Manuel Blanco Romasanta has been made famous in Spain due to two successful films about him, but his fame was already great in the 19th century. He is regarded as Spain’s first documented serial killer, criminal psychopath… and werewolf!
Romasant was born on 18 November 1989 in the small village of Regueiro, Orense province, in Spain’s most north-westerly Galicia region. According to documentation of the time, he was quite educated and well-off for his station in society. Unusual for the time, he could both read and write.
He started off as a tailor, but following the death of his wife when he was just 24, he gave up tailoring and decided to become a travelling salesman. According to legend, he became famous for the high quality fat and lard and travelled widely through Galicia, Portugal and Castile. Little did his customers know where this commodity came from.
The first murder case came on his travels outside Galicia, for the murder of Vicente Fernández, the constable of León.
The constable was charged with recovering a debt of 600 reales which Romasanta owed to a Ponferrada supplier where he bought the merchandise for his mobile shop. Fernández was found dead and Romasanta was judged by default (for failing to appear). He was sentenced to 10 years in 1844. He had escaped to the mountains of Orense and used the village of Rebordechao, in Vilar de Barrio, as his base for his peddling operations.
It wasn’t long before a number of women and children started disappearing. In total 7 women and 2 children who had known Romasanta had vanished after being in his company. In many cases he had offered to act as a guide around the city. He even passed on their news to family in other towns, telling them of how happy the victims were in their new life.
He now made a fatal mistake. He began to sell the clothing of the missing women in the towns where they had last been seen. It was also at this time that rumours started about the composition of his lard and fat he sold.
He was finally captured in Nombela, Toledo, and brought to trial in Allariz, Orense, in September 1852. The court case lasted seven months with more than 2000 pages of evidence recorded. These pages have survived the ravages of time and are still available to this day. (The Kingdom of Galicia Historical Archives: ‘Causa 1788, del hombre-lobo,’ – ‘Case 1788, of the wolf-man.’)
By the end of the trial, Romasanta had confessed to nine murders. However he had a chilling twist. He blamed the murders on a curse on him which turned him into a werewolf. He only killed when he was under the curse.
According to the testimony:
‘The first time I transformed, was in the mountains of Couso.
I came across two ferocious-looking wolves. I suddenly fell to the floor, and began to feel convulsions, I rolled over three times, and a few seconds later I myself was a wolf. Continue reading »
In some parts of the world, strange news stories become so well known, that they become a part of national folklore and legend. Even stranger is that even though these stories gain such prominance in one country, they are seldom heard in others.
One such case has become a major talking point for the people of Spain, but is virtually unheard of outside of the country. It is the true story of what happened to the boy from Somosierra?
It was the 24th June 1986. Andres Gomez was a truck driver who made his living delivering highly combustible and corrosive compounds to Madrid. On this particular day he was excited because his delivery was a little different – he had brought his family along for the ride.
His wife, Carmen Gomez, and their son, Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez had never been to Madrid before and as his delivery was in that part of Spain, he decided to bring them along with him. They were all excited about the trip and the next day they had decided that on the way home, they would stop off to see the amazing scenery at the Somosierra mountain pass in the Sierra de Guadarrama north of Madrid in Spain. But fate would have a different plan.
The Volvo F-12 refueled near the town of Cieza, Murcia. At 00:12, the family was seen by the staff of the petrol station. After taking a nap at a rest area, they returned to the 301 national highway to Madrid. At 5:30 am, they made their last stop at the Aragon Inn. Witnesses who saw them there said that the family looked happy and nothing was amiss. But shortly afterwards things changes drastically.
Witnesses on the road reported seeing the truck accelerating to speeds of over 140 km/h, stopping suddenly before speeding off again at high speed. It wasn’t long before the police received a call that a major accident had occured. The truck has collided with another car, overturned in a ditch and the tanker had ruptured, spilling the explosive, corrosive liquid all over the road.
Authorities rushed to the scene to contain the environmental damage. Specialist clean-up crews arrived at the scene and started cleaning up the spill. When they managed to get to the cab of the truck, they found that the liquid had penetrated it and the two bodies inside has suffered terrible burns, but were otherwise intact.
Everything looked like a tragic accident. That was until the grandparents asked authorities: Where is my grandson, Juan Pedro?
Fearing that the boy was perhaps injured, the crews and police scoured the site of the crash but there was no trace of the 10 year old boy. The only indication that he had even been in the cab with his parents was one lone shoe.
People immediately speculated that his body had been dissolved by the corrosive liquid, but this was quickly dismissed by the forensics team who said that even if his body had come in contact with large amounts of the fluid, bones and other biological materials would still have been evident.
The police interviewed witnesses to the events leading up to the accident. It as then that the true bizarre nature of the story became evident. Continue reading »
