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The Devastating True Story Behind The TikTok Killer · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So imagine for a second that you've chosen to travel solo.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Just completely off the grid.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Right. You've packed a bag. You know, you've left behind
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a life that maybe just wasn't working for you anymore.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: And you are finally feeling that elusive sense of just
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: complete freedom.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: That's the dream, right?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The open road is yours. Your schedule is your own.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And for the people who love you back home, the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: only way they really know you are safe... is the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: specific sound and rhythm of your text messages.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Because you weren't there physically. Yeah.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: It's the way you type, you know, the specific emojis
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you use or the cadence of your daily voice notes.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: It's basically a digital heartbeat.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But, like, what happens when that heartbeat suddenly changes? I mean,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the messages keep coming, yes, but the voice inside them,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the phrasing, the detail, it is suddenly just chillingly wrong.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: The phone is alive, but the person holding it is
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a total stranger.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It completely shatters that illusion of safety, you know, the
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: safety that our constant connectivity supposedly provides.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Because we have this really ingrained assumption that, well, because
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: a message arrives from a loved one's device, it is
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: inherently from that loved one. Yeah. But text is just
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: raw data.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Right. It doesn't have a face.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It has no face. It has no physical signature.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: When you strip away like the vocal inflection or a
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: video feed, a text message is incredibly easy to hijack.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And when someone does hijack it, they buy themselves the
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: absolute most valuable currency in any investigation, which is time.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. And that nightmare of a hijacked digital heartbeat
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: become an absolute reality for the family of a 42-year-old
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: woman named Esther Estepa Perez.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It's just a tragic case.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It really is. And we are pulling from a massive
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: stack of sources today for this deep dive for you.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We've got investigative articles, police and court records, and a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: lot of profound insights gathered around the recent Netflix Spain
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: documentary called The TikTok Killer.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Directed by Hector Wignanti, right?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. And the mission for this deep dive is
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to reconstruct this really specific fragmented trail. It reveals not
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: just how a woman vanished, but how a convicted multiple
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: murderer used the modern internet to rebrand himself.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as this folksy wanderer.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exploiting both, like, Legal loopholes and social media algorithms.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Well, and to understand how all of these elements collide,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: we really have to look closely at the mechanics of
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the systems involved.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to be dissecting the phenomenon of the voluntary
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: disappearance bias in law enforcement.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Which is fascinating.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And we'll look at the intricacies of European sentencing structures and,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: you know, the rapidly evolving science of genetic genealogy. Right.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: There's so many moving parts.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: But at the center of all this data and legal
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: philosophy is Esther. I mean, her daily habits, her specific
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: way of moving through the world is the baseline we
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: have to establish to understand the sheer magnitude of what
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: went wrong.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Right. So let's talk about the baseline. I mean, who
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: was Esther before she crossed paths with this man? The
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: sources we looked at describe her as lively and deeply restless,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: but there is a really specific context to her nomadism, right?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It seems crucial to how the police eventually perceived her. Yeah.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: So Esther was from Seville. And she was a survivor.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: She had recently escaped an allegedly abusive relationship, which actually
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: required her to spend some time in a women's shelter
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: just to stabilize her life and get her bearings.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Right, to find some solid ground.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Okay. And following that trauma, she made a very
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: deliberate choice to reclaim her autonomy by adopting a nomadic lifestyle.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just a random vacation.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. She moved through Spain, staying in hostels,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: doing seasonal work, and just taking these long walks. This
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: wasn't a weekend getaway, you know, this was her chosen
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: mode of existence. Wow. And she didn't do it alone,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: which is key. She traveled everywhere with her two dogs.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Which means she had anchors. I mean, she might not
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: have had a lease on an apartment or a standard
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: nine-to-five job, but she had non-negotiable responsibilities.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The dogs are a critical anchor. But honestly, the
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: most important anchor was her mother, Josefa Perez, who goes
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: by Peppa.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so... She and her mom were close.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Incredibly close. Esther spoke to Peppa every single day.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Every day.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Every single day. I mean, the media might shift, right?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it was WhatsApp messages, sometimes voice notes or video calls.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: But the contact was absolute.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Okay. And that daily communication is basically the control group
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: in this experiment. When you have a pattern that rigid,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: any deviation is mathematically significant.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: So we have this woman moving freely but highly tethered
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to her mother digitally. And we reach mid-August 2023. She's
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: staying at a hostel in Alicante, which is on the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: southeastern coast of Spain.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And this is where the variables change because she meets
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: a man named Jose Jorado Montilla. Now, the sources indicate
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: he's in his early 60s and he's presenting himself as
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: like a travel content creator.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: The TikToker.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Right. He has a TikTok presence under the name Danita Montilla.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm just trying to picture what a 60-something travel
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: influencer on TikTok even looks like to someone staying in
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a backpacker hostel.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Well, if you look at the mechanics of social media curation,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: it's all about building a specific archetype.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, how do you mean?
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Montillo wasn't trying to be a glamorous influencer, you know,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: with ring lights and pristine clothes. He curated the archetype
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: of the weathered, wise elder of the trail.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, like a nature guru.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. His feed was full of walking routes, rugged Spanish landscapes,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: and these folksy philosophical monologues about human kindness and the
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: beauty of nature.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: That is so creepy in hindsight.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: It really is. But the TikTok algorithm rewards authenticity, or
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: at least the performance of it. So for someone staying
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: in a hostel, encountering an older man who openly documents
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: his travels and talks about the beauty of the open road.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It just automatically lowers their defensive barriers. Completely.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It provides a plausible, publicly documented reason for him to
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: be exactly where he is, doing exactly what he's doing.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: It is like a digital character witness. He doesn't need
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: someone to vouch for him because his profile does it.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And it clearly worked on Esther because she actually appears
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: in some of his footage from that time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: She does, yeah.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: They strike at this companionship. And on August 22, they
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: decide to do a massive hike, 37 kilometers from Dania
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: toward Gandia.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Which is intense.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a 37-kilometer walk in the Spanish summer heat is
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: grueling for anyone. And the medical records show that by
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, Esther is in severe physical distress. Right.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: She has a badly swollen leg and a severe headache.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And that physical toll is important because it really dictates
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: the next documented event. The distress is severe enough that
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Montia actually calls emergency services.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: An ambulance is dispatched and Esther is transported to a
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: hospital in Gandia. And we have the admission and discharge
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: papers for this.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So there's a clear paper trail.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She receives medical treatment, which includes an injection for
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: her symptoms. And she is officially discharged at roughly 4.30
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: in the morning. On August 23.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: That 4.30 a.m. time stamp is basically the precipice. Because
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: after she walks out of that hospital, no one who
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: actually knows her ever hears her actual voice again.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Never again.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: But the phone doesn't die. Thirteen hours after that discharge,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Peppa's phone lights up with messages from Esther's WhatsApp. And
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the content of these messages is just completely unmoored from reality.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: It's bizarre.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Right. The texts claim she is completely broke, living on
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the street with two Argentine friends she just met, planning
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: to sell her phone for cash, and moving to Buenos
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Aires to start a new life.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you analyze those messages from a perspective
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: of linguistic forensics, the deviations are glaring.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So obvious.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Because a perpetrator hijacking a communication device has a specific
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: narrative goal, right? they must explain the impending permanent silence
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: of the device.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: The inclusion of Argentine friends and a move to Buenos
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Aires is an intercontinental misdirection. Right.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It's designed to explain why a physical search in Spain
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: would be totally useless.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the claim that she is selling her phone
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: is the mechanical excuse for why the daily voice notes
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: will permanently cease.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It's a digital ransom note written in her own font.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: It's just screaming that someone else is holding the device.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: But when PIPA takes this to the police, you know,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: sounding the alarm that this isn't her daughter, the investigation
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: doesn't instantly ignite into a massive manhunt.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: The sources mention that law enforcement categorized it as a
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: voluntary disappearance. Help me understand the mechanics of that decision.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: How does a mother report that her daughter's digital identity
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: has been stolen to fake her own disappearance and the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: system responds with a shrug?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Well, it really comes down to bureaucratic triage. and the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: statistical matrices that law enforcement agencies use to allocate resources.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Matrices? Like a checklist?
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Sort of, yeah. Police departments process an overwhelming volume of
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: missing persons reports every single day. So to manage this,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: they apply risk profiling.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: If a minor vanishes, the risk profile is categorized as critical,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: triggering immediate mobilization. Right, obviously. But if a 45-year-old accountant
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: with a mortgage, a spouse... at a regular nine to
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: five job fails to show up for work and leaves
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: their car running in the driveway.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: That's a massive disruption.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The disruption of their rigid daily physical routine flags
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: the disappearance as highly suspicious.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But Esther doesn't fit that matrix at all. She doesn't
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: have a lease. She doesn't have a nine to five.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you input the data of a 42 year
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: old adult who already lives transiently, who moves from hostel
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: to hostel and whose phone has just transmitted a message,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: explicitly stating an intention to move to another country.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: The system just sees someone moving on.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Right. The algorithm of the bureaucracy defaults to autonomy. The
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: foundational assumption of the legal system is that adults have
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: the right to walk away from their lives.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: So Esther's hard-won independence, the very nomadism she used to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: heal from her past trauma, it inadvertently placed her in
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a category that blinded the triage system to her peril.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: That is so sad.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It is. The system relies on physical routine to detect disruption.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It struggles immensely to quantify a mother's intuition regarding digital
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: tone shifts.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: That is deeply frustrating. So the family officially files a
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: missing persons report on August 26, 2023. And operating under
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: this voluntary disappearance bias, the police do initiate an investigation.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: But their first major move is to check on Esther's ex-partner. Right.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: The one she had previously accused of abuse. Now, I
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: understand that the partner is usually the prime suspect, but
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: considering the wild text messages about Argentina, why the tunnel
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: vision on the ex?
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Again, it's a matter of statistical probability guiding the investigated mechanics. Okay.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: In homicide and missing persons cases involving women, the statistical
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: likelihood of intimate partner violence is overwhelmingly high.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is statistically true.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: It is standard operating procedure, often referred to as the
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: proximity rule, to clear the inner circle before expanding outward.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So the police interrogated the ex-partner... They verified his movements
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and established a solid alibi. Furthermore, records indicated that the
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: conflict between them had actually de-escalated in the months prior,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: so he was definitively ruled out.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So they clear the ex-boyfriend, and they are still operating
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: under the assumption that she might have just hopped a
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: flight to Argentina.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And the case really threatens to become just another dusty file.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: But then the perpetrator does something that seems completely counterintuitive
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: to getting away with murder.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: That's wild.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: On September 8th, Roughly two weeks after Esther vanished, Peppa's
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: phone rings. And the man on the other end introduces
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: himself as Jose Gerardo Montilla. He volunteers the information that
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: he was at the hostel, that they hiked together, and
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that he took her to the health center.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: The psychology of a perpetrator inserting themselves into the active
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: orbit of a victim's family is a really complex mechanism.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I just don't get it.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Well, on the surface, it appears reckless. But operationally... It
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: serves multiple strategic purposes for the killer. First, it is
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: an aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuver.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, like he wants to know what they know?
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By calling the mother directly, he opens a conduit
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: to monitor the investigation from the inside. He can gauge
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: what the family knows, what the police are communicating to them,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: and whether the geographic focus is shifting toward him.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: He's basically tapping his own wires.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: He's bypassing the police to get updates directly from the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: source of the panic. But he didn't just call. he
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: started sending them his TikTok videos. Videos featuring Esther, videos
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: of them walking, videos of him looking deeply concerned about
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: her disappearance.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: And that is the secondary purpose. The performance of transparency. Wow.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: By voluntarily providing digital evidence of their association and acting
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the part of the distressed friend, he is attempting to
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: inoculate himself against suspicion.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Like hiding in plain sight.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The psychological gamble is that a guilty man would
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: sever all ties and flee... whereas an innocent companion would
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: be helpful and present. He is using the curated trust
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: of his TikTok persona and weaponizing it directly against the
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: grieving family.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to wrap my head around the sheer
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: arrogance of that gamble. He assumes they will just accept
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: this performance blindly. But Peppa and Esther's sister, Raquel, are
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: operating on a completely different frequency. They completely reject the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: police's narrative of a voluntary move. They know Esther would
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: never abandon her two dogs.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Never.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And now, thanks to his own narcissism, they have a name.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So around January 2024, they do what any of us
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: would do. They open Google.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And the digital footprint is unforgiving. When the family searched
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the name Jose Jurado Montilla, the search engine didn't prioritize
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: a harmless travel vlog.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: It surfaced the historical archives of Spanish journalism. It revealed
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: his aliases Dinamita Montilla and El Piti. It exposed a
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: sprawling documented history. that identified the man texting them not
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: as a concerned hiker, but as a convicted serial killer
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: from the 1980s.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I cannot fathom the physiologic reaction to that moment. I mean,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you are sitting at a computer desperately searching for a
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: thread that leads to your missing daughter, and the screen
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: tells you that the last man to see her alive
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: is a documented monster.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: It's a living nightmare.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: The instinct would be to scream, to call the police
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and demand they kick his door down, to text him
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and confront him, but they didn't do any of that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't. And their restraint is an absolute masterclass
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: in counterintelligence. They understood the fragility of their position.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: How do you mean?
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: If they confronted him, if they exhibited anger or fear,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: they would burn their only bridge. A man with his
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: history would immediately recognize the shift in tone, discard the phone,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: vanish into the transient underground, and sever their only tether
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: to Esther's final known movements.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, that makes so much sense.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: So they made the agonizing decision to maintain polite contact.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: That is so brave.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: They thanked him for his concern. They absorbed his performative videos.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: They effectively became their own undercover operatives to ensure the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: trail remained warm while they tried to force the authorities
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: to look closer.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: To understand what the family found in that Google search
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and to really grasp the absolute failure of the system
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to protect Esther, we have to pull the timeline all
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the way back to the 1980s.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: We have to look at the mechanics of Montia's original crimes.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: The sources detail a spree of extreme violence between 1985
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and 1987 in the Malaga area of southern Spain. What
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: was his methodology back then?
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: His operational methodology in the 1980s was defined by geographic
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: isolation and just overwhelming ballistic force. Okay. He was born
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: in 1961, and by his mid-20s, he was utilizing the
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: rugged rural terrain of the Malaga province as a hunting ground.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: In November 1985... a 57-year-old man named Francisco Gonzalez, was
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: found shot to death in an isolated rural farmhouse, a
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: cortivo in Almogia.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: The sources note that this specific killing is the only
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: one Montia ever partially admitted to, right? Years later in interviews,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: he framed it as an accident. He claimed he was high,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: out hunting foxes that were bothering chickens, and the gun
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: just went off impulsively during a confrontation. It feels like
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a very calculated admission to me. It is.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It's a highly calculated narrative technique known as minimization.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Minimization.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. By admitting to the mechanical act of the shooting
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: but stripping away the predatory intent, he presents himself as
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: a victim of circumstance and substance abuse rather than a
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: cold-blooded killer.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: It provides an illusion of accountability. He technically confesses, which
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: satisfies a public desire for a confession, but he firmly
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: rejects the label of a serial predator. He's aggressively maintained
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: his innocence regarding the subsequent murders.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: But the subsequent murders are undeniable. I mean, in March 1987,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a 46-year-old man named Antonio Paniagua is found dead in
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: a country house in Campanillas, and his body is semi-charred.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Investigators tie items found on Montilla directly to that scene,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and then it escalates in May 1987. Two tourists, one
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: British and one German, are camping near the Caminito del
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Rey Gorge. They are found brutally murdered, showing both severe
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: gunshot and knife wounds.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: It was a horrific escalation.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So he's finally apprehended on May 4th, 1987 in Elora.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: He goes through the judicial process and is convicted of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: all four homicides. And the courts hand down a sentence
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: totaling 123 years. Now, when you or I hear a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: number like 123 years, the natural assumption is permanent removal
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: from society. The math implies he will die in a cell.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Right. And that is the perceptual friction between public expectation
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: and the actual mechanics of penal law.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Explain that for me.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: So the 123-year figure is a cumulative total of individual
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: sentences for each crime. However, the Spanish penal system at
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: that time, and honestly, this is common in many European
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: civil law jurisdictions, operated under a constitutional framework focused on
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: rehabilitation rather than purely punitive vengeance.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a different philosophy entirely.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The law stipulated a hard maximum cap on the
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: actual time a person could serve in a continuous block.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: which was 30 years.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Wait, help me understand the math here. If the hard
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: cap is 30 years and you are sentenced to 123 years,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: does that mean that after a certain point, every additional
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: murder you commit during a spree essentially carries no additional penalty?
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Because you've already hit the ceiling.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Functionally, yes.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Once the cumulative sentences exceed the 30-year threshold, the excess
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: years do not translate to additional physical days in a cell.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: They exist on paper, but the physical detention is capped
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: at 30 years. Okay. But the mechanics become even more
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: complex when you introduce sentence reductions. Good time credits earned
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: through work programs, educational courses, or general good behavior.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let me get this straight. If the cap
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: is 30 and you earn, say, 10 years of good
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: behavior credit, does that mean you walk out in 20 years?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Despite having a 123-year sentence?
