Woman in custody after giving neighbor box containing her partner’s severed head

The Civil Guard in Cantabria are searching for the body of a 67-year-old man named Jesús María B. R., after his partner gave her neighbor a box for safekeeping that turned out to contain the missing man’s severed head.

The case came to the attention of the authorities this past weekend, when the neighbor of suspect María del Carmen M. G. opened the package after having kept it in her house for some time. The woman had told her neighbor that it contained sex toys, and that she wanted it out of her home ahead of a possible search by the Civil Guard in relation to the disappearance of her partner in February of this year.

Due to the smell that was coming from the box, the neighbor decided to open it in the early hours of Saturday morning

Due to the smell that was coming from the box, the neighbor decided to open it in the early hours of Saturday morning. Inside she found a human head in an advanced state of decomposition. The woman suffered a panic attack on making the grisly discovery and alerted the police.

María del Carmen M. G. – who is 61 and from Cádiz, but who has been living in Castro Urdiales in Cantabria, northern Spain for several years – was detained shortly afterwards, and is facing homicide charges. DNA tests have confirmed that the head belonged to her partner. The authorities are now searching land that belonged to the deceased, according to his cousin, Carlos Ricondo.

“We had hopes that he would return, but after so long without any signs of life we even thought that he might have thrown himself into the sea,” explained Ricondo, adding that he had always doubted the story that María del Carmen had told the family after the disappearance. “First she told us he had gone on vacation,” he explained. “When we called his cellphone and got no answer, she told us that [the phone] had broken after it fell in the bath, and she gave us another phone number from which we received messages, but we didn’t think it was him given the way they were written.”

After so long without any signs of life we even thought that he might have thrown himself into the sea

Victim’s cousin, Carlos Ricondo

These “strange circumstances” prompted Jesús María’s cousins to request that he call them or send them an audio message with his voice to verify that it was really him. “But we got no response, which prompted his cousin Alfonso and a [policeman] friend of his to report his disappearance.”

But according to Ricondo, “nothing could be proved” and a judge shelved the case after María del Carmen M. G. testified that “he had fled voluntarily with €12,000 that he had in the house,” and that he had left her. According to Ricondo, however, the victim “never kept cash in the house.”

English version by Simon Hunter.