The Civil Guard works with the hypothesis that Esther López was abandoned alive in a gutter of the N-122 road after being run over the same night of his disappearance, in Traspinedo (Valladolid), on January 12. He also suspects that the woman died right there, despite the fact that the injuries he suffered were not fatal, according to the first results of the autopsy. That is the main line of investigation, as OPEN CASE has learnedthe events and investigation channel of Prensa Ibérica.
Esther López walked back to town That morning, after half past three in the morning. The reconstruction of the events places her next to the right lane of the road, in the direction of travel and with the cars behind her. The researchers’ hypothesis is that a vehicle coming from behind hit her violently. “Have hip and spleen injuries. She could have been hit from the side,” stress sources in the case. But no traces of braking have been found in the area, nor remains of the car that ran over her.
position change
His body was found on February 5 by a neighbor who was hiking. Esther was face down, with one cheek on the ground. Very close to her were his backpack and his mobile phone. On this point, the researchers work with an idea: “the corpse is not in the classic position of a hit-and-run. Esther had arms and legs parallel, almost attached to the body. Everything indicates that whoever ran her over, took her off the road and left her like that in the gutter.”
That thesis would be confirmed with the discovery of the victim’s mobile phone and backpack next to his body. “These objects were very close to her, the backpack was loose, next to her, not on her back; her cell phone, next to hers. Everything indicates that the same person who left her in the gutter threw her personal belongings near her“, point out the same sources.
Looking for mobiles
In this line, the first hope of the Civil Guard is find fingerprints or DNA traces in the backpack and the mobile phone of whoever left Esther in that gutter. “Nobody drives with gloves” sources of the case explain. But if that person or persons were not on file for having committed other previous crimes, there would be no way to compare their data.
The civil guards are tracking all the mobile phones -and their owners- that passed through that area of the road the morning that Esther died, as they already did to find the murderers of Diana Quer and the Asturian councilor Javier Ardines
On the other hand, in that area of the road no security camerasHence, the research is now focused on locate and identify all mobile phones and their owners who passed on that road and in that direction between half past three, the time Esther supposedly separated from the last friend with whom he was that morning, and ten minutes to six. At that time, Esther’s mother called her on the phone, without being able to talk to her.
This is something similar to what the Civil Guard did in the investigation of kidnapping and murder of the young Diana Quer in Galicia and, more recently, in the crime of Councilor Javier Ardines in Llanes (Asturias), when all the phones that were in the area and the nearby highway were tracked.
I shouldn’t die
Investigators do not yet know if Esther’s run over was accidental or intentional. Yes, there is a devastating fact in the provisional data that they handle. The injuries sustained by the woman were not fatal.. “Yes, who ran her over? I would have called an ambulance or taken her to the hospital, Esther could have been saved. He had serious injuries to his spleen and hip, but they were not fatal,” they explain. The hypothesis is that Esther could not move and froze to death – that morning between seven and eight degrees below zero – in that ditch several hours later without no one could help her.
Faced with the testimonies provided by the man who found the body and two other neighbors, the sources of the investigation consulted by OPEN CASE believe that the woman’s body was not moved. “With the data we have today,” they explain, “we don’t think so” and recall cases of failed raids in search of missing women. “When Bernardo Montoya abandoned the body of Laura Luelmothe volunteers passed and stepped, leaving their footprints, three meters away from where her body was and they did not see her”, they remember.