Haughtiness and inordinate appetite to be preferred to others.
Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins and appears in the story of Alfredo Galán Sotillo, known as the murderer of the deck and sentenced to 142 years in prison for six murders and another three attempted.
The man, who was 25 years old, became in 2003 one of the most ruthless serial killers in recent criminal history. He killed without pattern, without method, without logic. He killed, as he himself confessed, to "experience" what it felt like to kill and seeing that he did not feel anything extraordinary and that it was easy, he continued to do so without fear of being arrested, plunging society into an unbearable climate of anguish and terror.
Those days anyone could be a target of the deck killer. There were no social networks, but there were television programs with tables full of specialists who tried to decipher the motivations of a criminal who randomly left successive cards from the deck on the corpse of his victims.
Alfredo Galán, the fourth of five children from a working family in Puertollano, who was saddened at the age of eight when his mother died giving birth to his sister, never excelled at anything. He enlisted in the army and as a professional was assigned to two missions in Bosnia. There he bought the Tokarev and the 7.65 by 25 mm ammunition that he used in all his crimes for 400 pesetas.
The first was on January 24, 2003 at eleven thirty in the morning in the Chamberí neighborhood of Madrid. He drove out of his house in his metallic gray Renault Megane ready to kill for the first time. He parked and began to walk waiting for the best moment. He followed a portfolio that did not give him any option and it was then that he passed through an open portal that communicated with the doorman's house, which he accessed to the living room. Juan Francisco Ledesma wore blue work overalls and was at the table finishing eating with his two-year-old son, who was drinking a glass of milk. Without saying a word, he took the gun from the right pocket of his tracksuit jacket and pointed it at her head.
"On your knees and face the wall," he told her. Without saying a word, the doorman obeyed, while the little boy watched the scene. “I put the gun four centimeters from the head and pulled the trigger. The bullet did not come out. I had to reassemble the weapon," Galán declared. The victim pleaded: "Please don't kill me." But he fired. The victim fell dead and the child began to cry. He didn't touch the wallet on the table. He got in the car, went home, ate something and took a nap. He chose the victim at random.
The homicide was investigated as one more death, although the police could not find a motive and were surprised by the use of a Tokarev, a World War II military weapon used in the Balkans but not very common among criminals in Spain.
Eleven days later, Galán committed his second homicide. On February 5, he was at home until one in the morning when "I went out to kill again." He decided on the northern area of Madrid, Barajas, and it was not until half past three that he saw the first person, a man sitting at a bus stop in the Alameda de Osuna neighborhood. He stopped the car in front of the awning and left the engine running. "On your knees and against the tree," he commanded as he pointed at her. Juan Carlos Martín, a 28-year-old airport cleaner, complied. Galán brought the gun to the back of his head and fired. He picked up the scabbard and at the victim's feet threw an ace of cups. "Why did you leave that letter?" the policemen asked him later. "To make things difficult for you."
That same day, at four in the afternoon, after eating and watching television, he returned to the streets "to continue killing." He decided on Alcalá de Henares. In an alley on Calle Alberche he found the Rojas bar open. He entered, gun in hand. He shot the owner's son, Mikel Jiménez, 18, in the forehead, and a 57-year-old widowed neighbor, Juana Dolores Uclés, who had come down to telephone. The owner of the premises, Teresa Sánchez García, 38, took refuge behind the bar and Galán shot her “bullet” three times, causing physical and psychological injuries for life. He later recounted that on that occasion he did not leave any letter "to mislead the police."
A month later, in the town of Tres Cantos, the young Santiago Eduardo Salas and Anahid Castillo said goodbye at three in the morning on the porch of her house. Without saying a word, she walked towards them, who thought she was going to ask for a light. Galán aimed at the man's forehead, but the bullet deflected into his face. He forced her to her knees, and when he fired, her gun jammed again. She didn't risk it. She ran out but before she threw the letter of the two of cups, believing that the young man had died, although she saved his life and spent years from operating room to operating room. The victim in the trial stated: "I will never forget that face, it still terrifies me."
On March 18, Galán left his house shortly before nine at night, wanting to kill. In the media, in the bars, practically only the murderer in the deck and the inability of the investigators to stop him were talked about. At random, he chose the town of Arganda del Rey. In an open field he followed a man, whom he lost behind some bushes, but it didn't take him long to come across a couple, Gheorghe and his wife Doina, both Romanian. They were walking confidently with their backs to Galán when he pulled out his gun and shot the man directly in the head first. Then against the woman, who received four bullets. Over her bodies he threw the cards 3 and 4 of cups.
By then, the National Police and the Civil Guard no longer harbored any doubt that they were dealing with a serial killer who killed at random. They made three robot portraits based on the stories of two of the survivors and asked the FBI for help. The Defense Ministry included Galán on a list of suspects for a couple of incidents in the army and the psychiatric discharge after which he abandoned his military career. But the researchers showed the photograph of him to the survivors and, not recognizing him, they discarded him.
On May 22, 2003, the National Police arrested another of the suspects who appeared on the army list. He was a nightclub doorman, linked to formations of the extreme right and with a history. The two survivors recognized him without hesitation, but he was soon released when it was found that he had an alibi for the crimes. The pressure was unbearable.
On July 3, 2003, after three months without killing and tired of not being found, Galán showed up drunk one night at the municipal police station in his town, Puertollano, assuring that he was the murderer of the deck. Since they didn't believe him, he told them: “The cards next to the dead have a blue dot marked right in the center with a felt-tip pen on the back. Call your homicide colleagues and see what they tell you.
Alfredo Galán is still in the Herrera de la Mancha prison, in Ciudad Real. Survivor Anahid Castillo died of cancer in Ecuador. Before she died, she asked her mother to visit Galán in prison to tell him that she had forgiven him. But it could not be. The criminal refused to receive it.
