Nathalieaged 46 when she was brutally murdered, arrived in Spain in 2018 with a clear motivation: to find decent work to pay for her children’s studies. “In Colombia, things were bad and my mother tried her luck in your country. She had relatives in Marbella who could help her find work. We all supported her,” he recalls on laSexta. Victor Hugothe eldest of his children. Natalia packed her bags and never returned to Cali, her hometown. A man she met in 2022 murdered her, mutilated her and threw her remains into the sea on January 8, 2023.
“They didn’t do enough to protect my mother”
Today began the trial against Leonel HB (Colombia, 1977), the confessed murderer of Natalia. The prosecution is seeking 25 years in prison for the crime of murder and an additional nine months for violating the restraining order in force against Natalia at the time she committed these acts. Years that are not enough for the children and loved ones of the victim. “The only thing that consoles us is that we will no longer see him in the street,” laments one of Natalia’s cousins present today at the first session of the trial: “My cousin ended this relationship as soon as she grew her hand. She reported it. “It was no use.”
An idea that Victor Hugo also shares: “The system failed with my mother. She did the right thing. He sought help from the courts, he did not seek justice on his own. And of what? There are insufficient guarantees for victims of gender-based violence. They didn’t do enough to protect her. “I don’t know where the fault is, the mistake, but my mother’s murder could have been avoided.”
Natalia had let her whole family know that the man she had met on certain occasions during the summer of 2022 was starting to behave “strangely”. Her son claims that his mother was “afraid” for her life and especially for that of her family members. “To my mother threatened and harassed her to the point that one day he punched him and broke his nose. It was then that she went to the police and reported him for mistreatment,” remembers Victor Hugo.
She denounced, he got parole
Following this complaint, on December 21, Leonel – her attacker and murderer – was sentenced by the Court of Violence Against Women number 1 of Marbella to 16 months in prison, as well as a ban on communicating by any means. any way with the victim. or approach him within 500 meters of him.
Leonel should have gone to prison, but since there were no previous crimes in Spain, they let him free. The day he murdered Natalia, January 8, 2023, he “deceived her under the pretext that he already had money that he owed her,” says the victim’s cousin. As Natalia needed the money to send to her son Víctor Hugo and to be able to pay for his university studies, she agreed to stay with him. And that’s all, his life. Leonel took her away: he decapitated her and cut off her hands in an attempt to make it difficult to identify the body when the police investigated her disappearance.
The system is once again failing victims of gender-based violence
Victims of gender-based violence are encouraged to file a complaint, to rely on their family, to seek protection. Natalia fulfilled to the letter. The system responded as usual in these procedures.
Natalia’s attacker murdered her in the same city, more precisely on the same beach, where they met in the summer of 2022.
