14 years. Justice for Juan Holgado
Francisco Holgado sits in his white van at a gas station, staring at a white wall bearing some of his angry graffiti: "14 years. Justice for Juan Holgado."
"Let's fix that," he says, and jumps out. He shakes a can of spray paint and starts writing. The black paint dribbles down in the driving rain but eventually the words stick. "15 years."
That's how long it has been since robbers stabbed Holgado's son up to 30 times and left him dying in a pool of blood. And it's how long Holgado, now 66, has waged a lonely quest for justice - one that sent him on an undercover mission, cost him his marriage and his career and estranged him from his three surviving children.
How far does a father go to find his son's killers when police blunders let them walk out in the open? For Holgado the answer is extreme.
The mild-mannered bank teller disguised himself in a salt-and-pepper wig, put on a tough-guy voice and plunged into the criminal underworld of this southern Spanish city - a world away from his quiet middle-class life on the other side of town.
It was a universe of drug dealers and prostitutes, police raids and filthy heroin dens. Holgado infiltrated the gang suspected in the slaying - four heroin addicts with a history of petty crime - and recorded their conversations with a clunky, hidden tape recorder.
"What is a father supposed to do?" he asks with a sad smile. "A father whose son is murdered cannot just sit back at home. He has to give his life if necessary."
After 15 years, that risk has yielded no peace. Holgado keeps running into walls on his obsessive mission to crack the case. Just last week, despite a judge's orders, forensic police said there is no need to carry out new DNA tests on blood samples or fingerprints from the crime scene. Holgado's lawyer will appeal, but says his hopes are slim.
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He sees it in his dreams: His son gushing jets of blood as the knives come raining down. He replays the scene in his waking hours, over and over in his head. Describing it, he raises an arm up to his head, as if to fend off the blows.
The facts of the case are simple enough: In the small hours of Nov. 22, 1995, Juan Holgado, 26, who dabbled in modeling and dreamt of playing pro soccer, was working the graveyard shift at a gas station, filling in for a colleague as a favor, when robbers burst in.
The hold-up degenerated into a storm of knife thrusts. The young Holgado bled to death in a back office where he had tried to barricade himself in by pushing a photocopy machine up against the door. Forensics reports show the final blow from a knife cut his lung so deep that it came out the other side of his body. The attackers made off with a few hundred dollars worth of cash, cigarette cartons and some bottles of booze.:Text may be subject to copyright.This blog does not claim copyright to any such text. Copyright remains with the original copyright holder.
"Let's fix that," he says, and jumps out. He shakes a can of spray paint and starts writing. The black paint dribbles down in the driving rain but eventually the words stick. "15 years."
That's how long it has been since robbers stabbed Holgado's son up to 30 times and left him dying in a pool of blood. And it's how long Holgado, now 66, has waged a lonely quest for justice - one that sent him on an undercover mission, cost him his marriage and his career and estranged him from his three surviving children.
How far does a father go to find his son's killers when police blunders let them walk out in the open? For Holgado the answer is extreme.
The mild-mannered bank teller disguised himself in a salt-and-pepper wig, put on a tough-guy voice and plunged into the criminal underworld of this southern Spanish city - a world away from his quiet middle-class life on the other side of town.
It was a universe of drug dealers and prostitutes, police raids and filthy heroin dens. Holgado infiltrated the gang suspected in the slaying - four heroin addicts with a history of petty crime - and recorded their conversations with a clunky, hidden tape recorder.
"What is a father supposed to do?" he asks with a sad smile. "A father whose son is murdered cannot just sit back at home. He has to give his life if necessary."
After 15 years, that risk has yielded no peace. Holgado keeps running into walls on his obsessive mission to crack the case. Just last week, despite a judge's orders, forensic police said there is no need to carry out new DNA tests on blood samples or fingerprints from the crime scene. Holgado's lawyer will appeal, but says his hopes are slim.
---
He sees it in his dreams: His son gushing jets of blood as the knives come raining down. He replays the scene in his waking hours, over and over in his head. Describing it, he raises an arm up to his head, as if to fend off the blows.
The facts of the case are simple enough: In the small hours of Nov. 22, 1995, Juan Holgado, 26, who dabbled in modeling and dreamt of playing pro soccer, was working the graveyard shift at a gas station, filling in for a colleague as a favor, when robbers burst in.
The hold-up degenerated into a storm of knife thrusts. The young Holgado bled to death in a back office where he had tried to barricade himself in by pushing a photocopy machine up against the door. Forensics reports show the final blow from a knife cut his lung so deep that it came out the other side of his body. The attackers made off with a few hundred dollars worth of cash, cigarette cartons and some bottles of booze.:Text may be subject to copyright.This blog does not claim copyright to any such text. Copyright remains with the original copyright holder.
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