Manuel Delgado Villegas

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Manuel Delgado Villegas
Mugshot taken upon his arrest on January 18, 1971
Born	Manuel Delgado Villegas 25 January 1943 Seville, Andalusia, Spain
Died	2 February 1998 (aged 55) Badalona, Catalonia, Spain
Other names	El Arropiero El Estrangulador del Puerto
Children	Mary Victoria Penso
Conviction(s)	Life Sentence
Criminal penalty	Interned in a mental institution for life
Details
Victims	7 confirmed, 48 claimed
Span of crimes	1964–1971
Country	France, Italy, Spain
Date apprehended	18 January 1971

Manuel Delgado Villegas (Spanish pronunciation:

In 1961, aged 18, Delgado enlisted in the Spanish Legion. There he learnt hand-to-hand combat techniques, and one in particular, the golpe legionario or golpe mortal (literally "deadly blow"), a blow to the larynx with the edge of the hand that became one of his preferred methods of killing.

After the army, Delgado left Mataró and became a nomad, wandering along the Mediterranean coast begging, stealing and picking fights with prostitutes and homosexuals. He was arrested several times under the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes or Ley de Peligrosidad Social (translation - "Law of Vagrants and Crooks" and "Law of Social Danger") that targeted beggars and homosexuals in Francoist Spain, but was never imprisoned. His odd behavior under arrest always led to his being sent to mental institutions, from which he was soon released.^[6]

Murders

Delgado killed his first confirmed victim in 1964, aged 21, and remained active until his arrest at 28 in 1971. He never killed with premeditation. Sometimes a simple trivial comment by the victim would be taken as an insult and unleash Delgado's rage, who would kill them with great violence using a blunt object, strangling them or with his bare hands; Delgado would attack others with the intention of robbing them or, if the victim was female, raping them, which he did only after they were dead. The wildly different nature of the crimes and the victims (men and women, young and old, Spanish and foreign, heterosexual and homosexual, rich and poor) and Delgado's nomadic lifestyle made it impossible, before his confession, for law enforcement to connect the killings as the work of a single person. Only the last two murders happened in the same place and close in time, precipitating Delgado's arrest.^[7]

Victims

Confirmed by the investigation

Llorac

Ibiza

Chinchón

Barcelona

Mataró

El Puerto de Santa María

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Locations of the murders of the confirmed victims

• Adolfo Folch Muntaner (January 21, 1964), 49 – A chef. He was killed while sleeping on the beach of Llorac in Garraf, near Barcelona. Folch had gone to the beach that day to take some sand, used at the time to clean the fat from kitchen pots and stoves.

"I saw a sleeping man leaning against a wall. I approached him and very slowly, with a large rock that I had picked up close to the wall, hit him over the head. When I realised that he was dead, I took his wallet and the watch on his wrist. He had barely anything in it and the watch was crap!"

— Manuel Delgado Villegas

• Margaret Hélène Thérese Boudrie (June 20, 1967), 21 – A French student from
  Ibiza Town, along with a friend.^[8] Delgado sneaked into her room and suffocated her with a pillow. Once she was dead, he stabbed her in the back with a stiletto
  , raped her body and stole a medal that she was wearing around her neck. The body was found with multiple bruises and scratches. Her friend, an American tourist named Jules Morton, was arrested and held in prison for over a year before his innocence was proven.
• Venancio Hernández Carrasco (July 20, 1968), 71 – Hernández was tending his vineyards by the banks of the
  Tajuña River in the town of Chinchón when Delgado approached him asking for food. Hernández replied that he was young and that if he wanted to eat he ought to work. This comment cost him his life. His body was found floating in the river near the San Galindo dam^[9]
  and was initially reported as an accidental drowning. Delgado later changed his testimony and claimed that he killed Hernández because he saw him trying to rape a little girl.
• Ramón Estrada Saldrich (April 5, 1969) – A homosexual furniture dealer from Barcelona and regular client of Delgado, whose services he hired for 300 pesetas. According to Delgado, they were in his dealership when he asked Estrada to give him 1,000 pesetas (about $10) and he agreed to do so after sex, but he only paid Delgado the usual 300. Delgado hit Estrada in the neck, but he was only knocked out and began to insult Delgado after recovering his senses. Delgado then tore a leg off an armchair and bludgeoned Estrada with it, before finally strangling him until his neck broke.
• Anastasia Borrella Moreno (November 23, 1969), 68 – Killed in Mataró. Delgado hit her on the head with a brick and pushed her off a bridge. He then dragged her into a tunnel and strangled her.
• Francisco Marín Ramírez (December 3, 1970), 28 – An electrician employed by
  Guadalete river, underneath the San Alejandro bridge in El Puerto de Santa María
  , 12 kilometres from the place of the murder.
• Antonia Rodríguez Relinque (January 18, 1971), 38 – Considered his girlfriend by Delgado, who introduced her as such to his father, and also killed in El Puerto de Santa María.[10] Rodríguez was a promiscuous woman and was reputed to have a slight intellectual disability. While they were having sex behind some bushes, Rodríguez asked Delgado to do something that "disgusted" him and he refused. She then insulted him, saying that he wasn't a man because she had been with men that had done that to her when asked, and Delgado strangled her with her own leggings. Delgado hid the body and returned to have sex with it on three consecutive nights before he was arrested. When asked, Delgado said that he had sex with her because dead or alive she was still his girlfriend.^[11]

Possible

Delgado's confirmed crimes are often misreported as eight instead of seven. This probably stems from a 1977 article in the popular weekly newspaper El Caso, that proposed Delgado as the possible murderer of Natividad Romero Rodríguez, a prostitute found dead in a large clay jar in a country house near Barajas,

At the time of his arrest, it was widely reported that he was diagnosed as having XYY syndrome which led to claims that this may have been responsible for his violent behaviour. However, the link between XYY syndrome and violent behaviour has been disproven by modern studies of the condition.

In the process of investigating the veracity of his claims the

Manuel Delgado Villegas died on February 2, 1998, at the Hospital Can Ruti in Badalona as a result of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

TV Programs featuring Delgado Villegas

• Cuatro (15 February 2009). "La muerte aparente; El rastro del arropiero; Diarios del Miedo". Cuarto Milenio. Season 4. Episode 24/45. Cuatro.
• * "Entrevista a 'El Arropiero'". Dossier 21. 1993.
  La 1
  .

See also

• List of serial killers by number of victims

Notes

References