A father who pursued his daughter’s killer for 30 years worries he’ll escape again

This is the story of two men at odds for 30 years: Martín Mestre has relentlessly pursued his daughter’s murderer, while Jaime Saade has tenaciously evaded jail and the father of the young woman he killed in 1994. Mestre spent years chasing a ghost – the earth had swallowed Saade on the night of the crime. Until 2020, when Mestre found Saade in Brazil after a decades-long, made-for-the-movies search.

“I was like Forrest Gump sitting at the bus stop, telling his story to whoever would listen,” said Mester. “I have tried to keep Nancy’s story alive all this time. I have told it to all the detectives and police commissioners who have come and gone.”

Mestre collapses on the sofa in his Barranquilla (northeast Colombia) home and looks at his phone vibrating on the table. Brazil’s Supreme Court had overturned a previous ruling 24 hours earlier and ordered Saade’s extradition to Colombia. Never has this cold case been so close to resolution. Now everyone wants to talk to Mestre, a reluctant champion in a race against the slow-turning wheels of justice before the statute of limitations expires. It was also a personal race against mortality – Mestre just turned 81. The phone buzzes all day long. “I’m exhausted,” he admits, tired of talking about the same thing for over 29 years.

For Mestre, yesterday is always January 1, 1994, a day forever engraved in his memory. He remembers every detail, even the smell of gasoline, when he drove out at dawn to look for his daughter. The story begins with a father searching early on New Year’s Day in the nightclubs of Barranquilla for his missing daughter, Nancy. By the end of the day, the story turned into a quest to find her killer. He found Nancy a few hours later in a clinic, unconscious from a bullet wound to the head. But Saade disappeared for the next 26 years. He had changed his name to Henrique dos Santos Abdala, and was living quietly with his wife and two children in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), as if nothing had happened.

Finding Saade was always the goal, and when Interpol finally arrested him, Mestre thought the rest would be simple. All Colombia needed to do was request his extradition, and Brazil would hand him over. But then Brazil’s Supreme Court astounded everyone by denying the extradition. Two justices voted in favor of extradition and two determined that the statute of limitations had expired; the fifth justice was absent that day. The Supreme Court decided a tie vote should benefit the accused. Saade was free once again, and Mestre thought it was all over.

Martín Mestre and his wife, Lina, live in a home overlooking the Magdalena River, full of religious icons and images. A Virgin Mary statuette, an image of Jesus Christ and a red rosary lie on the bedside table, perhaps bringing peace to Mestre throughout his ordeal. He believes that angels have been helping him persevere and never give up. The most recent angel is a Barranquilla native named Margarita R. Sánchez, an attorney with the Miller & Chevalier law firm in Washington, DC, who learned about the case through a friend.

Sánchez and her law firm agreed to start a pro bono legal battle on Mestre’s behalf to persuade the Brazilian Supreme Court to overturn its decision and order Saade’s extradition. It had never happened before. Sánchez argued that the tie-breaker rule did not apply in a case like this and that the statute of limitations had not, in fact, expired. The Court not only agreed to hear the appeal, it overturned its first ruling and order Saade’s extradition to Colombia.

Mestre followed the hearing online, with his son on the phone from Miami and Sánchez in Washington, DC. Bruno Barreto, a Brazilian lawyer, represented them before the Supreme Court. Since the Mestres did not understand a word of Portuguese, they watched the judge’s faces closely for any signs. They thought they had lost again until Sánchez told them no – the Court had ruled in their favor. The couple was overjoyed, but Mestre has learned to be cautious.

Mestre is happy, but also worried. Saade has been free since the first Supreme Court ruling and another escape is on everyone’s mind. After all, he had gotten away with murder since New Year’s Eve in 1993, when he went out to celebrate with Nancy. After dinner in his home with the young couple, Mestre walked them to the door and told Saade, “Take good care of her.”

The parents went to bed and left the hallway light on for Nancy. Shortly before dawn, Martín woke up, startled to see the hallway light was still on. Only Saade knows what happened after he left the Mestre home with Nancy. He was never seen again in Barranquilla.

Mestre went looking for Nancy in all the nightclubs and then went to Saade’s house, where he found his mother strangely mopping the floor at dawn. She told him that Nancy had been hurt and was being treated in a nearby clinic. Mestre raced over there and ran into Jaime’s father, who told him Nancy had attempted suicide. The young woman died nine days later. Jaime Saade was sentenced in absentia to 27 years in prison for the rape and murder of Nancy Mestre.

Martín Mestre always wanted a big family with lots of children and grandchildren. The Mestres had four children, but only one is still alive. The first – María Paulina – was stillborn. The second, Martín, lives in Miami and has a daughter. The third was Nancy and the fourth, Juan Rafael, died when he was 15 days old from liver failure. If Saade had not fled, Mestre believes he might have properly mourned his daughter and closed the chapter. But he couldn’t. “It’s not an obsession – I’m not obsessive. I just want him to suffer the consequences, pay the penalty and not make a mockery of my family and daughter.”

The search for Jaime Saade has dominated Mestre’s later years. After retiring from military service, he took intelligence collection courses and became an internet expert. Helped by a Colombian police officer, he created several fake profiles on social media and eventually penetrated Saade’s world. He discovered clues that pointed to Brazil, where one of Jaime’s brothers lived.

Time has also worked against this case. The 27-year in absentia conviction expires in July. Saade’s lawyer now argues that the statute of limitations expired after a change in the law reduced the sentence to 24 years. Mestre’s lawyers countered this by claiming that the statute of limitations was suspended until Saade’s arrest in 2020 – Brazil’s Supreme Court agreed.

All these details are overwhelming for Mestre, so he shrugs his shoulders fatalistically and waits for Saade’s extradition to Colombia. “If he escapes, then I’ll go looking for him again – I’m used to that.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition