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article_detail
Date Published: 16/04/2021
ARCHIVED - Three similar murders in the region of Valencia raise concerns about copycat crime
Three women have been found strangled in Elche, Silla and Massarrojos in the last five months
In the past five months, the bodies of three different women, all murdered by strangulation, have been found in the Comunidad Valenciana, but to date police have been unable to dientify the perpetrator (s) raising concerns that there could be a serial killer or even “copy cat killers” on the loose in the region.
The first of the three victims was a 45-year-old woman named Alicia, who lived in La Hoya in the municipality of Elche in Alicante province. Her body was found in a ditch around 200 metres away from her home. The crime took place between 5 and 6 pm on November 6 2020 and several witnesses saw a suspect, who was wearing a hoodie and walking with a limp, near to the crime scene although subequent enquirires were unable to identify the individual seen.
Investigators failed to find any indicators of sexual abuse before strangulation on the corpse and the police force have not ruled out the murder being a casual crime carried out at random, but five months after the incident, investigators have still not made any advances in the case.
The next victim is very different to the first, but the crime itself has some similarities such as the manner of death and the location in which the body was found. The cadaver of Florina Gogos, a 19-year-old Romanian woman who had also been strangled, was found by a hunter on January 30 in an irrigation ditch that runs between Silla and Albufera.
Florina was last seen getting in a white car with a man on a road which connects Silla with Albufera, in the Valencia province of the region, a significant distance from Elche, where she was working as a prostitute. The investigation was archived due to a lack of evidence.
The third victim, 43-year-old Olga Pardo, was also strangled to death. A farmer found her body in an irrigation ditch in Massarrojos, a district of Valencia city, also in the Valencia province, on April 6. The lack of witnesses and the absence of biological evidence from the murderer on the body, which was submerged in water for around 24 or 36 hours, have also made the investigation difficult.
There are concerns that the deaths could have been the product of an “imitation effect”, caused primarily by the media, as sufficient specific crime details are revealed to the public for a copycat crime to be committed. Although this kind of information doesn’t make a person into a murderer, the media can be the last push for individuals who have a prior motivation or who have already imagined themselves committing a crime, according to a criminology expert from the International University of Valencia.
However, there is also the possibility that they could all be the work of the same person, although as of this moment, no physical evidence has been found to link the three cases, or simply three unconnected murders.
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