NOVEMBER 23, 1996
Juan's death… wasn't normal.
We had doubts right away.
It was really strange.
Suspicious.
It just didn't add up.
This makes no sense.
THIS EPISODE IS THE PRODUCT OF TWO YEARS OF RIGOROUS INVESTIGATION.
Juan died at forty.
He was at a high point in his life. Professionally, financially.
He was a wonderful father.
Very kind, loving, totally focused on his daughter.
Where's Daddy? Where's Daddy? Can you say, "Daddy"?
He was always sending us letters and photos.
-This was in England. -Right.
And this one was taken in Mexico during the World Cup.
I think it was 1986, right?
Yeah.
There was a huge void after his death,
because it felt like he just vanished overnight.
And then we started to have serious doubts.
There were no signs of foul play, but I knew it didn't add up.
Angi was brought to trial in the Provincial Court of Barcelona,
where she was convicted of suffocating her friend
and trying to cover up the crime by staging the scene as a rape.
She received a 30-year prison sentence.
POSSIBLE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?
It took me a while to process the whole thing,
but I slowly started to understand.
I was like, "If she's capable of doing this, then, I mean…"
It just made perfect sense of all the doubts I had about her.
PROVINCIAL COURT OF BARCELONA
This isn't going to be easy, but it's important.
We came here to get justice.
We came here to figure out who murdered my sister
and to put them away for a long time.
When I came into court to testify, I…
I saw her for the first time.
She was very well-dressed, wearing makeup.
And I remember she seemed calm and kind of sweet and quiet,
just sitting there, acting like she had nothing to do with any of it.
It made me really angry, knowing what she had done.
You know, this woman proved she's capable of taking another person's life for money.
-Please state your name. -María Ángeles Molina Fernández.
And that just added to all the doubts we had about Juan's sudden death.
Knowing her, how could you not be suspicious about it?
Did you take out loans under the name Ana Páez?
No.
Then would you care to explain
why several witnesses identified you as the borrower?
I don't know.
I was very sure that the person who came into our office
is the person who came for the life insurance.
The thing is, she was wearing a wig.
Did you murder Ana Páez?
Did you kill Ana Páez because you knew she had money?
No.
Murderer! You're a murderer!
Order! Order in the court!
The Provincial Court of Barcelona
has sentenced María Ángeles Molina to 22 years in prison.
Identity theft, huge piles of cash…
The motive? Money.
Investigators found Angi expected to receive a million euros
from life insurance policies she took out in Ana's name.
Angi denied that she manipulated the body
and staged the crime scene to make it look like
the death occurred during an orgy.
Went from a close friend to a convicted murderer.
It seemed like the perfect crime.
Planned to perfection.
She's been accused of committing the perfect crime.
I guess it was perfect in the sense that she got away with it.
Until now.
ANGI: FAKE LIFE, TRUE CRIME
Juan's sisters first contacted us when…
well, right after the trial,
after Angi was sentenced for the murder of Ana Páez.
They were surprised that there were professionals
devoted to reviewing cold cases.
And, you know, with their brother's suspicious death…
EXPERT CRIMINOLOGIST
CASE HISTORY
…they were considering our services,
so they could get a… well, a second opinion
because they weren't convinced by the official ruling back in 1996.
I got in touch with Félix Ríos, who ended up being a great advocate.
He was constantly helping us push the case forward
and follow up on all the details from the first investigation.
We thought we could find evidence to make them reopen the case.
PRE-TRIAL PROCEEDINGS
The records showed that, even in '96,
the sisters thought Juan's death wasn't an accident.
The first step for us when we reopen any case
is to analyze the judicial proceedings and the police records.
POLICE STATION
Could you read the crime scene report?
"The body was found on the floor beside the bed, fully nude."
"With the left leg bent back."
"And the right arm raised."
"Items found on the victim."
"None."
What's that say?
Why does it say this right here?
When an officer wants to revise a report,
instead of crossing out any information, they just add "correction" and keep going.
Oh, okay. That's why it says "correction."
"Items found on the victim. None."
"Correction. A ring."
Now would you mind reading the medical examiner's report?
"Preliminary forensic report. No external signs of…"
"No external signs of injury."
"Or physical trauma."
"In his right hand, which was on the bed, the victim held a disk drive."
A disk drive?
What does that mean?
The investigation was seriously flawed.
Even if they were convinced it was a suicide or an accidental death.
They hardly took any pictures
and not a single photo of the body at the scene.
Nobody had the resources or technology we have today.
So I think it was a thorough investigation for the time.
