The National Police have arrested in Murcia another fugitive from the campaign The 10 Most Wanted. Jesus Heredia Iglesias, who had been on the run for ten years, was sought for a murder committed in 2009 in the Toledo town of Talavera de la Reina, one of the most notable cold cases among national fugitives in recent years.
Citizen cooperation, sparked by the police’s social media outreach about the most wanted fugitives, helped locate him in Murcia where he had built a family network that facilitated his concealment.
15 years in prison
The fugitive faced a sentence of 15 years in prison for his role in the death of a person in Talavera de la Reina. The incident followed an argument in a bar during which he stabbed the victim with a knife and then fired five shots.
After attempts to locate the fugitive in the Toledo province and in other parts of the country, the Fugitives Localisation Section decided to include his profile in the campaign The 10 Most Wanted, given his reputation for being able to elude police. Investigators also found that he maintained a broad network of family ties that could be helping him hide.
Thanks to social media
Thanks to the public’s attention to the campaign and to the public exposure of the fugitive’s profile on the National Police’s social networks, information came in from citizen collaboration about a possible location in the city of Murcia.
After several surveillance and tracking operations, authorities were able to determine the address where the accused was concealing himself with his wife, from which they took strong protective and counter-surveillance measures to avoid capture by officers.
Once located and identified, an operation was carried out to access the dwelling with the support of the Special Security Operations Group and the Prevention and Rapid Deployment Unit, leading to his arrest. This marked the fourth arrest from the The 10 Most Wanted list since the campaign began last July.