Gaspar Rivera, one of two people detained in the Ciudad Real region for the murder of businessman Juan Miguel Isla, allegedly admitted to police that he helped conceal the crime. The revelations emerged from ongoing investigative coverage by Prensa Ibérica and the Open Case program, CASO ABIERTO. Rivera’s statements place another suspect at the center of a complex case that has gripped the local community and drawn attention to hidden motives behind a high-profile disappearance.
The 74-year-old retiree from Valdepeñas, described as a close associate of the first detainee, was summoned to testify before a judge on Wednesday. He was expected to shed light on events surrounding Isla’s disappearance on July 22, following a meeting at which Isla confronted someone about a land deal tied to the sale of a family farm. The court decided to detain him after his testimony outlining the alleged sequence of events and the involvement of others in the case.
In his courtroom account at Manzanares Court No. 2, Rivera accused his friend Antonio Caba of carrying out Isla’s murder after a meeting at a ranch later searched by the Civil Guard Central Operations Unit. Rivera added that after the killing, Caba allegedly requested help to move the body, which was reportedly dumped into a well on another parcel owned by Caba. Rivera claimed that he then drove the victim’s Renault Clio to a rural area in Albacete, where authorities later found the car during a separate investigation in January.
A farm valued at half a million
The victim’s children, represented by lawyer Javier Campos del Burgo, noted that the confession from one of the involved parties will require formal declassification at trial to reveal further details. Campos also shared that Isla’s children feel a deep sense of loss after the body found at the Caba property was identified as their father. They await the delivery of the remains so they can arrange a proper burial for their father; the family’s grief remains raw and unresolved while the investigation continues.
At the time of Isla’s disappearance, Antonio Caba had been assisting in the sale of land valued at more than 200 million euros, a sum that exceeded half a million euros in this case. The Civil Guard believes tensions over the financial agreement worsened the situation on the day Isla was due to receive part of the money. Investigators have not recovered the funds, and the exact extent of Rivera’s role, described as a messenger without independent financial resources, remains under scrutiny as authorities work to map out the broader network of involvement among those linked to Caba and Isla’s business activities.
Blue Section Affiliation
The second detainee in the case, Antonio Kaba, has so far chosen not to testify, exercising his right to silence. His defense attorney, Rodrigo Garcia, relayed information from Caba implying that social media posts suggest a fascination with firearms. Garcia indicated that Caba had a historical association with the Blue Division, a unit associated with a controversial period in the mid-20th century. The defense emphasized that those posts should not be interpreted as a direct admission of responsibility in Isla’s case.
There are additional threads linking Caba to another missing person case from July 2019 involving Jesús María González Borrajo, a 55-year-old businessman who vanished after selling two high-end Mercedes vehicles for approximately 28,000 euros to an acquaintance. Sources close to the investigation indicate that Caba acted as an intermediary in that transaction as well, suggesting a pattern of involvement in multiple failures to settle financial disputes tied to Isla’s family farm. This backdrop has complicated the broader narrative of the disappearance and the subsequent investigations, prompting authorities to examine old ties and potential repeated behavior across similar cases.