On Monday a new hearing session unfolded in the ongoing case surrounding Jorge Ignacio Palma, who is accused of a string of murders and violent assaults. The alleged victims include Arliene Ramos, Lady Marcela Vargas, and Martha Bald, with reports indicating an attempted series of similar attacks on eight more women across a period of roughly fifteen and a half months. Authorities allege the operation involved transporting cocaine of high purity, with criminal acts conducted under the guise of deception linked to the victims.
In this fifth court session, a witness with familiarity to the case, Arlene Ramos, testified that she was reachable only at the very end of the previous Friday and could not reach the scene in time. Her statement was postponed, with no new date set yet.
Arliene, described as the first alleged victim in the defendant’s orbit, was reportedly attacked while intoxicated. The witness did not appear during the investigation, yet her remarks were released during the previous Friday’s proceedings.
During the day, members of the National Police and its scientific unit conducted several procedures, presenting the results of fingerprint analysis. In addition to the Gran Via Marqués del Turia address, they reported DNA found at the scene as part of the investigation.
Two police laboratory agents testified that they recovered traces from the scene where the victim was found. The evidence included a brown liquid in a glass beaker and a white powdery substance in a tube. Tests confirmed cocaine with a purity rate around 81.6 percent, with no apparent cutting agents identified. Toxicology experts noted that cocaine typically arrives in the country with some dilution, but the current sample showed a high purity. The defense questioned the handling of the evidence and whether analyses were submitted to official agencies for review.
Two experts described how fingerprints were attributed to the suspect. One fingerprint came from the left ring finger and another from the left index finger. The experts explained that the traces had reached them through a standard police exam process and were then entered into an automatic fingerprint recognition system, which flags individuals with prior criminal records.
Forensic specialists who conducted the autopsy on Arliene Ramos, a 32-year-old Brazilian woman, spoke about her death, noting she was found deceased in a Valencia brothel. The coroner initially recorded the cause of death as natural, since the available tissue samples did not show clear signs of poisoning at the time. The organs were removed, complicating the ability to determine the precise cause from tissue samples. The coroner stated that if the death had been caused by cocaine poisoning, the individual would have died abruptly, but the emergency services had begun resuscitation efforts. This line of inquiry has been central to the defense’s strategy in the six sessions to date and is expected to shape the final report. The coroner added that the patient would have died suddenly had resuscitation not occurred.
Toxicology experts from the Barcelona area contested the coroner’s assessment, noting that sample timing matters because concentrations peak in the hours prior to sampling. They observed that the levels of metabolites were not particularly high, suggesting the poisoning occurred several hours earlier. They highlighted that, by the time samples were taken, metabolites could have diminished, which would affect the interpretation of cocaine’s role. The Valencia Forensic Institute and its experts previously ruled out poisoning as the cause of Arliene’s death, explaining that the timing of sample collection impacts interpretation. The defense has argued that this discrepancy should be considered in the concluding report.
Tomorrow’s hearing will address the death of Lady Marcela Vargas
This Tuesday, the proceedings will examine Vargas’s death, described as the second fatal outcome attributed to Jorge Ignacio. A witness who located the body, along with the chief investigator of the National Police Homicide Squad and several technicians involved in the police examination, are scheduled to testify.