Noble Blood - A Double Murder in Madrid

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

In 1980, a story captivated the Spanish media — the Marquis and Marchioness of Urquijo were found dead in the summer home, with no clear suspect in sight. Eventually, attention would turn to their playboy son-in-law, but the mysterious details of the case offer more questions than answers.Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Noble Blood merch— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They hit a bogo. Well, then you got it. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. On the morning of August 1st, 1980, a Spanish nobleman and his wife, the Marquise and Marcheus of Arquillo, had just moved into their summer chalet in Soto Grande, right outside of Madrid. where they would spend the entire month of August. But neither of them, Maria Lourdes-Eauquillo, nor Manuel de la Sierra Torres, her husband, came down for breakfast that morning. When the Marquise's driver arrived at the chalet,

he told the cook how strange it was that they had slept in so late. They called them on the internal line in the house, and no one answered. When they went up to the Marquise's room, they found that Maria Lourdes-Eir-Decchio and Manuel de la Sierra Torres had been murdered. Aside from the cook, there hadn't been any other domestic workers in the house. Maria and Manuel had encouraged them to take the previous afternoon and evening off. The cook would later tell the police that she hadn't heard anything.

Even more inexplicable was that Boli, the Marquesses famously loud, poodle, didn't bark even once that night. It seemed like whoever had carried out the murders knew the house well. The killer got in through the indoor pool, using a blowtorch to activate the latch and get into the main house. Even though they broke through the glass door in the back of the house, no glass shattered to the ground. They knew where the alarm was and switched it off. Nothing was stolen. There was no clear suspect. Initially, Maria and Manuel's children, Miriam and Juan, were considered. After all, the nobles had 43 million piscetas that their children could have inherited upon their parents' deaths. But both had alibis. Miriam was with her lover, Richard Rue, a coworker from her office whom the press nicknamed Dick the American. and Juan was in London getting a master's degree in finance. When the police finally did arrive at the scene,

they discovered one even stranger detail. Someone had already washed the blood off of Maria and Manuel's bodies. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble blood. With no suspect in sight, the investigator on the case, case declared, quote, this case is inexplicable after spending a few hours at the crime scene. The case would remain inexplicable for months. The police couldn't find any solid evidence that could pin anyone to the murders. There was no murder weapon, no DNA, just a few bullet casings at the Marquess's summer house.

This didn't stop the press from speculating about the culprit, of course. By 1980, the Franco dictatorship had been over for just five years, and journalists were eager to flex their new freedom of expression. Besides, in the middle of the summer heat, when many Spaniards were on vacation, there was barely any other news to report on. On August 2, 1980, the only other story making it to the front page of a major Spanish newspaper El Pasoise was, government vacations paralyzed political activity. The case would only pick up steam, as months passed and the press speculated on potential culprits. Readers devoured stories about the Urquios in various newspapers and weeklies,

theorizing that the murderer was a member of the Basque Nationalist Terrorist Group, ETA. Later, that it was a hitman, or even that it could have been a former domestic worker fired for a gay affair with the Marquess. A clear suspect finally emerged nearly a year after the murders. One morning in April, 1981, a child playing in the San Juan Reservoir in Madrid found a pistol on the shore.

This gun matched the one that had killed the Marquesses of Urquillo, a small 22-caliber pistol with a silencer. It was registered in the name of Miguel Escobedo, the father of Rafi di Escobedo, the Marquess's estranged son-in-law, who was married to their daughter, Miriam. Rafi Escobedo was a handsome law school dropout and a known playboy. Like the Marquesses, he was also a noble,

as his mom was from the Prada Armeno family. But his parents had fallen on hard times. His family's dire financial circumstances didn't get in the way of his social life. He spent his teens and early 20s cavorting with Madrid's young elite. Miriam de la Sierra, the Marquess's daughter, and Rafi met at their equestrian club when she was 20. Miriam developed a crush instantly. She wrote in her memoirs, quote, Rafi was very attentive, charismatic, friendly, and very affectionate.