It seemed like they were stumbling around.
They obviously didn't have much experience with something like this.
They'd notice a detail that could be important,
but then they wouldn't follow up on it in legal proceedings.
Like, for example, the safe which they found open.
They didn't connect it or see it as a robbery gone awry.
They thought, "There's a dead body, and the safe just happens to be open."
Basically they stuck to their initial assumption,
that it was a suicide or an accidental death.
They didn't even acknowledge the possibility
that it could have been a homicide, but the evidence was there.
When Juan died, I was just a kid.
But they asked me to review the case 20 years later,
when his sisters reached out.
We wanted to get the lay of the land.
The context of what happened in '96.
So the first thing we did was review the key points of the investigation.
The night Juan's body was found,
Angi had called the police to report it.
She claimed she'd come back from Barcelona that afternoon.
She and her daughter were on vacation.
And she was the first person our colleagues asked to give a statement.
JUAN AND ANGI'S HOUSE
Angi said she got home around 8:10 p.m., but she couldn't get in the house.
So she went to her neighbor's place, and from there she called Juan at work.
I got a call from Angi,
and she said, "Hey, sorry, but I'm locked out."
She asked if Juan was there.
I said, no he isn't,
and we're all surprised he hasn't come in yet.
According to her statement,
she left her daughter at the neighbor's house,
and managed to get in her house by climbing through the kitchen window.
She saw that keys were just inside by the back door.
She unlocked the door, opened it, let her daughter in,
and took her downstairs where the bedrooms were,
and put on a movie for her.
Check this out.
She has her own VHS player, her own TV, a little table for tea parties.
Oh, and then there are the barbies. Lots of barbies.
She's obsessed. Quite the treasure trove.
Then, according to her, she goes upstairs.
She spends about an hour taking care of some chores around the house,
at which point she goes back downstairs to use the bathroom,
and that's when she finds Juan's body.
And this is daddy's bedroom.
Angi notices Juan's wallet and his Rolex are missing.
The wallet had a "W" on it, the logo of Juan's company.
And even though the safe was open, she didn't see anything else missing.
The police conduct a search,
but they can't find the Rolex or Juan's wallet.
Then the judge gives Angi her keys, and turns the house back over to her.
The autopsy was performed that night.
And the medical examiner determined
the time of death was 24 to 28 hours before the body was found.
They found internal hemorrhaging in the vital organs.
INSTITUTE OF TOXICOLOGY
They also had his viscera tested for toxins.
FORENSIC PATHOLOGY
TOXICOLOGY
The problem was, some of the samples weren't properly preserved.
They deteriorated on the way to the lab.
TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION
"We received liver, kidney, spleen, lung, and brain samples."
"The samples were sent
without adequate amounts of fixing liquid."
"They arrived in a state of advanced cadaveric putrefaction."
Oof. Wow.
Despite all that, the samples yielded results.
"Upon inspection, we identified high concentrations
of phosphate ions in the samples."
HIGH CONCENTRATION
"This can be found in multiple compounds readily available to consumers,
like Calgon."
That was the initial twist that suggested he'd been poisoned.
But, according to the records, even after that,
they were working under the assumption it was suicide or an accidental poisoning.
But during the search, they didn't find any household toxin or a suicide note
that would reinforce that theory.
TOXIN CONTAINER NOT FOUND
NO INDICATION OF
SUICIDE
There's no reason in the world he would have.
No, no way.
I don't believe it for a second.
Juan wouldn't have committed suicide. Definitely not.
No, not a chance. He wouldn't go that far.
He had a daughter who he adored. He always put her first.
You know, he had plenty of reasons to live.
When Angi was questioned about the toxins, she said…
"When he took the medicine, he'd just gulp a bunch down."
"He could've taken something toxic. It's possible."
"Maybe Alka-Seltzer or something?"
"We do use Calgon at home too."
"Sometimes, when there's a little left,
I put it in a mason jar next to the toaster."
"Maybe he thought it was something else."
Oh God, no.
The judge said there were aspects of the case that were unprovable,
but she saw no evidence of foul play.
FOUL PLAY
According to her, the forensic report was decisive.
A third party couldn't have been involved.
She attributed everything to suicide or an accident,
and she closed the case.
After Juan died,
I ran into Angi around his company offices.
She seemed frazzled and nervous.
Her husband had just died, but she kept asking about
how she could take control of his assets and his shares in the company.
She was rushing around, trying to sell his shares.
"Hurry, get the paperwork done
'cause Angi wants to take off for Barcelona."
