Leidy Vanesa was only 17 when she vanished on the way to a family friend’s house in Valencia, where she would have eaten after school, on June 2, 2008. Three months later, on September 20 of the same year, her skeletal remains were found buried in Macastre. The autopsy concluded that a minor had been beaten to death following a severe head injury.
National Police investigations led to the stepfather of the teenager as the prime suspect, and three other individuals were questioned by the court, offering statements. Two were allegedly paid to help dispose of the body, and the girl’s mother faced suspicion of involvement in a cover-up. The case paused again until a fourth suspect emerged, identified as the boss of Omar P., with whom the stepfather was working on a reform project in Puerto de Valencia on the day the girl disappeared.
Fourteen years after this unsolved murder, as reported exclusively by Levante-EMV of the Prensa Ibérica group, the Requena Education Court number three reopened the case on July 22. There is an implication that the victim’s mother may have pursued information on social networks, and her absence eventually led to a lawsuit that day. The mother expressed, “I hope Justice will listen to me this time and everything will come to light. And the person who harmed my daughter will not escape accountability.”
Yenni has little doubt about who killed her daughter Leidy. “Father of my daughters, I have nothing more to say,” she stated frankly. In the initial charges for alleged cover-up, he responded, “I was not protecting anyone; I was influenced by him. I lived with a psychopath for many years and was unaware of it.”
“I wore a mask, because I did not expect someone I had lived with all these years, with whom I had been raising a daughter since she was an infant, to do something like this,” she admitted, recognizing the danger for her daughter long ago and also citing concerns about the father of one of Leidy’s three alleged murderers in Bilbao. He feared for his life.
“If your father hits you or goes too far, will you tell me?” he asks his little one when she could speak. “That’s the first thing I’ll do, I’ll call you.” That hopeful answer, and the belief that he would not harm a biological child, is the only thing that comforted her then.
Leidy Vanesa is pictured with her stepfather, who remains the prime suspect in her murder.
However, Yenni lives under the weight of signs she believes connect her daughter’s father to Leidy’s death. “He became obsessed with my daughter,” she says, noting that Omar P., as testified by multiple witnesses, controlled anyone approaching Leidy and even threatened one of her boyfriends with a knife. There were also reports of a hidden micro camera in the room of a young man involved in the case.
All indications point to the girl’s stepfather as the alleged perpetrator of the crime: “She became obsessed with him”
One year before the tragedy, Leidy reportedly told her mother that her stepfather had made a sexual advance when she was six years old. Yenni reacted by expelling him from the home. Later, Leidy said the claim was fabricated, but Yenni notes that she never observed a strongly affectionate attitude from Omar toward Leidy, whom she raised since infancy. “Leidy didn’t let Omar get close to her.” That is now part of the narrative surrounding the case.
A mother’s despair
One mistake Yenni acknowledges is traveling to Colombia a few months after her daughter disappeared, before the body was found. She says she felt isolated—no family or money to support her daughters abroad. Omar left for South America without informing her, leaving her with a newborn baby. When Interpol requested DNA testing to compare with remains found in Macastre, Yenni rushed back to Spain despite visa obstacles arranged by the consulate.
“I don’t regret returning as I could not bury my daughter,” she says. “Omar deceived me into buying a computer for a kid in Valencia, but I’m not naïve,” she adds, reflecting on her arrest for drug trafficking.
“They didn’t act for 14 years, leaving the case in a drawer. I hope the beast is held accountable”
Yenni describes Omar’s violent behavior during their relationship but says she never blamed him for being the father of her daughters. Yet she remains puzzled by the March 2016 court filing that did not bring the alleged murderer and accomplices to justice. “It’s striking that one of the defendants claimed Omar paid him €1,500 to drill a hole to get rid of a brownie. That brownie was my daughter.”
Additional requests for new evidence have been made. A lawyer for Leidy Vanesa’s mother, Jorge García-Gasco, asked that Leidy’s underage sister be questioned as a witness to shed light on her relationship with the stepfather.