He was always making plans. He took me to parties. He even taught me how to dress differently. Rafi provided a refreshing contrast to Miriam's strict upbringing. Her father was known for being stingy with his kids, to such an extent that Miriam and Juan were called the poor in their posh circle of friends. She started working at the age of 14 to earn her own money, with no allowance to speak up. Miriam hoped that, with her responsible, practical attitude,

she could clean up Rafi's act. She wrote in her memoirs, I love being a mother to everyone. Raffy was like a child, attractive, charming, friendly, so with Rafi I adopted, the same role of Savior. I wanted to transform him. Being so young and sheltered, Miriam wasn't yet aware that an, I can fix him attitude, doesn't exactly bode well for a couple. The Marquesses were not so naive. They strongly objected to their daughter's marriage, since Raphael had no job or prospects. But Miriam stuck to her guns, and after a year and a half of dating, the couple married at the Church of Humera on June 21, 1978, with all members of the High Society, from the Duchess of Alba to the Egyptian ambassador in attendance. The marriage deteriorated almost immediately.

as soon as Miriam said I do, she regretted marrying Rafi. They started out living with her parents in their summer home in Sorasagas, but they clashed constantly. Once, Rafi even called the Marquess his father-in-law a, quote, pig, miser, and cretan. In response, the Marquess threatened to cut Raffa off without a placenta. sick of fighting with Rafi, the Marquesses threw the young couple out of their house. The newlyweds went to live in an apartment in Madrid, where they suffered various periods of financial hardship

without Miriam's parents stepping in to support them, which Rafi resented. Rafi and Miriam were so broke that he had to pawn Miriam's engagement bracelet. Soon they began living completely separate lives. Sometimes Miriam would come home from work and find their apartment full of people drinking, doing drugs, and gambling. Things that she recalls she, quote, couldn't or didn't want to know about. She felt she never fit in with Rafi's friends, other rich kid layabouts, when she never drank a drop of alcohol in her life. Miriam wrote, quote, Little by little, I realized that my relationship with Rafi was hopeless.

At first, we had daily arguments, but later he decided to disappear and dedicate himself to his travels. After just six months of marriage, Miriam and Rafi were separated. Miriam, regretting her union with Rafi, made amends with her parents, who, to their credit, never said, I told you so. the Marquess and his deeply religious wife, a member of the Roman Catholic Opus Day organization, agreed to try and help Miriam escape her marriage by seeking a church annulment. By Easter 1979, nine months after she had married Rafi,

Miriam was in a new relationship with Dick the American, a co-worker at the company she worked at. By the time of the murders, Miriam and Rafi had been, separated for over two years. Initially, neither the police nor Miriam considered Rafia's suspect because he had no financial motive. He didn't stand to inherit anything if the Marquesses died because they had signed a separation of property agreement before the marriage. But after finding the pistol at the San Juan Reservoir, another motive emerged. Revenge. Unlike Miriam, Rafi resented his in-laws for their stinginess and blamed them for their financial struggles.

They had fought constantly, and Rafi made no secret of his hatred of his father-in-law. It's true that Rafi's general incompetence seems not to fit the precision of the crime, with not even a shard of glass left at the crime scene, but he was also a loose canon, unpredictable and reasonable. reckless. Miriam began to wonder if Rafi's venomous words for her father could have turned into actual violence. In the weeks after the murder, she remembered a frightening anecdote from her past. After a particularly bad fight with the Marquess, Rafi had told her, I have a plan prepared, and I am going to kill your family. A few days after finding the gun in the San Juan

Reservoir in April 1981, inspectors went to Rafi's family home with a search warrant. At the shooting range, they collected samples of bullet casings, which they compared with the ones from the crime scene. They confirmed that they were the same, and so they headed to the Escobedo family ranch in Quinka, where Rafi had retired with the intention of setting up a pig farm. From there, Rafi was taken to the General Directorate of Security, which at that time was located in Puerto del Sol in Madrid. Rafi suffered through hours of interrogation and humiliation, and at the end of the night, he confessed. He had killed the Marquesses of Urquio, and he also said he had not done it alone. He wrote by hand in a statement, quote,

