The officials of the Mas Enric prison, in Tarragona, who yesterday did not have a guard in the center, approached in a group to the doors of the Department of Justice in Barcelona with their hands stained red. There was no need to ask who were colleagues of Nuria López, the 44-year-old head chef and mother of a girl murdered on Wednesday by an inmate. His colleagues received hugs and shared the tears, reproaches and lamentations of the rest of the prison officials who gathered at the doors of the counselor Gemma Ubasart's office to shout at her that “enough is enough” of being considered second-class officials who work without security.
Many of those who gathered to protest and pushed to break through the Mossos d'Esquadra line that protected the door of the apartment had met Nuria at some point. Or in Mas Enric or in Brians 1. The woman had been working in prisons for a decade “with the same passion and dedication as she did on the first day,” said one of her colleagues.
Iulian Odriste, 48 years old and sentenced to 11 years for murdering another woman, had been working in the kitchen for three years. A coveted position and one of the highest paid in prison. All the Mas Enric officials consulted assured that Iulian was what is considered an “exemplary prisoner” who never caused problems, “with a clean, obedient cell.” But everyone also warned that it was “the exemplarity of the psychopath.”
In December, the prisoner had a violent argument with another inmate and was charged. A serious offense that took him out of the kitchen, to which he was returned without any explanation. "We were surprised. Because that is a position that cannot be accessed with a blemish on your record,” says another colleague of the murdered woman.
On Thursday, like every working day, Iulian Odriste asked the officials to open the door to his cell, in module 6, where he was alone. Less than a hundred meters away were the kitchen rooms. There he remained all morning, working with the rest of the inmates.
The security cameras inside the prison record how the murderer went to the office where Nuria was organizing the next day's tasks. It was four in the afternoon. He commented something to the woman, who got up, and together they headed to the cold room. The inmate opened the door, outward, gave way to Nuria and closed it behind her. They both remained inside for six minutes. The autopsy will determine what happened in those terrible moments. The prisoner left the chamber, the images show as if he was manipulating the door handle, he moved to the kitchen utensils area, took a large knife and returned to the cold room.
Instantly Odriste leaves the camera with the bloody knife and goes to one of the spaces in the kitchen that he knew perfectly well were not within reach of the security cameras. There he slit his throat.
Not many minutes passed when another inmate assigned to the kitchen first found the murderer's body and, while the rest shouted for Nuria, another prisoner found her lying on the floor of the cold room. They couldn't do anything for her life. She was dressed and without elements to suspect sexual intention in the crime.
From that moment on, madness took over the prison workers. Screams, sobs and desperate comings and goings of colleagues who helplessly claimed that Nuria's had been a "death foretold." “This Government has taken away the little authority we had in the prisons. They have sold us, we are in danger and the worst thing is that they know it and they don't care," his companions lamented.
