Netflix's Game of Widows is based on the true murder case of Antonio Navarro Cerdán, a 36-year-old engineer who was found brutally stabbed to death. On August 16, 2017, police found Antonio's body in his parking lot located on Calamocha Street in Patraix, a neighborhood in Valencia, Spain. He had multiple stab wounds to his chest and none of his personal belongings were missing, hinting that the assailant had an intense relationship with the victim, and killing him was his main goal. But who could have that much of a problem with Antonio? You see, Antonio was a simple man who had been living a pretty decent life.
A year ago, on September 3, 2016, he had married 26-year-old María Jesús Moreno in her hometown of Novelda, Alicante, and the couple moved to Valencia together for work. In the city, María, alias Maje, was a nursing supervisor at the Casa de la Salud Catholic hospital, while Antonio worked at the El Reboller Highway Conservation Center. On the day of Antonio's murder, Maje sent him numerous text messages, and when he didn't respond, she feared something bad had happened. In short, it was Maje who ordered Antonio's murder.
Director: Carlos Sedes
Writers: Ramón Campos, Gema R. Neira, David Orea
Stars: Ivana Baquero, Tristán Ulloa, Carmen Machi
According to Rocia, a friend of Antonio's, Maje had a series of affairs before and after their marriage, and Antonio knew about his wife's past infidelities but had forgiven her, convinced that he truly loved her and wanted their marriage to work. However, all this time, Maje had been trying to seduce her lovers, telling them her false sob story about how her overly possessive husband controlled her and wouldn't let her leave the house without his permission. Maje even told her lovers that Antonio abused her physically and psychologically, and that she just hoped she would die so she could live a quiet and comfortable life.
She carried out this ruse with several young lovers, including a boy named Tomás, who had been in a relationship with Maje since May 2016, before the wedding. She tried to convince them to kill Antonio, but when they didn't fall for it, Maje began a secret affair with a nursing assistant, Salvador Rodrigo Lapiedra, at least 20 years her senior. One of the aspects the police noted in their reports was that he was the only lover of Maje's who didn't fit the profile of her previous lovers. She only sought or desired young, athletic men, and apparently, Salva didn't fit the requirements, which is why the authorities never questioned this coworker.
In fact, not even Salva, not even in his wildest dreams, imagined that someone so young and handsome would show interest in him, which is why he didn't see all the red flags in his path. According to Salva, they were once having lunch at their farmhouse in Ribarroja del Turia when Maje suddenly told him about an accident that had occurred at Antonio's company in June, where two of her colleagues had died in a traffic accident. She added that she wished it was Antonio who had died so she could escape her troubled marriage. Salva, who had seen numerous cases of domestic violence on television and in newspapers, knew they always ended in disaster, so he was willing to help Maje break up her marriage by any means possible, and that was how she emotionally manipulated him into murdering her husband. At the hospital, Maje gave Salva the garage key and asked him to wait for her husband to arrive so she could surprise him. After stabbing him several times in the chest with an onion knife, Salva returned to his farm and threw the murder weapon into a septic tank.
Initially, the national police homicide unit had no incriminating evidence against Maje, although they suspected the widow was the mastermind behind her husband's murder. To learn more about her, the homicide unit requested permission from the judge in charge of the case to intercept Maje's phone conversations. For the first two or three months, the unit found no substantial evidence; however, a call they received on November 8, 2017, radically changed the investigation.
Salva called Maje, but Maje suspected the police had tapped her phone, so she asked Salva to meet with him personally to discuss the matter. The authorities, who had been listening to the conversation, quickly arrived on the scene. They saw Maje meeting with a man at a café called La Casa del Tapeo, and from his appearance, it was clear this was the person they had been looking for all along. The homicide unit's next step was to gather enough evidence to finally arrest those involved in the murder case. It turned out that Salva had given Maje another phone, so the two prime suspects had been available to hide their relationship.
But although the widow and her lover had played it safe up until then, they ultimately made a mistake and discussed Antonio's murder, giving authorities grounds to arrest him. On January 2, 2018, they met at a cafe in the Las Américas shopping center, where they discussed the "key" Maje had given Salva to break into the garage. During this time, one of the homicide squad officers listened to and recorded the conversation.
On Friday, January 12, 2018, the homicide squad, armed with incriminating evidence, finally arrested Salva and Maje and took them to the police station to take separate, incommunicado statements. And when the interrogator asked Salva if he was involved in Antonio's murder, he quickly assumed the blame. He completely excluded Maje from the equation, not wanting anything bad to happen to her. The problem is that Salva worshipped her like a goddess, and Maje took advantage of her vulnerability for her own benefit. Antonio already had a wife, who worked at the same hospital, and a daughter, but he didn't consider either of them before beginning a discreet relationship with Maje. He was so fascinated by her beauty that he never considered the consequences of his actions. Perhaps the femme fatale rejuvenated him, to the point that he exchanged perfumed letters with her in the hospital as if they were high school lovers.
Salvo was in pretrial detention in Picassent prison when he finally changed his mind. His daughter had asked him to stop lying to the authorities and confess. So, on November 10, 2018, he called his lawyer, María Julita Martínez, and told her he wanted to appear before the investigating judge and rectify his statement. At that moment, Salvo finally revealed to the authorities how Maje had emotionally manipulated him and convinced him to murder her husband. Salvo believed that if he didn't help her, he would lose her forever, and that was the only reason he made such a grave decision. The trial for the murder of Antonio Navarro began on October 14, 2020.
The lawyers presented 51 witnesses, 14 expert witnesses, and more than 50 pieces of documented evidence, especially the telephone conversation between the defendants. On October 30, the jury unanimously found Salva and Maje guilty of intentional homicide. The judge finally handed down the verdict, sentencing Maje to 22 years in prison, with the aggravating circumstance of family ties, while Salva received a 17-year prison sentence with the mitigating circumstance of cooperating with justice. To this day, Salva is still serving his sentence in Picassent, while Maje has had another affair with a prisoner, David M. R., convicted of a violent murder in 2008. In 2022, Maje became pregnant by David and, in May 2023, she was transferred to the Fontcalent Mothers' Unit. Two months later, on July 13, she gave birth in a public hospital in Alicante. Currently, Maje is still serving her sentence in Fontcalent prison and reportedly no longer has a relationship with David and plans to raise their child alone.
Until the end, many experts and lawyers tried to theorize about Maje's true motive for Antonio's murder, but they found no concrete justification. Dr. Vicente Garrido Genovés, a criminologist and professional psychologist, believed that Maje did not want to divorce her husband and resort to legal means because she did not want to become the villain of the story. She had been unfaithful to Antonio before and after their marriage, and society would likely have labeled her as the disloyal wife incapable of loving anyone.
Furthermore, Antonio had several life and accident insurance policies, as well as an apartment in his name, establishing a financial motive for the murder. These resources would have allowed her to live a fairly comfortable life in her husband's absence. And last but not least, in Salva, she had found someone willing to take a leap of faith and solve all her problems. It was possible that Antonio, as much as he loved his wife, wouldn't let her live the life she wanted, and that was why she decided to get rid of him so she could live her own way.
Comments
Post a Comment