I am guilty of the death of my in-laws, the Marquesses of Arquio. He gave key details. He said that he used tape to break the glass door that led to the pool of the villa so it wouldn't shatter. He refused to say, who else had been with him that night. The next day, he immediately recanted, saying that he confessed under duress. Although he did admit to having been in the Samosagas' moment, mansion that night, he said that he was not the one who pulled the trigger and actually killed his in-laws. After Rafi insisted on his innocence, the case suffered even more setbacks. The four 22-caliber

shells that had been found in the Marquess's room and the 265 that had been collected at the Rafi's family estate disappeared from court, as did the murder weapon recovered in the reservoir and Rafi's handwritten confession. When the trial finally began, it was a media event. Journalists crowded in the front row and the courtroom was so packed that people could barely get in and out. Jose Maria Stampa Brawn, Rafi's defense attorney, emphasized that, having lost all of the evidence,

the prosecution did not have enough proof to convict Rafi. The lack of evidence made both, sides cases much more difficult. The defense expert claimed that the shells from the crime scene didn't match the ones from Rafi's house, while the police maintained the opposite. Still, the defense attorney Stampa Braun put up a formidable defense. When the prosecution brought out an expert witness testifying to these similarities between the two sets of casings, Braun dictated to the secretary of the court a report. in which he qualified and questioned that evidence.

The prosecutor interrupted him, saying that he was behaving inappropriately. Braun responded, quote, If the detailed report of a lawyer made in defense of someone who is risking 60 years in prison is considered inappropriate, then I, from this moment, resign from the defense and cease to be a lawyer because I am not interested in collaborating with justice. The audience in the courtroom burst into applause, and the presiding judge had to order the courtroom to be cleared. For their part, the psychiatrists who examined Rafi and testified at the trial established that he was, quote, incapable of killing a fly. They concluded that he lacked the, quote, capacity, intellect, and will to kill with such certainty and coldness.

Ismail Fuente and Camillo Velacantos, who covered the trial for El Paix, wrote on June 24, 1983, quote, with the exception of Escobedo's confession of guilt, which he later retracted, and which is the central issue of the trial, from the point of view of the criminal procedure law, none of the alleged evidence could be proven to the accused. But it seemed like the judge, Banvenito Guevara, had already decided Rafi was guilty from the beginning of the trial. According to a journalist who covered the case, one of the sessions of the trial began with the judge saying to Rafi, Guilty one, get up. On July 7, 1983, Guvara's sentence was released to the public. In a decision that only took up a page and a half, Rafi Escobedo Alde was sentenced to 26 years,

eight months, and one day of imprisonment for each of the crimes, for committing two crimes of murder with the aggravating circumstances of premeditation and nocturnality. Upon hearing the sentence, Rafi said, I didn't think I was going to be convicted. What can you do? In spite of the shaky evidence, with the trial over and a verdict reached, it would seem that the Urquio case was closed. But in his sentence, the judge included a phrase that would fuel decades of further investigation

by the police and press alike. He stated that Escobedo murdered his former in-laws, quote, either alone or in the company of others. Lo and behold, no more than two days after the verdict had been reached, a bombshell article dropped in Spanish magazine interview that promised to reveal who those others might have been. On July 9, 1983, Interview Magazine introduced a new suspect into the Aqueo case. Maricio Lopez Roberts, 5th Marquis of Tore Amosa. Lopez Roberts was a close friend of Rafi's and ran in the same circle of Madrid socialites. The magazine alleged that, being a good shot and an inveterate hunter, he had ordered a silencer for a gun from a workshop days before the crime.

