The defendant in the death of Manuela Chavero has stated this Monday that her passing was accidental, resulting from a fall, and he denies any sexual assault as alleged by the accusations.
Moreover, the man, who is now under indictment, has asserted that he did not have sexual relations with the victim either before or during the events for which he is charged, the death of the Monesterio neighbor in July 2016 and the subsequent concealment of her body for four years.
During his testimony in the trial that began this Monday at the Provincial Court of Badajoz, the defendant, Eugenio, reported under questioning from his lawyer that Manuela died accidentally after tripping and falling while he was helping to move a cradle he intended to return to her.
He noted that the two went to his parents’ house so she could collect the cradle situated there.
In his account, once inside and as they were lifting the cradle, Manuela tripped, fell to the ground, and became motionless. He then carried her body to the trunk of his car and drove to a finca he owned on the outskirts of the town. There, with the help of a tractor’s shovel, he transported the body to a secluded spot and buried it.
Before his statement, a video recording created by forensic police in reconstructing Manuela’s death was shown in the courtroom.
Although the reconstruction lasted over five hours, the audiovisual material shown on Monday focused on the core aspects of the case, as explained by the presiding judge.
Synthesis of the events
The images were recorded during the reconstruction conducted over four days following the arrest on September 18, 2020, of Eugenio, a man in his twenties at the time, whose family had a home near Manuela’s residence in Monesterio, Badajoz.
The material displayed concentrated on the sequence of events on the day of Manuela’s death, the subsequent transportation of the body to Eugenio’s car, the drive to the outlying finca, the transfer of the body with a tractor shovel to a deeper area of the property, and the burial that followed.
During the reconstruction, Eugenio asserted that Manuela fell accidentally in her room while they were loading the cradle and that, as a consequence, she died. He said, “I went to the living room for a while” when asked what he did after the woman lay on the floor.
He also explained that from the fall to burying Manuela’s body, roughly five to six hours passed, and that the body slipped from the shovel and fell to the ground when the tractor wheels hit some stones.