José Bretón case
The case received a level of high media coverage, because the National Police's leading research official categorically denied after examination of the burnt remains that they could be human, classifying them as "rodent bones".
Anthropologist Francisco Etxeberria offered his assistance to Ruth Ortiz's accusation lawyer, disputing the previous conclusions and revealing the human nature of the remains.
In order to carry out his plan, José Bretón decided that the most appropriate place would be the estate of his parents, known as Finca de Las Quemadillas, in Córdoba.
Between 5 and 7 October 2011, with the intent to make the corpses of his children disappear, José Bretón collected firewood and bought over 270 litres of diesel fuel in large quantities at a petrol station in Huelva.
In order to be able to offer some information about the alleged disappearance, he carried out a kind of experiment with his nephews, the children of his sister Catalina Bretón and his brother-in-law José Ortega, on the morning of October 6, 2011, leaving them on their own for a few moments when he was taking them to school.
During the journey, or when he arrived at the estate, he supplied both Ruth and José with an undetermined number of the tranquillizers Motivan and Orfidal, in order to facilitate the children's total drowsiness and/or death.
Once they arrived at the estate, at about 1:48 pm of that day, José Bretón phoned his wife again, without being able to contact her, so he decided to continue carrying out his purpose.
He laid his children down (it has been impossible to determine whether they were dead or alive), together with a metal table with the board upright, covering practically the whole length of the minors and the pyre itself, and set a large bonfire.
He quickly stoked the bonfire with firewood – about 250 kilograms – and gasoil – about 80 liters –, which reached temperatures up to 1200 °C, achieving a similar effect to that of a crematorium.
José Bretón remained by the stake until 5:30 pm, fueling it with diesel oil (an accelerator) in order to keep the temperature high enough to completely scorch and make his children's corpses disappear.
Around 6:41 pm, José Bretón called the Spanish emergency number 112 and notified the authorities of the disappearance of his children, provoking the intervention of the police.
[4] During the investigation of the case by the judge José Luis Rodríguez Lainz, some errors came to light in the chain of custody of the legal evidence related to the remains collected in the bonfire of Las Quemadillas.
[5] When Judge Rodríguez Lainz called to testify Josefina Lamas after the refutation of her preliminary report and her retraction, he proceeded to show different images of the evidence.
On her behalf, the public prosecutor claimed that there were obvious evidences that proved that Bretón had murdered his children in the cruelest possible way and then burnt the corpses.
Bretón's defence appealed the sentence from the Audiencia Provincial of Córdoba to the High Court of Justice of Andalucía, emphasising the chain of custody of the evidences.
The High Court of Justice of Andalucía rejected the appeal in November 2013 and confirmed the 40 years of prison sentence imposed by the Audiencia Provincial of Córdoba.