It was just like boom, boom, boom. "He's dead? Okay, I'm out of here."
I remember she wanted to know if Juan had left a will in Argentina.
That's how determined she was.
She wanted to know if there was anything halfway across the world
she could get her hands on.
Then she sold the house fast. She did it all so fast.
She changed in this really dramatic way right after my brother's death.
She tied up her loose ends in the Canary Islands
and went to start a new life in Barcelona.
We didn't hear from her.
Until we saw her on TV impersonating Ana Páez.
When Angi got arrested, her daughter called Juan's sister, Silvia.
She asked Silvia to come pick her up
because she'd been left all alone after her mom had been taken away.
So that gave Silvia some access to Angi's personal belongings.
ANGI'S HOME BARCELONA
Well, the apartment was basically the same as the house in the Canary Islands.
All the furniture was the same, the cupboards, the dishes.
I mean, almost everything had been brought over to that place.
But it was really, really messy inside.
Just every kind of clutter.
I was looking around like…
"Why would she keep all this junk?"
She had turned into a hoarder.
There were dozens upon dozens of shoes, coats, dresses, you name it.
Oh, you know, another thing I stumbled upon.
There were these shipping documents for their car.
It was an official application
to transport the car Angi used in the Canary Islands in '96.
But the strange thing was she submitted it before Juan's death.
On top of all that, we found the…
the school enrollment letter for our niece, Juan's daughter.
-Right. -Again, it was weird.
Because all that had been set up before Juan died.
SEPTEMBER 1996
In September, she enrolled her daughter in a school in Barcelona.
But she took full advantage of that trip.
She shipped her car, and she also had a boyfriend there.
-So strange. -It's crazy. No…
No one knew about these documents in '96.
-No. -Nobody had them.
I started going through drawers to clean some of this stuff out,
and, oh, surprise!
I found Juan's wallet and the Rolex.
I was shocked. I couldn't believe it.
It was still in there after all these years.
It took ten years to find it?
Hello!
-Happy birthday to you -Happy birthday to you
It was all pretty clear.
She had a premeditated plan to build a new life in Barcelona.
Not too long before he died, I got a call from Juan.
I was like, "Oh, what a surprise."
He asked me for my help
'cause he was having serious problems with Angi.
He said, "She's spending so much money
taking all these trips to see you in Barcelona."
I was like, "What? To see me?"
He said, "Doesn't she visit you a lot?" And I'm like, "No."
I didn't wanna say anything about her old life.
So I told him he should hire a private detective right away.
And Juan found out who Angi was.
Nothing was ever enough for Angi.
She spent all his money at the casino.
She was there all the time. She loved gambling.
She was all about the money.
And the less work she had to do to get it, the better.
Eventually, Juan found out.
He told me he was having a really hard time with her,
and the only reason they weren't getting divorced
was their daughter.
After a while he called me again and said, "Patricia, thank you."
"I did what you said and hired a detective,
and now I know everything I need to know."
He said he had enough evidence to take his daughter
and leave Angi with nothing.
I remember I said, "What evidence?"
And he said, "I have some photos in my safe."
And that was the last time I ever
spoke to Juan.
Did you murder Ana Páez?
In 2008,
Juan's sisters tried to focus investigators' attention
on their brother's death.
Because that was when everything related to the crime of Ana Páez
started to come to light.
Her motive was clearly financial.
"My husband had life insurance,
but I don't know if it covers suicide."
LIFE INSURANCE
Throughout this whole thing, insurance kept coming up.
Insurance was always involved somehow.
When the insurance company informed Angi she wouldn't get any money
if Juan's death was ruled a suicide,
she started changing her story.
She said it could've been an accident.
ACCIDENTAL DEATH
"I highly doubt that my husband
took his life voluntarily."
"He didn't suffer from depression or any serious illnesses."
Why did you have chloroform?
Well, I used to own a few silver candelabras.
One of them was badly scratched and chipped.
That gentleman told me I could fix it
by treating the silver casing with chloroform.
In the case of Ana Páez,
they couldn't legally prove that chloroform was used.
But the investigators all suspected it was.
CHLOROFORM
It was difficult to prove through a chemical analysis
because chloroform is very volatile and it leaves the body quickly.
But either way, my sister was unconscious.
She couldn't defend herself, so…
I mean, she was knocked out with something, right?
They couldn't prove it, so the charge got reduced
from first to second-degree murder,
and it took four years off her sentence.
In Juan's case, the presence of toxins is very clear.
Ion phosphate.