The silencer, which they alleged, was then used on the gun that killed the Marquesses. Maricio Lopez Roberts was taken into police custody, where he clarified that the silencer he had ordered was for a rifle, not a pistol, disproving the allegations from the magazine. Still, he admitted that he was connected to the case. Lopez Roberts told the inspectors that on July 31, 1980, after having dinner at Elis Bejo and a few drinks, Rafi arrived with his friend Javier and Estacio. Anastasio was another boy from a well-off family, a flirt and a party animal, who spent his nights out at famous Madrid clubs.

Anastasio and Rafi had been friends since they were six. Anastasio did not belong to a family of ancient lineage, nor did he have a noble last name. But his father owned a gas station in the center of, of Madrid, with which he amassed a considerable fortune, which made him a rich kid. According to Lopez Roberts, after dinner, Anastacio did not accompany Rafi to the chalet to kill the Marquesses. That said, on August 3, 1980, Rafi met Anastacio in Madrid's Plaza del Conde del Via Esuchil, where he gave him the bag he had taken two Somasaguas on the night of the crime.

It contained guns, gloves, a blowtorch, and the hammer that had been used to gain access to the inside of the house. Apparently, Rafi asked Anastasio not to look at what was inside the bag and just to get rid of it, and Anastacio was the one who threw it into the San Juan Reservoir. The next day, Lopez Roberts warned Anastasio of the danger if he were arrested and recommended that he flee to England and from there to South Africa, a country with which there was no extradition treaty. Since Anastasio had no money on hand to escape, Lopez Roberts lent him 25 psaletas. The police confirmed this information and also confirmed Lopez Roberts' alibi for the

night of the murders. It might seem strange that Lopez Roberts would confess to helping an accessory to the crime escape, but he declared that Rafi's sentence was indefensible and that he just wanted to help the police find the true culprit. I say this now because I want justice to be done, he told the police, while assuring that his friend was innocent and was paying the price for others. After Lopez Roberts' revelation, both he and Anastacio, who hadn't actually fled, were arrested and both spent three and a half years in provisional prison awaiting trial. They were released on March 21, 1987. Nine months later, a lawyer went to Anastasio's house to notify him that the Madrid Provincial Court had set the date for the oral hearings for both his and Lopez Roberts' trial.

But Anastacio was nowhere to be found. It turned out he had escaped. He took a bag with some clothes and the money from an apartment he had sold and drove across the border into Portugal with one of his eight brothers. From there, he took a direct flight to Brazil, a country with no extradition treaty with Spain. Meanwhile, Ralphie Escobedo, was in prison. He had been transferred to El Dueso Prison in cell number four.

four on the second floor. He decorated it with photos of Miriam and paper airplanes in every corner of the room. Rafi also kept in his cell a collection of letters stored in cardboard boxes and a canary. While in prison, Rafi agreed to an interview with the journalist Jesus Quintero, who had the nickname the Madman on the Hill. Rafi spoke of his depression in prison and, and his alleged unfair treatment by the justice system. There has been no investigation, and there will be no investigation, because nobody is interested in investigating it, he said to Quintero, I am nothing anymore.

On July 27, 1988, 14 days after that interview, Rafi Escobedo was found hanged at the age of 33 in his cell. He had hanged himself using a sheet. Later that year, Lopez Roberts was taken to court, where the judge, who happened to be the son of the judge who had originally tried Rafi, presided over the case. Lopez Roberts was accused by the prosecutor of covering up the perpetrators of the murders and of having had news of the event, both from Rafi and from Anastasio. The case was much less of a media event than it had been in the early 80s. The courtroom was not even half full. In court, Lopez Roberts tried to downplay his knowledge of the crime, saying,

Rafi told many things. Some were true and others were not. I did not believe absolutely everything he told me because he had changed his version about 200 times. But Lopez Roberts admitted to having met with Anastasio the day after Rafi's arrest at a cafe in Madrid. I found him very worried about the arrest, and I advised him to go to London, where his girlfriend was, so that she could console him. He told me that he had no money, and I lent him 25 psaletas.

