On September 24, 2014, the National Police arrested Antonio Ángel Ortiz Martínez, the serial pedophile who sowed fear in Madrid for months with his monstrous crimes. The one known as Ciudad Lineal pedophilethat kidnapped and raped four girls Between five and nine years old, it wouldn’t hurt anymore.
That September day, a sigh of relief filled the capital early in the morning, when police announced that at 7:30 a.m., agents from the Special Operations Group (GEO) had broken into a house in Santander—the home of an uncle of Ortiz—to capture what many described as “enemy number one.”
For months in a cell in Jaén prison, after spending almost a decade in Herrera de la Mancha (Ciudad Real), Ortiz, now 53, continues to serve sentence of 70 years and six months prison sentence imposed on him by the Provincial Court in 2016 and confirmed two years later. Supreme Court for four crimes of sexual assault and four others of illegal detention.
His arrest 10 years ago ended the appeal “Operation Candy”which mobilized dozens of plainclothes police officers in parks and areas frequented by children in the Madrid neighborhoods of Hortaleza and Ciudad Lineal.
Four girls kidnapped and sexually assaulted
The alarms had been sounded months earlier, on April 10 of that same year. Nine-year-old girl kidnapped while he was going to buy candy – “candy” in English, hence the name of the operation – near a popular park in Ciudad Lineal. A few hours later, she appeared alone and dazed. Her captor had sexually assaulted her in the area called “Floor of Horrors” in Santa Virgilia Street, where he also attacked another girl after giving them Lorazepam.
It would take up to 10 hours for the Scientific Police to search the house little by little to find evidence after his arrest. The cross-referencing of other cases and subsequent investigations determined that Ortiz’s first victim was a five-year-old girl whom he approached in another park on September 24, 2013. On June 17 and August 22, 2014, the pedophile from Ciudad Lineal again acted against two other girls, aged six and seven.
The four victims, whose identities were protected, probably recognized the monster who had harmed them after he approached some of them with the deception of spending money on them. a prank on a family member.
This is how the police found the attacker
The police went to nine research axes and I have a list of 50 suspects. Aware that unfortunately, in this type of crime, repeat offences provide more clues because the offender can make mistakes, the officers began to “get into shape” after the third attack.
They already had a “sketch” drawn by the second victim of the house on Santa Virgilia Street and its physical appearance given by an 11-year-old girl whom the accused had allegedly approached during a failed attempt half an hour before the second attack. This little girl, the second victim, gave many details about the accused’s house, of which she drew a plan: it had white doors, a semi-circular parking lot, a brick facade and she remembered the number 8 on the elevator, referring to the floors of the property. The detail of the white doors He returned to the scene during the third attack on June 17. Researchers They narrowed the list down to three suspects.
A few months later, on August 22, she committed the fourth attack, a determining factor in the identification of the accused, because this girl not only confirmed the predator’s “modus operandi” of capturing minors with the aim of playing a prank on a family member, but also He also gave the profile of someone who took great care of his physique. He described the suspect very well: “muscular, sweating a lot and sweat was coming out of him. He spoke of very marked veins”, as reproduced by the chief inspector in charge of Operation Candy who testified at the trial, where he added that these data They took them to search the gymnasiums.
The agents identified, without knowing that it was their definitive man, Antonio Ortiz, divorced and father of two children, on August 28 after he left the gym during a preventive check. He he seemed impassivejust as he did during his arrest and during the trial. When the officers returned his ID, he knew he was in danger and the police knew he had a strong case for being the man they were looking for. After that routine identification, Ortiz wandered around the neighborhood for two hours and spent the night in his car. Just a week later, he was starting his flight to Santander.
Another key element was also car used by the suspect, even though he changed vehicles because the press published the brand. This was the case sports towel that the pedophile took out of his backpack one day. Furthermore, the phone positioning the accused placed it at or near the scene of the attacks, given that Ortiz kept it while he was traveling, but turned it off when he committed the attack. house description that girls and their background They put the finishing touches on him to designate him as the definitive suspect: He had already been sentenced to nine years in prison for sexual assault in 1998, although he was eventually seven years old.
With the judicial authorization already in hand, the police finally managed to remove him from the list of most wanted criminals. September 24, 2014.