In the days before Juan's death,
the cleaning lady said Angi was constantly calling
to ask how Juan was feeling.
RECREATION OF WITNESS STATEMENT
Yes, she used to go to Barcelona a lot,
but she never called like that before.
She kept asking if I was sure that Juan was feeling okay.
And, yeah, I told her that he was perfectly fine.
Then she told me she was going to stay there a little longer.
She wouldn't be back for a few more days.
Every time she said he's feeling fine,
Angi would say, "Well, I'll stay a few more days."
That amount of phosphate typically causes some kind of burn or abrasion.
So let's say he ingested it by accident somehow,
maybe drank some detergent by mistake.
Or let's even say he tried to commit suicide.
Those burns would've gone from the upper gastrointestinal tract
to the stomach, right?
From the mouth to the throat to the gut, basically.
But, weirdly, the autopsy showed the opposite.
The burns went from the inside out.
At one point, we remembered a report
from the National Toxicology Institute in 1996
about the vomit Juan left on the sheets.
They never took any pictures of the stain it left,
but the report had a very vivid and detailed description of it,
and, apparently, there were these unusual crusts.
It seemed like that would be key to understanding the burn patterns.
All we had to do was test the sheets again,
but unfortunately…
the sheets had already been destroyed
because they took up too much space in the evidence room.
And if the case was ruled a suicide or, at worst, an accidental death,
well, why keep the evidence?
What's the point?
So the question remained,
"How is it possible that Juan ingested something
which started taking effect only after it had reached his stomach?"
One possible answer was a capsule.
But to prove it, we had to create a simulation
that allowed us to put that theory to the test.
First, we had to recreate the temperature and environment of a stomach,
then drop the capsules in and pour that liquid out onto a bedsheet.
We were pretty surprised to see that it created a similar stain
to the one described in the report.
The crust that formed appeared to be made of the partially dissolved coating
from the capsules.
NOVEMBER 23, 1996
Our theory about when and how she pulled that off
is based on some really simple math.
If someone has a bottle with twelve pills,
and I put in one or two or maybe three that are poisoned,
and the victim takes one pill every day,
I know that sometime within the next 12 days,
the victim will ingest one of the poisoned pills.
It's like she knew he was gonna get sick.
Otherwise, why would she be asking about his health
and changing her travel plans?
The day Juan didn't pick up the phone,
that's the day she buys the ticket
and comes back from Barcelona to the Canary Islands to find him dead.
I can't believe it.
At first, we didn't consider it, but after everything that happened,
we started looking into the option that…
COURTHOUSE
So after four long years of work,
we submitted a report to the court that made an attempt to answer
some of the questions everyone had about Juan's death.
I'm sure you can guess what the conclusion was.
We found that, after reexamining the evidence,
there was a very high likelihood of homicide.
And then all the findings in our report
were reinforced when the National Police looked into it themselves.
HOLDING A DISK DRIVE
NO TOXINS OR SUICIDE NOTE
TWO HOURS BEFORE BODY FOUND
CALLED AND ASKED ABOUT JUAN'S HEALTH
Then, in 2017, we submitted our report to the court,
which summarized all the evidence
pointing to María Ángeles Molina as Juan's killer.
TO LOOK LIKE A ROBBERY
ROLEX AND WALLET
FOUND AT HER HOME
LIFE INSURANCE PAYOUT
It turned out the National Police
were more convinced of our theory than we were.
They said the case was clearly a murder and a major miscarriage of justice.
Then, suddenly, you're like,
"Wow, that uncertainty I had, all those doubts,
that was real, it's been confirmed."
But so much time had passed,
I think all of us had kind of lost hope that we'd ever get justice for Juan.
And even then…
it was hard to shake that.
Finally, it seemed like the time had come.
The judge issued a ruling that he wanted an indictment as soon as possible
and he was determined to see the case go to trial.
Just when we were about to take the next step,
the DA decided to slow it down and basically said, "Hold on."
"We're still in the investigation phase. We have tests to do."
And I think that's when the tables turned.
I mean, we'd been in an all-out rush because of the mistakes they made
in the first investigation into Juan's death.
"The court finds sufficient grounds to dismiss the case
because the charge of murder has not been substantiated."
"Also, considering the initial forensic reports
and the lapse in the principle of immediacy,
the court hereby dismisses this case."
It was like a bucket of cold water. I had to read it a few times.
This case was so complicated,
and for it to be dismissed in a two-page decision was just…
so disappointing.
The court decided there wasn't enough evidence
to justify the charges,
and that was the end of it.
