[4] On 18 June 1993, Romero ambushed Ángel Ibáñez (24) and his girlfriend Sara Dotor (20) as they left the park and ordered them to go to an uninhabited, dark area next to a railway.
Romero took some of Dotor's clothes and threw them in the Jabalón river, then disposed of the blade in an orchard's waterwheel some 100 meters from his residence.
[2] Saez testified later that Romero came back home at 1:25 AM and that, in the following days, he got rid of the clothes he was wearing that night and of two knives he used to carry.
Maroto studied Art History in Ciudad Real and had returned to Valdepeñas only two days before, following the end of the school year.
He believed that she was dead, and fearing that this would out him as the murderer of Ibáñez and Dotor, he resolved to put Maroto in the car's trunk and the bicycle in the backseat, and throw both in different water wells in the country.
Again according to Romero, a discussion ensued and he ended up strangling her with her shoelaces and throwing the body into an empty well that he covered with large stones.
Maroto's family met Prime Minister Aznar and the Ministry of the Interior offered 25 million pesetas for clues leading to the arrest of the murderer.
[4] While being held in Herrera de la Mancha prison for domestic violence, Romero was informed that two witness testimonies and a DNA match tied him to the 1993 murders and the 1998 disappearance, respectively.
[2] Police explored the possibility that Romero had attacked other women in Ciudad Real and the Canary Islands during the time he had resided there.
Special interest was given to the murders of 15-year-old Inmaculada Arteaga in Campo de Criptana in 2001 and 31-year-old Juani Díaz-Flores in Herencia on Valentine's Day, 2003.