Cristian Rad, 39, had been hiding in Catalonia for twenty years. He settled in Barcelona with his uncle, Vasile Ostas, 51, to continue pimping and take refuge from the pursuit of the French police. Cristian lived in Prat de Llobregat. In Vasile, in Segur de Calafell. Both were arrested in August by the Mossos d'Esquadra and the National Court extradited them to France, where in 2011 they were sentenced in rebellion to 30 and 25 years in prison for murder. By the time he was arrested, Rad had gotten his life back on track. He was a family man, had two children with a Catalan woman and worked as a concierge in a luxury hotel in Barcelona. No one had ever suspected anything. Neither does his wife. At the time of the arrest he felt a sense of relief. "I will finally be able to sleep peacefully", he revealed to the agents.
He came from a broken family in Romania and ended up in the care of his uncle, who started him in the prostitution business. In 2003 they both lived in France and were part of a Romanian women-trafficking mafia. On February 20, 2003, in Nancy, in the northeast of the country, they killed Philippe Charuel, 29 years old, a customer who had fallen in love with a prostitute and who tried to rescue her from the network criminal When they realized their intentions, the pimps reacted and showed no mercy. Rad and Ostas surprised Charuel in a bar in the city of Toul, kidnapped him for several hours, tortured him, beat him to death, put his body in the trunk of a BMW and buried him in a forest in the municipality of Gondreville.
From that day, uncle and nephew fled to Barcelona. Both continued to be linked to the prostitution business. The uncle worked as a watchman of a brothel where one night a prostitute was murdered. The investigation of that case ended in deadlock. The case was referred to the central homicide unit, which is responsible for reviewing old episodes and trying to open new lines of investigation. A year and a half ago, reviewing the case, they realized that Ostas was near the crime scene and was identified along with Rad. Both had been living for years under false identities that hid their Romanian origins and presented themselves as Croatian citizens. Their names and faces passed through the police in Romania, Belgium, Croatia and France. In Croatia, where they said they were from, there was no arrest warrant. In France, on the other hand, they were finally named and identified as the perpetrators who had been wanted for years for the Charuel crime. Once identified, the Mossos found the definitive proof linking them to the crime in France. In a parking lot they found the BMW with which Charuel's body was taken. It was hidden under a tarp and with various traps around it – such as water bottles – to alert the owners if someone lifted the tarp to uncover the vehicle.