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Historically, yes.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: The prison system applied those good time credits directly against
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the 30-year maximum cap. rather than against the 123-year total
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: accumulated sentence. This meant that prolific offenders could reduce their
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: actual time served significantly below the 30-year ceiling.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I can imagine people were furious about that.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Well, this mechanism caused massive public outrage, particularly regarding convicted
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: terrorists from the ETA separatist group, who were accumulating hundreds
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: of years in sentences but facing the prospect of walking
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: free after 20 years.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the legal mechanism mentioned in the sources,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the Parrot Doctrine. It sounds like the Spanish Supreme Court
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: looked at this math and realized it was completely broken.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. To rectify this perceived loophole, the Spanish Supreme Court
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: established the parrot doctrine in 2006, named after an ETA member,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Henri Perrault.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: The doctrine changed the mathematical formula. It mandated that good
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: time credits must be subtracted from the total accumulated sentence,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: the 123 years, rather than the 30-year cap.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see the logic there. If you have 123
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: years and you earn 10 years of credit, your sentence
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: drops to 113 years.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Which means you are still infinitely far above the 30-year limit,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: ensuring you actually serve every single day of that 30-year maximum.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: It closes the loophole.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: It effectively neutralized the benefit of good time credits for
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: mass casualty offenders. ensuring they served the absolute maximum permitted
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: by law. And for a while, this doctrine kept Montilla
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: and dozens of other serious offenders securely incarcerated. But the
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: doctrine faced a profound legal challenge at the international level.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: In 2013, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: reviewed the parrot doctrine and actually struck it down.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: On what grounds? I mean, if the goal is to
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: keep serial killers in prison, why would a human rights
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: court intervene?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's important to understand the European court's ruling was
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: not a commentary on the morality of the offenders. Okay.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: What was it about them?
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: It was a strict interpretation of the principle of legal
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: certainty and the prohibition of retroactive punishment.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Retroactive punishment. Right.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: The court ruled that Spain had changed the mathematical rules
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of sentencing after the crimes had been committed and the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: original sentences handed down.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: The Fundamental Human Rights Protocol dictates that a prisoner must
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: be subject to the penal laws as they existed at
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: the time of the offense. By retroactively applying a harsher
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: calculation method, the court argued Spain was violating the prisoner's
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: fundamental rights to due process.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: So the philosophy being that the state cannot bend the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: rule of law just because the public despises the individual.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: The math has to be blind, even if the result
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: is terrifying.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: That is the exact core friction. Now, as impartial observers
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: of this material, we have to look at both sides.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Legal purists argued that allowing the state to retroactively change
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: sentences erodes the foundation of a fair judicial system.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Right, because if they can do it to them, they
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: can do it to anyone.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But critics of the Strasburg decision pointed to the immediate,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: tangible danger. They argued that applying standard rehabilitative metrics to
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: recidivist serial killers is a fatal administrative error.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, too.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: They warned that striking down the pair doctrine would force
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: the release of individuals who possessed zero potential for rehabilitation,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: basically prioritizing abstract legal theory over the physical safety of
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: the public.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And the physical reality of that ruling is that the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: prison doors literally swung open because the old math was reinstated.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: The good time credits were applied to the 30-year cap again,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and Montita's time was considered fully served. So, in December 2013,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: after serving 28 years of a 123-year sentence, he walks
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: out a free man.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And the transition from a highly controlled maximum security environment
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: to absolute freedom is jarring. Records indicate he spent his
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: first night of freedom sleeping under a bridge.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: He spent the next decade living an itinerant lifestyle, moving
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: through rural areas, essentially picking up the nomadic threads of
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: his youth. But he also engaged in a really sophisticated
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: reputation laundering campaign.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: You mean the newspaper interviews? Because he actually spoke to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the press after his release, really.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: He did. He leveraged the public fascination with his release
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: to craft a very specific narrative.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: He reiterated his partial confession for the 1985 shooting, painting
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: it as a tragic mistake of a drug-addled youth, but
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: fiercely maintained his innocence regarding the other murders. He framed
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: himself as a victim of a corrupt judicial system that
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: needed a scapegoat.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Classic manipulation.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Completely. He presented himself as a man who had suffered greatly,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: paid his debt, and was now just seeking peace in nature.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Which is the exact foundation of his eventual TikTok persona.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: He spent a decade perfecting the character of the wronged
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: wise wanderer in print before he ever picked up a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: smartphone to broadcast it.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And the tragedy is that the critics of the Strasberg
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: ruling were entirely correct about the danger. If we look
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: at the timeline provided in our research, Montilla's release didn't