If I knew that Anastasio was actually involved in the affair, I wouldn't have lent him that money so he could go anywhere. Lopez Roberts maintained, almost to the end, that in his conversation with Anastasio, the latter made no reference to having gotten rid of a bag containing the gun used in the murderers, the hammer, the blowtorch, and a butane cylinder used to break into the Huyo house. He knew from Rafi that Anastasio had taken care to get rid of these objects, but at the cafe they didn't mention it.

Quote, as Lopez-Roberts says, although I imagine he was worried about it. On February 26, 1990, Lopez Roberts was sentenced to 10 years in prison for being an accessory to the crime, lending Anastacio money to escape the country. While Lopez Roberts served his prison sentence, Anastasio was still missing. It wasn't until 2015 that Vanity Fair finally found Javier Anastacio in Buenos Aires. The charges against him have been dropped. and he insisted on his innocence, alleging that Juan de la Sierra, the Marquess's son,

was actually the one behind the murder. He poked holes in Juan's alibi that he was in London at the time, saying that none of the journalists who had been waiting for Juan at the airport to see him arrive back to Madrid had actually seen him, and that Juan denied a judge's request

to show his plane ticket and passport. Most damningly, he said that the night Rafi told Anastio to take him to the Marquess's house, Rafi had said it was because he had an appointment with Juan. It's still unclear what exactly happened on the night of July 31, 1980, and who killed the Marquesses? Even if you believe that Rafi did pull the trigger, Javier Anastasio buried the evidence,

and Mauricio Lopez-Roberts helped Anastasio escape, it remains murky what Rafi would have had to gain from such a gruesome murder and why his friends were so willing to help him with such a high-profile crime. It's even less clear if there were even more people who were involved in the crime. It was the case's ambiguity that so captivated the Spanish media. The Arquillo murders were the first parallel trial in Democratic Spain, creating a media circus and a slew of conspiracies in its wake. Every aspect of the case was up for debate, even the smallest detail.

Like why the Marquesse's poodle didn't bark when an intruder arrived that night, or why the bodies of the Marquesses were washed before the police arrived, making a forensic autopsy impossible. We still don't have answers for those questions, and police mismanagement only made things worse, given that the most crucial evidence in this case, the murder weapon, the bullet casings found at the scene of the crime, and Rafi's handwritten confession, all went missing.

This allowed the media to pick apart and speculate about every detail and let conspiracy theories proliferate. As a journalist who covered the case put it, quote, it had all of the ingredients of a good soap opera. Two dead Marquesses, Rafi's morbid gang, well-off guys who spent their time drinking gin and tonics at the country club. There was also a divorce, an American lover,

a guy with no job or prospects, strange moves in the jet set. This case had everything. Everything, perhaps, except definite answers. That's the end of the story of the murder of the Marquesses of Urquillo. But keep listening to hear even more about some shady behavior that happened in the house on the morning of the murders. Everyone, I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means but I just know the groundlings, I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent,

I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wode.

My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and The Big Money Players network. It's Will Farrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through.

And I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The day after the murder, the Marquesse's financial administrator, a man named Diego Martinez Herrera, arrived to work wearing black clothes, as if he were already in mourning,

even though it was a sweltering August in Madrid. As soon as he found out what had happened, he went immediately to the Marquesse's office. He took some documents from the table and went out to the garden to burn them. He asked for help from the butler to burn the documents, but the butler kept many of the papers and then handed them over to the police. This detail continues to confound those investigating the crime. What documents were burned and why? While we don't have an answer,

and the police never considered the administrator nor the butler prime suspects, the act was suspicious enough to raise questions about their involvement in the case. Rafi, for example, did accuse Diego Martinez Herrera of collaborating with Juan, their son, in murdering the Marquesses. For the record, the butler, who took every opportunity to talk to the press about the murder, also blamed Juan and Diego for the horrific crime. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Menke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Danish Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Julia Melani, and Armand Kasam. The show is edited and produced by Noami Griffin and Rima Il K. Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the podcast. the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard sell? shelter instead of beer.

They had a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.