The victim in the La Verdellada case was facing serious financial strain in November 2017. Friends and colleagues indicate that the National Police, along with lawyer and businessman Evaristo González Reyes, view the death as a calculated act carried out by Machín, with the alleged aim of arranging purchases for ten phones used to communicate with the person identified as the target, and the individual who pulled the trigger.
It has now been five years since Carlos Machín Quintero was shot in his car in the parking lot of the La Laguna School of Official Languages in La Verdellada, shortly after English classes. The incident occurred on a Tuesday evening, April 17, and initial reports described a fatal shot delivering a stark image of a man lying on the asphalt.
Investigators soon learned that Machín had ties to the nightlife scene near the university town, managing well-known venues such as Kapitel bar and El Palco nightclub. A native of Isora in El Hierro, Machín held responsibility for these establishments but had also been linked in past years to a prominent figure in real estate, nightlife, and lagoon-area hospitality. While the Science Police conducted a standard initial assessment and collected samples, images of Machín’s body raised echoes of other cases with higher crime rates in the Canary Islands.
Five years on, the trial remains unresolved. The man named as the alleged mastermind, lawyer and businessman Evaristo González Reyes, is linked to the case, along with Ernesto Inocencio OH, who is identified as the alleged perpetrator and driver, and five other suspects who have been released on parole while awaiting trial. Prosecutors have not yet filed formal charges against all defendants, and no public date has been announced for the proceedings. The investigation is carried out by the Provincial Brigade of the Courthouse Police, which began identifying suspects four years ago after prior arrests.
A pivotal aspect of investigators’ work involved analyzing phone communications before and after the murder, revealing patterns crucial to the case.
Seven months after the killing, in January 2020, the case against Evaristo González expanded to include a separate matter known as the Corredor case. He faced charges related to social security fraud, undeclared workers, forged contracts, and falsified payrolls designed to access pensions and unemployment benefits or to finance purchases through untrustworthy banks. The Ninth High Criminal Court sentenced González Reyes to eight years, a sentence later reduced to two and a half years on appeal by the Sixth Circuit of the County Court.
The Corredor case gained public attention in 2012, when National Police operations led to González Reyes’s arrest for these offenses. Machín Quintero was also investigated in that process. In 2015, a court order limited most wiretapping because the extension authority granted by the judge was not documented in the court file. González Reyes was ultimately convicted in 2019 by the Provincial Court in the first component of the matter.
Machín reportedly began to distance himself from the La Laguna nightlife circuit in the years before the murder and pursued other projects. On the night Machín was killed, investigators recovered a SIM card holder among his belongings that did not correspond to the two phones he normally used. Hours after the shooting, Machín’s wife discovered a phone she did not recognize in a home drawer and turned it over to authorities.
A discreet communication channel between a figure nicknamed “Tito” and an ex-manager surfaced in the investigation, with activity peaking at 788 interactions over five months. The terminal appears to have served Machín almost exclusively as a private line to Evaristo González Reyes, suggesting the device functioned as a secured communications tool for his inner circle. The justification cited was part of a broader investigation used to track suspects.
Police records indicate the SIM card for this phone was purchased by JDSH, the son of a regular collaborator of González Reyes. The found device is an older model lacking internet access or modern applications, yet JDSH procured other similarly configured devices under their own name. One device made its last connection the day before the murder, while another was deactivated just hours prior to the event. One phone appeared under the name of a resident at González Reyes’s villa in Tacoronte, listed on Machín’s calendar as Tito Tacoronte. The same nickname is used for Evaristo by associates.
Another terminal, with a number ending in 806, registered under a fake ID, is believed by investigators including attorney Santiago M., who led the inquiry, to have been operated by Evaristo. Across the device’s lifetime, it logged 1,188 calls, including 798 calls to Machín’s secret number.
From May 2022 onward, the alleged instigator and the individual identified as the author of the material have remained at large.
The number ending in 806 also connected with another device ending in 115 used by Ernesto Inocencio, identified as the shooter. The number known as Tito’s device, ending in 604, was activated in November 2017, a period during which Machín faced financial hardship. The line remained active for the next five months and ceased operations at 19:45, just hours before the murder. In the days that followed, communications varied in their pattern. In one notable sequence, after the shooting and the car’s destruction, the driver JG placed eight consecutive calls to a third party, a move that investigators interpret as an attempt to summon assistance to Gracia and aid the escape from the burned Renault Clio. The Homicide Squad Group views this as evidence that JG sought urgent help from a collaborator to extract him from the area.
Citations throughout the investigation attribute significant weight to the analysis of phone records, cross-referencing movements and contacts to establish a timeline and potential networks involved in the crime.