‘Manolo’ spent most of his life in prison before ‘fleeing Spain for Portugal’ in 2019
The elderly man – currently in preventive custody for the attempted murder and rape of two young women beside a dam in the Alentejo earlier this week – was sentenced to 76 years jail for the murder of a teenage couple, in 1983, but released after serving only 13, due to ‘good behaviour’.
How this could have happened considering the horrific way he snuffed out the lives of two perfectly innocent people is a question that clearly no one now will want to answer. But these dismal details are coming out now in the national press, as ‘Manolo’s’ latest victims recover from surgeries in hospital in Lisbon.
The 1983 murders appear to have developed out of pique: at first ‘Manolo’ appears only to have been intent on robbing the pair of their money (at gun and knife-point), and a gold chain that Aurora Barbero Luelmo had around her neck.
He decided to leave them tied up beside the water, so that they could not pursue him, but as Aurora started screaming, he “became irritated”, writes Correio da Manhã: he threw the young woman into the water, and drowned her. He then returned to her boyfriend, José Manuel Tamame Domínguez, and strangled him with a sheet.
He confessed all this a few days later to police (after being found in possession of a medallion belonging to one of his victims) – but 13 years later he was free, this time on probation.
Within a month, he had raped a 30-year-old woman in circumstances reminiscent of this week’s attack at the Póvoa e Meadas dam in Castelo de Vide.
This time, he served a bit more than 13 years in jail – and then out he came again, and fled to Portugal “due to the social pressure in Zamora” – the area where his attacks had taken place.
Again, how authorities here could not have been aware of the presence of a convicted murderer has to be another question.
There was no ‘secret’ over this man’s new home: back in 2019, in Zamora, journalist ML Pascual wrote about of Manolo’s decision to leave Spain, saying:
“To talk about Manuel Martínez Quintas in Zamora is to talk of the devil. Born in Valdecarros, Salamanca, but resident in the Pinilla neighbourhood, he was a small time criminal who was in and out of jail until January 1983, when he committed the crime that would change his story”.
Back in 2017, Manolo was ordered not to go near Zamora for a period of five years. He almost certainly complied with this restriction, as he has been living in Castelo de Vide, beside the dam where he attacked two young women, since he ‘fled’ his native country.
He is now in preventive custody charged with seven crimes, including attempted murder, attempted rape, kidnap and possession of an illegal firearm, as authorities may be asking themselves questions as to how they could have allowed such a potentially dangerous individual to live unchecked in a makeshift caravan beside a well-known tourist spot.
According to reports since the attack on the two young women this week, Manolo was accused of rape since his arrival in Castelo de Vide, “but the complaint was later withdrawn”.
Had he served his original 76 year sentence, he would still be behind bars.