Well, the official end, I guess,
because I don't think our doubts are going anywhere.
Yeah, it's true, the case is closed. Legally, that's the end, more or less.
But until we find an airtight explanation,
we're not going to stop.
We just can't.
When the case was dismissed, I actually thought it was a mistake.
I mean, how could you just close the book on this?
It didn't make sense. Really?
The system is going to fail Juan again?
THE DAY JUAN'S BODY WAS FOUND
On the day they found Juan's body,
his safe door was open.
When she finds her husband, she claims the safe is open,
and there are some things… missing.
What we do know, because it's in the police report,
is that two hours passed from the time she entered the house
to when she found the body.
During the investigation in 2017,
the National Police took a statement
from one of the officers who was present for the search.
And this is what he said.
While we were searching the house, the wife seemed totally calm.
We were surprised. We thought she'd see it as a violation of privacy.
Especially when we looked through the very personal photographs
we found in the safe.
PHOTOGRAPHS OF A VERY PERSONAL NATURE
We never learned more about those pictures.
They weren't in the report because they were deemed irrelevant.
We decided not to include the pictures
because they didn't seem related to the husband's death.
We never knew what was on the disk drive either.
It's a mystery.
Did anyone else see Angi's photos?
The police saw all those photos.
They closed that case fast. Suicide. That's it.
It just doesn't add up.
Case closed. That's it.
And do you know why?
Can I actually say it or not?
What time is it?
It's 5:30. Exactly. Nice job.
That means it's time to let them come over
and take a look around the house to see if they like it.
Right, sweetheart?
Skinny Kiti can take this room if he wants.
JUAN'S VOICE
Skinny can crash right here until he gets himself situated.
Guess we'll just have to see if Skinny gets lucky and…
comes here to take a job.
JUAN'S FRIEND "SKINNY KITI"
Do you remember
what little shits we were
when we used to play football in the street?
She didn't even get your last name right.
We were lifelong friends. Brothers.
I'm here because no one deserves to die like that.
I'm here for Juan. He deserves it.
I'm here because I feel a sense of duty, really.
And maybe guilt. Yeah, a little bit of guilt.
Truth is, I tried my best to help him, but, in the end, it… it wasn't enough.
Sometimes I wish that when he called me asking for advice,
I wish that I'd done more for him.
I don't know. More than just give him a shoulder to cry on.
But obviously, how would I have known what was gonna happen?
I don't think this is going to be over
until the day we know exactly what happened.
But even that won't heal the emotional wounds.
I mean, there's nothing…
there's nothing in the world that can make up for a loss like that.
WE WON'T FORGET YOU
AT THE TIME OF THIS DOCUMENTARY'S RELEASE,
ANA PÁEZ'S FAMILY HAS NOT RECEIVED THE COMPENSATION SET OUT IN THE SENTENCE
SHORTLY BEFORE THE RELEASE OF THIS SERIES, ANGI WAS ARRESTED
AND ACCUSED OF PLANNING A NEW CRIME FROM PRISON
Angi doesn't deserve freedom.
If you do something like this, you get punished by the law,
but there's also a social punishment.
Angi deserves both. I mean, she's already a pariah.
And I think she'll have to deal with that for the rest of her life.
I just hope the people who have to live around her
know who they're dealing with,
so that what happened to my sister doesn't happen to them.
Juan married Angi thinking she was the daughter of a judge
that had connections to nobility,
but the truth is he married a character that Angi created.
Okay, cut. Cut, please.
Great, thank you. Did we get all that?
WE USED AN ACTRESS TO CREATE AN INTERVIEW BASED ON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS
I think you were really convincing. Have you played a cop before?
No. I've played… well, lots of different characters…
ACCORDING TO SEVERAL SOURCES,
ANGI HAS NOW CHANGED HER NAME AND HER PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
THE OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE CAUSE OF JUAN'S DEATH HAS BEEN CLOSED
AND THE CORRESPONDING LEGAL PROCEEDINGS HAVE BEEN DISMISSED TWICE BY THE COURTS
DUE TO LACK OF EVIDENCE.
THE OFFICIAL CAUSE OF JUAN'S DEATH IS SUICIDE.
THE NATIONAL POLICE DECLINED TO TAKE PART IN THIS DOCUMENTARY
ANGI AND JUAN'S DAUGHTER ALSO DECLINED TO PARTICIPATE
SHE ASKED FOR HER IDENTITY NOT TO BE REVEALED
ANGI AND HER LAWYER DECLINED TO RESPOND DURING THE MAKING OF THIS DOCUMENTARY S