Signed: ‘The Horrible Human Being.’ The story of the triple murderer released by Trump

Víctor Salas has talked so much over the last week that his mouth is dry. He asks for some water so he can continue telling his unusual story. Since Monday, he has given countless interviews in Madrid to national and international media outlets to warn of a “serious mistake.” The man who tried to kill him in 2016, Dahud Hanid Ortiz, was repatriated by the United States from Venezuela on Friday, July 18, and allowed to go free. It was this survivor who broke the news to the Spanish press after receiving a police alert.

Now, the 45-year-old lawyer is wondering about the whereabouts of the murderer more keenly than anyone else. It is unclear where Ortiz went after being released upon arriving in San Antonio, Texas, along with nine political prisoners who were being held in Venezuelan prisons. Some media outlets have reported that he traveled to Orlando, Florida. Ortiz was serving a 30-year prison sentence in a Caracas jail for killing three people in the Spanish capital, but he has only spent six years, nine months, and 10 days behind bars.

Salas walked into EL PAÍS headquarters on Thursday looking exhausted. He said he had spent the night before poring over U.S. case law to find out if there was any way for that country to comply with a sentence handed down in Venezuela for a crime committed by a U.S. national in Spain. It’s a legal mess. “This is very complex, but it can’t stay this way,” said the lawyer, who moved to the Spanish capital from his native Peru in 2008. He was more indignant than frightened. He feels indebted to the families of the deceased, two employees of his Madrid office as well as a client whom the killer mistook for him: “It’s not fair that politics should take precedence over the rights of victims.”

Nothing has been heard so far from another person who was threatened by the killer: Irina Treppel, who lives in Germany and was Ortiz’s wife. She began a relationship with the Madrid-based lawyer, which unleashed the killer’s wrath. She collaborated with Spanish investigators to uncover the truth and, over the following months, received messages that terrified her.

Do they both have reason to fear? Nine years have elapsed since the events, enough time for tempers to cool, but the evidence gathered against Ortiz by Spanish investigators suggests that this 54-year-old former U.S. Marine is very dangerous. He returned from the Iraq War with psychological damage and he is a professional killer, capable of murdering three people and fleeing without being discovered.

Spanish and German authorities have not disclosed whether they have issued an alert in case Ortiz tries to enter European territory. But aside from that potential danger, the case also raises questions about whether Spain should demand that some form of proportionate punishment be meted out for this horrific crime committed on its own territory.

The wrong victim

On the afternoon of Monday, June 20, 2016, Ortiz got into a car in the small town of Würzburg, Germany, for a 1,242 mile (2,000 km) drive to Madrid. Sitting at the wheel of an old silver Volkswagen Golf, he felt consumed by jealousy. His wife had started a relationship with a lawyer based in Spain in April. His goal was to kill him.

Ortiz had slipped into decline after being expelled from the U.S. Armed Forces in 2014. He was discovered falsifying documents related to his residence. As a Marine, he had been awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq, where he suffered multiple physical and mental injuries.

After getting kicked out, he remained with his wife near the Schweinfurt base in Germany, his last military posting. But the relationship broke down and he refused to accept it. In May 2016, he discovered that she was in a new relationship with Salas. He snatched her cell phone and called the lawyer: “I have been trained to kill, and I am going to come after you to kill you.” Salas did not take him seriously.

Ortiz arrived in the working-class district of Usera, in Madrid, on Wednesday, June 22, shortly after dawn. At around 2:30 p.m., he entered the law office and asked the two employees, Elisa Consuegra and Maritza Osorio, for the lawyer. They informed him that he was not there at the time. The exact time of the women’s deaths is unknown, but the client’s death did not occur before 5:00 p.m., when he walked in looking for some papers. He was an Ecuadorian taxi driver, Pepe Castillo, who had double-parked his car. The killer used a knife to execute his victims and burned the office before setting off on his return journey by road to Germany. He believed he had achieved his goal.

Ortiz only realized he had killed the wrong person when he watched the news back in Würzburg. He did so at the home of Larisa, Irina’s mother, who was trying to get the couple back together again. Larisa told the police that when Ortiz saw on the BBC that the deceased was actually a client, not the lawyer, he began to shout that it was false. Victor Salas had been saved because he had taken a nap, and Ortiz had just discovered that his heinous act had been pointless.

The Spanish police officers who traveled to Germany months later discovered that Ortiz had crafted a meticulous alibi. To do so, he enlisted the help of a friend, Adytia Dolontelide, to whom he left both his phone and his bank and gym cards during the days following the events. He instructed him to leave a false trail of his presence in Germany. According to the friend, he helped Ortiz because the latter had told him he wanted to have an affair behind Irina’s back.

