José Jurado Montilla, better known as “Dinamita Montilla” or “El Titi”, is a name that resonates in police stations all over Spain. This 63-year-old man, with a criminal history which began to form decades ago and with several murders behind it, has become a macabre figure. Both in real life and in the digital world, where until his arrest he stood out among his 3,000 subscribers document their travels.
The last known crime associated with “Dinamita Montilla” was the murder of Ester Estepa Pérez, a 42-year-old Sevillian woman whose body was found in a sugar cane field in Valencia. Ester disappeared on August 21, 2023 after being treated at the Francesc de Borja Hospital in Gandía. The remains of his corpse, including his skull found last February, were finally identified thanks to DNA analysisconfirming the suspicions of the National Police about the tragic fate of the Sevillian.
Montilla, incarcerated since May 20 for the murder of a young man -David H.- in the Montes de Málaga in 2022, has spent more than half of his life behind bars. In the 1980s, he was sentenced to 123 years in prison for four murders, although he only served 28 years due to the repeal of the Parot Doctrine.
Between 1985 and 1987committed a series of assassinations in rural areas of Malaga, where victims, like David, were attacked with guns in isolated locations.
The DNA tests that made it possible to identify Ester were also essential in solving the case of the young Málaga, since the remains found in the zipper from his backpack, they linked Montilla to the crime scene. David, a computer engineering student, was murdered while picking carob trees on his family’s land. The description of a man older and sinister with a shotgun, provided by David via WhatsApp messages before his death, proved to be the key for investigators.
History of the murder
The story of José Jurado Montilla is dark. After his capture in the 80swas investigated for the death of two tourists -an Englishman and a German- camped near the Desfiladero de Los Gaitanes natural park, whose bodies were shootings and stabbings. On another occasion, in 1985, he murdered in Almogía Francisco Gonzalezresident of the Puerto de la Torre district of Malaga, and in 1987 he killed Antonio Paniaguathe former driver of singer Juanito Valderrama, whose body appeared semi-carbonized in a house in the countryside near Campanillas, also in Malaga.
Montilla with Ester Estepa, his sixth known victim
Despite his dark past, Montilla managed to evade authorities for years after his release, moving across Spain. Until his last arrest, he documented his nomadic life on TikTok, a platform on which, in fact, he uploaded a video a few minutes before being arrested in a bar in Valdebótoain Extremadura and near the Portuguese border.
Ester Estepa’s murder puts him back in the spotlight once again, now behind bars. The relationship between the two began in a shelter where they became friends, as confirmed by the victim’s mother. After his disappearance, Montilla even shared on the social network a poster alerting you to your searchwhich can be seen as an attempt to deflect suspicion about his involvement.