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: just culminate in Esther's disappearance in 2023. He had already
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: reverted to his violent baseline the year prior.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: The timeline is totally unforgiving. In August 2022, exactly one
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: year before Esther vanishes in Alicante, we are brought back
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: to the Los Montes de Malaga region.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Which is the exact geographic profile of his 1980s hunting grounds.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Yes. A 21-year-old computer engineering student named David H., travels
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: to a rural plot of land owned by his family
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: to check on some carob trees.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Just a normal day.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It is a mundane, solitary task in a deeply isolated
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: area locally known as Los Ciegos. And David never returns.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: And the next morning, his body is discovered. And the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: scene is just a brutal echo of the past. It's
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: not a sophisticated modern crime. It is an execution.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: He is shot in the back of the neck with
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: heavy shotgun slugs and then shot again in the head
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: at close range with pellets. The motive occurs entirely financial.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But Petty, his phone, his wallet, and his keys are taken.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: A young man's life is extinguished for pocket change in
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: This crime scene exposes the fundamental paradox of Mantia's operational
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: methodology in the modern era.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, so?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: He relied on the identical tactics he used in 1985,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: seeking out the geography of isolation. He targeted a solitary
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: individual in an environment devoid of witnesses or CCTV cameras.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: utilizing overwhelming ballistic force.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Right, doing what he knew worked.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He trusted the silence of the rural landscape to
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: protect him, just as it had decades prior. But he
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: failed to comprehend the invisible, microscopic revolution that had occurred
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: in forensic science during his 28 years in a cell.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: He thought he was playing the same game, but the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: board had completely changed. Because the police didn't need a
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: witness this time, they found a microscopic piece of evidence
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: on the zipper of David's backpack.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, they recovered a mixed DNA profile from that zipper.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Which is incredible.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: It really is. In the 1980s, touch DNA, the microscopic
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: shedding of skin cells left behind simply by handling an object,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: was basically science fiction.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: But in 2022, it is standard procedure.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The laboratory technicians extracted this profile and ran it
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: through CODIS, the National Police Database.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't a direct hit, was it? The sources
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: say it matched a paternal relative. I'm trying to visualize
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: how you go from a zipper swab to identifying a
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: killer who isn't even in the immediate system.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the intersection of traditional forensics and the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: rapidly advancing field of genetic genealogy.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: When a direct match fails, investigators can utilize specialized DNA
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: phenotyping and familial searching. In this case, the analysis of
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: the Y chromosome, which is passed down almost unchanged from
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: father to son, indicated a familial link to an individual
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: who was in the system.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: But the genetic distance suggested the common ancestor was generations back.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So they have to build a family tree backward to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: find the split and then trace it forward to find
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the suspect.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The laboratory staff collaborated with genealogy experts. They utilized
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: public census records, birth certificates, and marriage registries to build
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: a sprawling genealogical map. that stretched back 150 years.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: 150 years! That is insane!
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: They are tracking lineages through the late 19th and entire
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: 20th centuries. It is an exercise in extreme painstaking triangulation.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: That is mind-blowing. A 150-year genealogical map built off dead
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: skin cells left on a backpack zipper.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: And the complexity of this specific tree was staggering because
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: they actually encountered deliberate obfuscation.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Deliberate? What do you mean?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: The genealogical trail led them to a specific branch, But
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: the suspect's identity was masked by a legal name change
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that had occurred during childhood.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the investigators had to locate the obscure legal
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: documentation of that name change to connect the genetic lineage
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: to the modern identity. When the math was finally complete,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the triangulation pointed squarely at Jose Jurado Montilla.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: But knowing his name and actually finding a man who
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: lives entirely off the grid, sleeping in rural areas and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: moving constantly are two entirely different things. I mean, a
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: DNA match gives you an arrest warrant, but it doesn't
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: give you GPS coordinates.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Right, and that is where the second fatal flaw of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Montia's modern existence betrayed him. The DNA identified him, but
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: his digital narcissism located him.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Ah, the TikTok account.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Montia used TikTok not just as camouflage, but as
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: a source of narcissistic supply. He craved an audience. He
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: wanted to be seen and validated as this wise, traveling figure.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: The social media platforms operate on data extraction.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they know everything.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Every time he uploaded a video, he wasn't just broadcasting
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: his face. He was broadcasting his digital location.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Because of geotagging. Even if the video is just a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: generic shot of a tree or a dirt path, the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: app is recording the metadata. The exact time the video
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: was taken and the geographic coordinates of the device when
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it connected to the server.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So investigators didn't have to launch a massive resource-heavy
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: physical manhunt through the mountains of Andalusia. They simply monitored
