The Provincial Court of Madrid has sentenced Antonio Ángel Ortiz, known as the pedophile of Ciudad Lineal, to 70 and a half years in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting four girls between September 2013 and August 2014 in this Madrid district and in areas bordering. However, the Court explains that, in accordance with the Penal Code, the maximum limit of serving a sentence will be 20 years, to which the two years and five months that he has been in provisional prison will be discounted. zumba tips for beginners In the sentence, the court of the Seventh Section of the Madrid Court convicts Ortiz as responsible for two crimes of sexual assault in mediation with two crimes of illegal detention, two crimes of sexual assault, two crimes of illegal detention and one crime of injuries. They absolve him, however, of the crime of attempted murder against one of the minors who charged him with one of the private accusations, and two other offenses.

It also imposes 40 years of probation upon completion of the prison sentence and compensation of 426,200 for the four young women for the moral damages caused and the injuries suffered. You may also not approach less than a kilometer away or communicate with any of the four victims in a period between 23 years and 24 years and six months.

However, the Chamber recalls that the resolution is not final and can be appealed on appeal before the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court.

THE PROFILE OF A PREDATOR

Antonio Ortiz was arrested on September 24, 2014, in Santander, after a police "hunt" that lasted for more than a year. The Interior Minister at the time of his capture, Jorge Fernández Díaz, explained that he was an individual "of a violent nature", practiced bodybuilding and martial arts "and had relationships with organized crime."

He always knew the areas in which he acted to prevent his movements from being registered by security cameras that could expose him, and he took advantage of his work trips to Madrid, where he dedicated himself to the sale of vehicles and technology, to commit crimes.

Investigators found that the pedophile had put up for sale on the Internet the car he used to abuse minors, although he also sold another vehicle that he used regularly. Fernández Díaz explained that the arrested had access to different vehicles for sale and purchase because he worked for a businessman dedicated to the business, so he had the availability to use these cars.

'CANDY', A CHALLENGE FOR THE POLICE

The police operation received the name of 'Candy' (candy, in English) and was described as "very complex" by the Interior Minister. In it, several elements came together that made it difficult to resolve the case: the abuser's lack of relationship with the victims, the use of various vehicles to commit abuses, and the precautions he took to avoid being located.

Another important factor was the young age of the victims combined with the use of narcotics, which made their testimonies of "poor quality".

Due to the difficulty of the operation, the National Police resorted to the advice of specialists in behavior analysis "and even to the FBI," Jorge Fernández Díaz explained at the time.

The investigators did not have the complete "photograph" of the case until August 2014. The trigger was the abduction of a seven-year-old girl in the Hortaleza district, who was found an hour and a half later in a field in the San Blas district- Canillejas, adjacent to that of Ciudad Lineal.

TWELVE MONTHS OF TERROR

It was after that event that the agents managed to elaborate on the complete sequence of events, which linked several similar events that had occurred in Madrid in the previous months. The first thing they did was investigate whether the author of this latest kidnapping was the same one who had kidnapped a 9-year-old girl in Ciudad Lineal on the previous April 10. The little girl was found several hours after her disappearance, next to the Canillejas metro station.

At the time of the investigation, the Police already knew that the person responsible for the April kidnapping was the same as that of a kidnapping that occurred two months later, on June 17. A 6-year-old girl was kidnapped in the same district and found a few hours after her abduction, alone and with symptoms of having been drugged.

But there was still more. The first link in the rapist criminal chain was located by investigators in September 2013, when the kidnapping of another minor occurred in Ciudad Lineal.