How "indiscreet killer's" phone call boast brought him down

The case of the indiscreet killer, as it is being called, has so far resulted in two individuals being taken into custody and a third defendant released with charges in connection with the death of a man in Málaga last Saturday.

The victim, a 37-year-old Spanish national of Colombian origin, was stabbed to death during a bar fight involving eight people in Málaga's Plaza Murillo Carrera. The perpetrators were identified after one of them boasted about the crime on his cellphone during a bus ride to Madrid soon after the events. The man sitting next to him on the bus, it was later revealed, was a police officer in civilian clothes who overheard the conversation.

"I just killed a guy," said Óscar Elíseo, 19, into his mobile phone as he sought to flee the scene of the crime by taking a late-night bus to the capital on Sunday. It was 12.30am and the whole bus seemed to be asleep but somebody was still wide awake and listening in on the conversation, which lasted about half an hour.

Elíseo confessed that he was drunk at the time of the fight and that he was getting out of Málaga because things were too hot there. Without saying a word, the police officer one seat away sent a few text messages on his own phone, asking his superiors to quickly check the story in their databases. A quick investigation found that a murder had indeed taken place in Málaga whose description fit the information the officer had overheard on the bus. A man had died as a result of a bar fight, after sustaining fatal knife blows to his liver and pancreas.

During a rest stop at Bailén in the six-hour journey, the undercover cop also phoned 091, the police hotline, to coordinate the police operation that immediately got underway. When the bus operated by the Daibus company reached its destination - the Méndez Álvaro bus station - at 5.40am, several officers in civilian clothes surrounded the suspect, whom their colleague had described in an SMS as "wearing dark clothes, white sneakers, he is tall and has long dark hair." Elíseo's erstwhile busmate was standing discreetly behind him, as planned, to point him out all the better to the detectives waiting at the station.

Óscar Eliseo, a citizen of Paraguay, faces murder charges. Seven other people were arrested in connection with the crime, two of them under age. One of the arrested individuals has already confessed to his participation in the fight.

"He talked too much, he was indiscreet, and his strong fear got a hold of him," said police sources about Óscar Elíseo, who is nevertheless not considered to have delivered the fatal wounds.