They had a secret homosexual relationship. One was much younger than the other, the one who put up the money. During a fight, the young man killed the man. And then with a knife and a saw he cut up his body. He threw his head into the sea.
It could be the summary of Daniel Sancho’s crime in Thailand happened in Barcelona almost a hundred years ago. The young man’s name was Ricardo Fernandezalias Ricardito, and the victim, Pablo Casadofor whom he worked as a servant.
“A human leg, with its foot”
In Thailand, last August, it was a Burmese immigrant working at a landfill who raised the alarm when she found human remains in garbage bags.
In Madrid, on May 1, 1929, employees of the Mediodía (now Atocha) station warned of the bad smell in goods warehouses. Then it was common to send food to relatives that way. When moving a pine box, which had been there for about four months, they saw a grease stain. When opening the box They saw “a human leg, with its foot”according to the ABC newspaper report.
High-class
The box had been sent from Barcelona in December 1928 by a certain José Pérez. Inside it was a headless corpse. He was a tall, dark-skinned man, about 30 years old. He was wearing underwear, I had manicured nails and had been wrapped in expensive sheets. He was not a worker, he seemed more like someone from a wealthy class, a gentleman.
The murderer, this time, left the victim’s name on one of the papers that wrapped the body. It was about Pablo Casado de las Navas, an Andalusian immigrant who had made a fortune in Catalonia with cardboard factories.
Daniel Sancho, in a screenshot from his YouTube channel. / OPEN CASE
The investigation was to reveal secret aspects of life of the victim, and of his murderer. Pablo Casado lived on what was then Orteu Street in Barcelona. He had a servant, whom he called Ricardito, and who was also missing. Finally, Ricardo Fernández Sánchez was located and detained in the house of his new master, Don Enrique de Génova, where he was already providing his services.
In the first interrogations, Ricardo Fernández declared himself innocent, spoke of several masked people, one of them a woman, who had entered the house on December 8, 1928 and had forced him to remove the box containing his master’s body. Evidence against him soon arrived. There was tried to clean the whole house (unsuccessfully, left blood stains in the bedroom). Furthermore, there was bought a new mattress shortly after the disappearance of his boss.
Ricardito confessed that he had argued with Casado and hit him on the head with an electric iron, leaving him dead. He cut off her head and threw it into the sea, in the port of Barcelona. She was never recovered.
On May 23, Ricardito ended up confessing that he had argued with Casado and I had hit him on the head with an electric iron, leaving him dead. After a few hours of not knowing what to do, he used a knife and a saw to cut off the head and mutilate the rest of the corpse. He put the remains in a packaging box and after arranging them with the papers and cotton, he closed it perfectly.
On Monday wrapped his victim’s head in newspapers and threw it into the sea, in the port of Barcelona. Then, he took the box with the body to the train station and invoiced it to Madrid. Before leaving the house, he took a silver chain and the victim’s wallet.
The trial
The trial against Ricardo Fernández was held in early 1930 in the Barcelona Court. It could not be verified whether it was true that the cause of Casado’s death was the impact of an iron on his head because he never recovered, despite the fact that divers searched for days in the waters of the port of Barcelona. The medical reports did conclude that the decapitation of the victim had occurred after his death.
During the hearing, the servant retracted his confession and pleaded not guilty. He stated that Pablo Casado had an “inverted sexuality” and noted that he had homosexual relations with another friend. The chronicles of the time spoke of what servant and lord had intimate relations.
Ricardito’s story was turned into true crime many years before the Daniel Sancho case. It was one of the episodes of the TVE series “The Trace of Crime”. The role of the murderer was played by Juan Echanove
The reason for the argument during which Casado died was never known with certainty. Ricardito declared that his lord I had woken him up at dawn to make him dinner and he got angry. But a German couple who were friends of the victim pointed out that Casado had announced to them his intention to dismiss your servant. On February 18, 1930, Ricardito was sentenced to 16 years in prison as the author of a crime homicide now three more months for the theft of the silver chain.
Ricardito’s story was turned into true crime many years after the crime, and years before the case of Daniel Sancho. It was one of the chapters of the TVE series “The Trace of Crime”, was directed by Ricardo Franco and was called “The Case of the Dismembered Corpse.” The role of the murderer, the servant Ricardito, was played Juan Echanove.