The relatives of Alfonso Fernández and Cathaysa Rodríguez, both deceased in strange circumstances, have decided to place posters with their photographs around the city of Arrecife to try to obtain information from possible witnesses, who at the time "could not or did not want to speak with the Police", according to the criminologist Félix Ríos. With this initiative, they are trying to find clues that clarify the deaths of their loved ones, which took place in 2006 and 2007.
The families, supported by Ríos, are collecting information about both cases and trying to interview all the people related to the investigations in order to request the judicial reopening of the cases. And they consider that both Alfonso Fernández and Cathaysa Rodríguez were "murdered."
Therefore, and fundamentally because if this were the case, the culprits are still at large, the families are asking for citizen collaboration. "We need information. Call us to give us some clue about the crimes", the poster reads.
The telephone number that appears on the poster (664.846.960)
belongs to someone from the affected families, who will "guarantee" the confidentiality of whoever makes the call. In addition to the telephone, email and Facebook contact are also provided.
The tragic death of Cathaysa
Both cases shocked Lanzarote in 2006 and 2007. The young Cathaysa Rodríguez was found dead naked in the trunk of a car in April 2007. Her own mother found her, six months after she disappeared. Ester Rodríguez, the young woman's mother, is convinced that it was a crime.
After her disappearance on November 9, 2006, her mother went to the Municipal Police of Arrecife on three occasions to report her disappearance. "They didn't pay attention to me. Everyone told me that my daughter had hooked up with some boy and that she would be back. Since nothing so terrible had happened in Lanzarote before, the police didn't take me seriously," Ester Rodríguez has lamented on several occasions.
Therefore, after investigating on her own, she ended up finding her own daughter's corpse in an advanced state of decomposition inside a car trunk. Years after this tragic death, in 2011, the Investigating Court Number 5 of Arrecife provisionally dismissed the case of Cathaysa Rodríguez, without anyone having been arrested or charged for the death of the Lanzarote native.
The case of Alfonso Fernández
Alfonso Fernández appeared suffocated in his home in Tahíche in 2007. They found his body tied up and his head covered with a plastic bag. He lived with his girlfriend, of Polish nationality, and her sister. After the events, the two women fled to Poland but were arrested by INTERPOL.
Both remained imprisoned in the Tahíche prison, in Lanzarote, for only eight months. "They were released for lack of evidence," his ex-wife, Mari Paz Martínez, told La Voz in 2009.
Martínez learned of her ex-husband's death 20 days after it occurred. She was driving her vehicle when a news item on the radio caught her attention: "A man from Madrid appears dead in a closet in a house in Tahíche, in Lanzarote. He lived with two Polish women."
At that moment she knew it was her ex-husband, who had recently moved from Madrid to Lanzarote to live with his girlfriend. "Alfonso had a name, a surname and a DNA. He had a family. Why didn't the police notify us of what had happened?", María Paz wondered.
Due to all these facts and the strange circumstances in which both Alfonso Fernández and Cathaysa Rodríguez died, the families need new clues to get Justice to reopen these cases.
