It was 13:00 when Mari left the house. had a few weeks ago discharged after severe depression, but a few days had been a little quieter. It was good, a little better. “I’ll have cigarettes and some ice cream,” he said before leaving. He came back but left again: “I left them behind.” They never saw him again.
María Josefa Carnerero disappeared in broad daylight in the Contrueces neighborhood in Gijón on July 7, 2018.. Warned of the possibility of self-harm, his family went out to look for him in record time. Nothing led to it. Four years later he is still missing.
“The alarm went off right away,” her daughter Jennifer says today. “I remember coming home because I was shopping and I found my dad nervous. My mother wasn’t there, she hadn’t come back. It had been a long time since I had come to the mansion.
The search started immediately. “In half an hour” he rebuilds his daughter. “We took a quick tour of the neighborhood to see if we had seen him and went straight to the National Police.” “At the police level, there has been an alarm,” he said.my mother has attempted suicide beforeEverything looked bad.”
“Sewers, containers, rivers, bushes… I’ve looked for him in every corner, everywhere. I got scabies from the places I’ve entered”
María Josefa Carnerero, brunette, 45 years old. She is wearing black skinny tights, a striped shirt, and leopard sandals. Medical history: period of depression. He is not taking medicine. They complained the first posters were printed and the media came. “We had to move fast,” he remembers, plastering the city with his face.
The search started in the following area: Contrueces, Montevil and Los Pericones park (Gijón). Some voices claimed to have seen him walking alone, confused, around four in the afternoon. Trace extended: “Sewers, rivers, valleys, containers, bushes, private farms… We looked in all possible places”. There were no brakes, no limits, no exceptions, “we looked at all the places it could be thrown or thrown, all of them,” he confirms. “Actually, I had to be treated because of all the places I entered, I got scabies“They couldn’t find Mari – as those who loved her say – or anything that would give any clue as to where she was. They tried to reconstruct her steps, never knowing what she was doing.
Two months ago: depression
“The days before my mom got nervous, yes it’s true she felt a little better just two days ago, but she wasn’t well until she disappeared from the moment she left the hospital.” a few weeks ago He was hospitalized after he attempted suicide by mixing pills and alcohol.
“One day, overnight, he started to feel very bad, very sad,” her daughter recalls.When my father came home, he found him half-dead.. He spent a week in the intensive care unit, they admitted him to the Hospital de Jove (Gijón).
When he recovered, he returned home. “They said they did not believe that he was a suicidal person, that he would not repeat it.‘ says Jennifer. Today she calls it a mistake: ‘They didn’t treat her. After we broke up, they told us to lead a normal life, not to watch him too much, that he had a stress attack, that’s all.
On the day of Mari’s disappearance, as her family searched the street, she remembered that medical report with regret. “Man tries to take his own life enough to spend a week fighting for life and death… and medical diagnosis was little more than a stressed woman. The drugs they gave me were sleeping pills. Neither antidepressants nor control…”. They felt fear. Their daughter had only one idea in mind: Mari was offended again, “my mother had gone and had tried to commit suicide”.
A bottle of J&B
Hours passed. There were no traces. Also days. The investigation initially allowed to plot some of the route that the Mari took. Security cameras confirmed that he had gone to the tobacconist’s. He bought tobacco, not ice cream, or at least not proven, but it is recorded that he bought a bottle of J&B at the supermarket. “She doesn’t drink, she’s not an alcoholic, but she repeated the pattern of her previous suicide attempt: alcohol and drugs,” Jennifer complains. This idea was reinforced after calling home: “We found that the drug my father tried last time was not there.”
They kept searching for him, “we were looking for his body” and months later without a trace “we couldn’t find anything, not even a J&B bottle.” They accepted the absence, not without pain. It was the turn of the researchers, “From the National Police UDEV department -He’s in charge of the case- they told me they were looking for him alive”. Mari’s daughter was surprised. “They said that if he had committed suicide he would have appeared already, that he might have disappeared there.” , that he might have gone with someone… may or may not be a voluntary disappearance, but long live“. One of the few hypotheses, one that is equally cheering and frightening. The question does not end in the woman’s house: “Mother, where are you?”.
They fought for miles. Family members, volunteers, and agents did. No signs or symptoms of the woman were found. Mari’s cell phone was meticulously scrutinized at home. There were no strange messages or calls. “My mother hid so well to kill herself that she was nowhere to be seen? In the summer, in broad daylight, when people were walking, playing sports…” Doubts all. Time does not help, it outweighs.
“She didn’t eat, trembled, cried, didn’t look at me, didn’t kiss, didn’t hug… She had the urge to disappear,” explains her daughter.
“Who? What? Why?” Jennifer goes back to July 2018 again and again. “Since you came, He said something would happen to us, that it was his fault. but he did not say what or why”. They associated it with depression, irrational, baseless feelings, “we thought something was on his mind”, his daughter was complaining “which it was paranoia, it was something she dreamed of“.
Now, She suspects her mother is dating her with the recurrent idea of taking her own life, or if someone has taken her.. “Let’s see if he did something he shouldn’t have done or if they threatened to do something to me, to my father… We don’t know if something happened to him or whether he did it unintentionally. He’s been nervous since he left the hospital. He didn’t eat, he was shaking, he cried, he didn’t look at me, didn’t kiss, didn’t hug me. …I felt the urge to disappear“.
Mari: mother and friend, confidant, companion, “we went to everything together”. It’s not here now. His daughter walks to look for him. Work, work and move on, “He would be proud.” There isn’t a day that I don’t think of him. She calls her mother and presses her father, “I keep going as best I can, but her life has stopped.”
He doesn’t know what or who took him on July 7, “his mind or a third person…”. Jennifer makes a plea: “If someone knows something, please don’t tell them”. Just in case, she talks to him: “Mom, if you read us, tell us you’re okay.”