Despite this alibi, Ortiz decided to flee Germany just eight days after the murders, on June 30, 2016. He bought a plane ticket for July 5, from Frankfurt to Bogotá, Colombia with a stopover in Madrid.

A judge’s mistake

Ortiz was able to escape because the investigation was progressing slowly in Spain. The investigating judge was Juan Carlos Peinado, now a household name in Spain due to his controversial investigation into Begoña Gómez, the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Peinado and the police clashed because the former upheld a strange theory about a Mexican cartel that he believed may have had a score to settle with the owner of the law firm. The judge ignored the evidence pointing to Ortiz, including his wife’s statement against him just six days after the incident at a police station in Madrid. It took the judge a year to issue an international arrest warrant, on the anniversary of the crime, June 22, 2017.

Meanwhile, Ortiz entered Venezuela from Colombia through one of the thousands of illegal border crossings that existed at the time and which were bustling with migrants leaving the country. His sister Dalal lived in Puerto Ordaz.

For weeks, Ortiz tormented his wife with threats. He told her via WhatsApp that it was very easy for Syrian refugees to get to Germany. In one of many messages, he warned her: “Sooner or later, I will carry out my plans. I have all the time in the world, no fear, one goal, and a lot of information.” He signed off with: “The horrible human being.”

He called her repeatedly. He told her that he was going to take his own life and that she was responsible. He said he was depressed and had panic attacks and anxiety, and that he was using cocaine, marijuana, and pills.

On September 5, he wrote an email to his wife’s sister confessing his guilt. “I was a good man, but Irina changed that,” he wrote. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve slept 10-15 minutes since this happened. I did horrible things without meaning to, or whatever. Believe me, people lose their minds. I did.“ Then he added, ”I am sorry for all of this with all my heart, and since no one will ever forgive me, I hope to slowly disappear from your lives.”

In Venezuela, he worked selling appliances until he was arrested on October 13, 2018. Just two months earlier, President Nicolás Maduro had been targeted in a failed drone attack during a military parade in Caracas. The Chavista intelligence apparatus was on high alert, searching for foreign conspirators. They suspected him because of his belongings. He was carrying several foreign documents and had U.S. military IDs, military caps, and camouflaged bags.

He was flown to Caracas and handed over to the Military Counterintelligence Directorate, which saw the Interpol alerts indicating that Ortiz was wanted in Spain. Despite initial suspicions of espionage, the trial went ahead for the crimes he was charged with in Madrid.

The Spanish government requested his extradition, but the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office opposed it because Ortiz was Venezuelan by birth. At a trial that had to be repeated due to a change of judge, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Venezuela.

The sentence was handed down on January 9, 2024. Weeks earlier, Ortiz had been on the verge of leaving Venezuela in another prisoner exchange with the U.S., during Joe Biden’s administration. But that time, his seat on the plane ultimately went to the businessman Leonard Glenn Francis, aka Fat Leonard, who was implicated in bribes to the Navy.

Ortiz appealed the sentence twice. The last appeal was before the Venezuelan Supreme Court, which dismissed it in May of this year, just three months before he was released.

The U.S. State Department has provided little explanation as to why they accepted Ortiz, beyond saying that many detainees had reported torture. This has fueled suspicions that they were unaware of his past, although Venezuelan leaders have boasted that they warned the Trump administration that they were taking home a murderer.

The Spanish government has remained silent so as not to damage its delicate relations with the Donald Trump administration, but on Thursday it emerged that the public prosecutor’s office has sent a report on Ortiz’s legal situation to the United States.

The question is whether any action will be taken against the killer. This week, Víctor Salas and the father of one of the murdered employees, Juan Carlos Consuegra, spoke with Spanish judicial authorities to ask them to take action. “What we are asking is for the rule of law be restored,” says Consuegra. “This has been a mockery.”

During his meeting with this newspaper, Salas says he is tired after “nine long years of back and forth” to obtain justice. During that time, the only time he saw the man who tried to kill him was at the trial in Caracas in 2022, when he testified. As he stepped down from the witness stand, he took the opportunity to address the defendant, who was watching from his seat “defiantly,” handcuffed and guarded by two plainclothes police officers.

“You’ll end up in prison.”

Ortiz held his gaze and said nothing, according to another person present in the room. “He laughed,” recalls Salas. “What I saw was a lack of sensitivity toward human life.”