Accused of poisoning businessman at Palace Hotel to rob him on trial
The Madrid Provincial Prosecutor’s Office is asking for sentences of 17 and 19 years in prison for the two accused of causing the death of a businessman, whom they accompanied to the hotel room where he was staying in order to poison him and steal all his belongings.
The events occurred in October 2021 at the Westin Palace Hotel in Madrid.
The victim was José Rosado, a 42-year-old man of Puerto Rican origin, former CEO of Hijos de J. Barreras, the largest private Spanish shipyard.
The accused are M. V. P., born in Romania and with no criminal record, and M. C., born in Morocco and with several convictions. Both are in an irregular situation in Spain.
The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office charges each of them with the crime of homicide, article 138.1 of the Criminal Code; the crime of robbery with violence, provided for in articles 237 and 242.1; and the continuous crime of fraud, provided for and punishable under articles 248.2.c, 249.1 and 74.2.
He is requesting 17 and a half years in prison for the former and 19 years and three months for the latter, in which the aggravating circumstance of recidivism is present with respect to the robbery with violence. In the case of the latter, M.C., he requests that the sentence be replaced by his expulsion from the national territory due to the criminal record he has accumulated.
In addition, as civil liability, he demands that the victim’s mother be jointly and severally compensated with 100,000 euros and her sister with 50,000 euros. All of this with legal interest.
The trial is scheduled for next Monday, 24 April, in the Provincial Court of Madrid. They will be tried by a popular jury.
LETHAL INTOXICATION
According to the prosecution’s indictment, on 29 October 2021, José Rosado, a resident of Miami (USA), was in Madrid on holiday. During the course of that early morning the victim met the two accused and at around 5:00 the three of them went to the Westin Palace Hotel, located at number 7 Plaza de las Cortes, where the businessman was staying.
The prosecution maintains that once inside his room, both defendants, “acting with the intention of causing his death or assuming that possibility”, offered the victim a glass of wine, “having previously introduced in the bottle the narcotic substance called GHB in doses much higher than those normally tolerated.
As a result of this previous ingestion, the businessman died, “suffering respiratory depression due to lethal intoxication by Gamma hydroxybutyric acid, which caused him to suffer cardiorespiratory arrest”.
Subsequently, the defendants, “taking advantage of the fact that the victim had either died or was still unconscious”, seized an Apple iPhone XR mobile phone, which has been valued at 330 euros; a Microsoft Surface Pro 6 tablet, expertly valued at 825 euros; an Apple watch, valued at 140 euros; and three bank cards.
The prosecution claims that subsequently, both defendants, “with the common purpose of obtaining illicit financial gain, with one of the bank cards owned by the victim, at 6:27 and 6:28 on the same day, tried to withdraw 106 euros from a BBVA ATM in Paseo Alberto Palacios, without succeeding in the operation because they did not know the PIN number.
At 10.40 a.m., M.C. went to a tobacco shop in Móstoles (Madrid) and, using one of the bank cards, bought a carton of cigarettes worth 58.47 US dollars. Likewise, in another establishment in that town, two charges were made on the same card for 116.94 and 223 US dollars.
This circumstance made it possible to close in on the alleged perpetrators of the crime, who were finally located and arrested at their homes by the police.
The accused have been in pre-trial detention in this case since 24 December 2021, following their arrest the previous day.
According to what transpired at the time, the Romanian citizen was 39 years old when he was arrested and had nine arrests on his record, including several robberies with violence, some crimes against public health and other crimes of receiving.
The Moroccan national was 17 years old and had 17 previous convictions, most of them for robbery with violence, fraud, robbery with force, illegal association and usurpation of functions, among them two robberies committed in the centre of Madrid in which he obtained the loot by drugging the victims with GHB.
M. C., by final judgement of March 2017, handed down by Criminal Court number 5 of Getafe, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for the crime of robbery with violence, to expire in June 2018; by a final judgement of June 2019, handed down by Criminal Court number 22 of Madrid, he was sentenced to another year in prison for the crime of robbery with violence, to be completed in May 2021; and for the crime of robbery with force, Criminal Court number 2 of León sentenced him to another year in prison, being granted a suspension for a period of two years, pending compliance.