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: his digital footprint.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: That's so poetic.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: They analyzed the EXIF data and the geotags from his
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: recent uploads to narrow down his trajectory. And on May 16, 2024,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: the police tracked a digital ping to a local bar
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: in Valdobodowa, a small town in the province of Barajos
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: near the Portuguese border.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And they just walked in.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: They walked in and arrested him. The very platform he
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: utilized to build his disguise was provided the precise telemetry
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: required to dismantle it.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: The irony is just astounding. You have a killer utilizing
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: a 1980s analog methodology, a shotgun in an empty field,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: being dismantled by 21st century microscopic genetics and social media
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: server pings.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is a clash of eras.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: And the justice system moved relatively swiftly on this one.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Earlier this year, in 2026, a jury in Malaga convicted
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: him of the murder of David H. He was sentenced
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to 24 years... with the court citing aggravating factors of recidivism,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the use of weapons, and robbery.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: And that conviction solidifies his status as an active lethal threat.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: But the arrest in May 2024 served a secondary, equally
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: vital purpose.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Bringing it back to Esther.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. It forced the judicial apparatus to refocus its resources
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: on the agonizingly stalled case of Esther Estepa. Remember, Esther
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: vanished in August 2023. By the time Montia is arrested
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: for David's murder... Esther's family has been waiting in the
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: dark for nine months.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Maintaining that polite, terrifying correspondence with him just to keep
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the pressure on.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And tragically, the renewed geographic focus on the route they
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: hiked yielded the outcome the family had been dreading. With
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Montia in custody, investigators intensified the search along the path
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: from Danaya to Gandia.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. And in February 2024, slightly before his official arrest,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: but as the net was tightening, a highly significant discovery
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: was made.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: A human skull was located near a canal by Baron
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Castle in Gandia, a location perfectly aligned with the trajectory
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: of their hike. It took several months for the forensic
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: analysis to be completed, but by June 24, 2024, DNA
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: testing definitively confirmed that the skull belonged to Esther.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: The timeline of the discovery is harrowing. The skull is
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: found in February, but the area clearly holds more secrets
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: because in June 2024, hikers in the same general vicinity
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: stumble upon more remains.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Bones are found scattered in a dense reed bed, heavily
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: hidden in the undergrowth. This is nearly a year after
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: she vanished. The environmental exposure must severely limit what investigators
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: can definitively prove.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: It does. The science of taphonomy, the study of how
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: organisms decay and become fossilized, or, in forensic terms, how
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: environment affects biological remains, plays a massive role here.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, how so?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Well, a body exposed to the elements in a rural
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Spanish environment for 10 to 12 months... undergoes severe degradation.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: The remains are subjected to animal scavenging, which causes the
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: scattering of bones and extreme elemental weathering.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: All soft tissue, which is required to prove things like
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: strangulation or precise time of death, is entirely gone.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: But the bones still tell a story, don't they? The
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: sources indicate that authorities informed the family of some specific
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: forensic findings.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. Despite the degradation, the skeletal structure retains a permanent
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: record of extreme trauma. The forensic anthropologists identified a severe
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: fracture on the skull, consistent with a massive blunt force
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: blow to the head. Oh, wow. This finding transitions the
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: case definitively from a missing person's inquiry to a homicide investigation.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: The family also stated that authorities suggested the possibility of
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: a sexual assault prior to the murder, though proving that
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: definitively in a court of law without soft tissue or
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: DNA transfer is an immense forensic hurdle.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And Montezer's response to all of this, total denial.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: He vehemently denies any involvement in Esther's death. He claims
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: they parted ways after the hospital. He is currently sitting
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in prevented detention, facing two distinct homicide charges. He has
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: already been convicted and sentenced for David, but the trial
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: dates for Esther's murder are still pending.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: And the pending nature of Esther's trial creates a very
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: specific boundary for the documentary we referenced, the TikTok killer.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Right, because they can't show everything. Exactly.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Director Hector Muñente and his team faced a difficult
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: ethical and logistical landscape. Because the case is active, law
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: enforcement cannot release the entirety of their investigative files or
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: crime scene photos without jeopardizing the upcoming prosecution.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: So the documentary cannot rely on the standard true crime
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: procedural format of revealing police secrets.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: But doesn't that limitation actually force a more interesting approach?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Since Muñente couldn't build the documentary around police interviews... He
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: had to build it around the digital artifacts left behind.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: He talks about locking himself in an editing suite and
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: obsessively watching hours upon hours of Montee's TikTok footage.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: And it forces a psychological, almost voyeuristic approach. Beniente's analysis
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: of the footage is chilling.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: When you consume TikTok content casually, scrolling quickly, Montee's performance
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: holds up. He seems like a slightly eccentric, chatty older man.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: But when a filmmaker isolates the footage, slowing it down
