn the registration from the house, which threatened her legal stay in the country
According to Zeballos, "Raúl's family did not support the relationship with Romina. They had only been living alone in a house for a month, located on Avenida de Las Palmeras in Costa Teguise. In that period she stayed a second time at the home of the couple of friends. Finally Raul convinced her to return home."
In this complex judicial case, 45 witnesses and 28 experts intervened during the investigation, according to data from the Prosecutor's Office. However, Zeballos took the opportunity to denounce "the undue delays that have occurred in the case. One of the mitigating factors that have been taken into account to reach this agreement. This could have been a murder, but what has been proven is that it is a homicide."
Due to the celebration of the trial, Romina's mother is in Gran Canaria and has faced the media after the first session.