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and searching for the narrative seams, the performance fractures.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: The micro-expressions, right. The sources mention the tics in his videos.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Mugnante highlights the microsecond emotional switches that betray the
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: psychopathy beneath the surface. You see a warm, folksy smile
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: that absolutely failed to engage the muscles around the eyes.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Ugh, that is terrifying.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: You witness a momentary drop of the mask. a sudden
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: dead-eyed coldness that washes over his face when he finishes
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: a sentence, right before the charm is violently forced back
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: into place for the next take. It is the digital
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: preservation of a predator constantly adjusting his camouflage in real time.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It is a profound reminder of the danger of passive consumption.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: You know, true crime media frequently falls into the trap
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: of mythologizing these figures. We assign them catchy nicknames. We
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: hyperfixate on the brutality of their methods. And inadvertently, the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: victim becomes a secondary character in the killer's grand narrative.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens a lot.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: But this documentary refuses to do that. It makes a
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: highly deliberate choice to keep Esther at the absolute center
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: of the frame. It refuses to elevate Montia into some
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: sort of dark, charismatic folk devil.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: And that editorial choice anchors the tragedy in reality. It
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: serves as a stark counter-narrative to the current culture of
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: internet sleuthing.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: We are constantly inundated with stories of viral Reddit threads
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: cracking cold cases or crowdsourced TikTok armies analyzing background audio
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: to find missing people. It creates a false comfort that
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: the Internet will save us.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: But the resolution of this case did not come from
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: viral speculation. No.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: It came from the absolute refusal of a family to
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: accept the path of least resistance. It was a mother
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: who looked at a text message and knew in her
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: bones it was a lie. flatly refusing to accept a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: closed police file that categorized her daughter as a voluntary runaway.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: It was a sister who had the terrifying courage to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Google a stranger's name and then maintain a polite correspondence
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: with a serial killer for months just to keep the
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: threat alive.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: It is the triumph of grueling analog persistence over systemic apathy.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Perfectly said.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: The bureaucratic triage system failed Esther. It required the relentless
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: pressure of Peppa and Raquel, combined with the invisible, painstaking
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: labor of laboratory technicians swabbing zippers and genealogists tracing 19th
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: century census records, to finally force the system to see
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: what was right in front of it.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Esther is not a cautionary tale about the abstract dangers
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of social media or stranger danger. She was a vibrant,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: fiercely independent woman who survived abuse, loved her dogs, and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: maintained a flawless digital lifeline to her mother.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: The uncomfortable reality this case exposes is that the massive
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: algorithmic systems designed to protect society, whether it is police
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: risk profiling matrices or European sentencing caps, will often categorize us,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: process us, and move on long before the people who
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: actually love us ever give up.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: When you synthesize the sprawling elements of this investigation, you
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: are looking at a collision of eras.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: You have a predator operating with the blunt, isolated brutality
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: of the 1980s, unwittingly unleashed by a controversial human rights ruling,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: that prioritized retroactive legal theory over predictive behavioral risk. You
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: have the miraculous, undeniable math of genetic genealogy, and you
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: have the absolute double-edged sword of the modern digital landscape.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Montia utilized the internet as a hunting ground, right? A
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: mechanism to curate unearned trust and lure isolated individuals by
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: projecting an aura of safety. But the architecture of that
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: same internet, the ceaseless demand for data, the unblinking recording
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: of telemetry, became the map that ultimately guided the police
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: right to his barstool.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: For anyone navigating this digitally saturated environment, the core takeaway
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: is a profound re-evaluation of our daily habits.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how so?
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: We view our digital communication as a convenience, but it
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: is actually a vital safety telemetry system. A message that
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: deviates from the established baseline, a shift in vocabulary, a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: sudden change in life plans transmitted via text rather than voice,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: cannot be casually dismissed as a mood swing or a glitch.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Right, you have to pay attention.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: It must be treated... as a potential critical failure of
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: that person's safety. The rhythm of our digital lives is
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: as unique and as fragile as a physical fingerprint.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: We spend so much time worrying about the longevity of
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: our digital footprint, for you listeners out there. We worry
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: about an embarrassing photo from a decade ago resurfacing or
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: an old forgotten email account being compromised.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the normal anxieties.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: But looking at the terrifying efficiency with which Montia hijacked
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Esther's digital heartbeat... I want to leave you with a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: different kind of technological dread to mull over. We assume
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: our constant 24-7 connectivity is a shield that keeps us
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: tethered to the safety of our network. But when that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: exact same connectivity allows a predator with a stolen device
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to perfectly mimic our survival, to digitally perform our existence
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: while we are already gone, does our online life actually
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: make us safer? Or does it just buy the person
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: who took it from us a 13-hour head start?