# 79: Sick Stepmom Murders 8 Year Old Boy

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 28 Oct 2024, 1 h 12 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4331155601.mp3

Ad - Use my code USUAL20 for 20% off your first Wild order: https://www.wearewild.com/?discount=USUAL20 On February 27th, 2018, 8 year old Gabriel Cruz disappeared during a short 100-metre walk from his grandmother's house to his cousin’s. What began as a simple trip turned into one of Spain's most shocking and horrific murder cases. Over 12 days, 5,000 people, including Gabriel’s father’s girlfriend, Ana Julia Quezada, joined the search. But no one suspected she was hiding a terrifying secret. On March 11th, Gabriel’s body was found in Ana Julia’s car. She had murdered him, buried him, and then moved his body. She was sentenced to life in prison but the story didn’t end there. Without laws to prevent criminals from profiting off their crimes, Ana Julia sold the rights to her story, sparking massive public outrage across Spain. Calls for justice and a change to the legal system spread with the slogan #TodosSomosGabriel. Global Missing Children's Network - https://globalmissingkids.org/ Trigger Warning: kidnapping, missing children, racism and murder involving a child Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] In a quiet village in southern Spain, little Gabriel Cruz was
[0:04] just eight years old when he set out on a short and familiar walk
[0:08] to his cousins house. But somewhere along that path,
[0:12] something happened to the young boy.
[0:15] When he didn't return home, the entire community rallied
[0:18] together and soon a massive search and rescue operation was
[0:22] underway involving police, firefighters, divers and
[0:26] thousands of volunteers. Among those searching for
[0:30] Gabriel was his own stepmom, Anna Julia Cazada.
[0:34] For 12 agonizing days, she joined Gabriel's father, the man
[0:38] she loved, ceaseless searching and pleading for the child's
[0:43] safe return. But no one knew the horrific
[0:46] secret that Anna Julia was hiding this whole time.
[0:50] A secret that would reveal the devastating truth behind little
[0:54] Gabriel's disappearance. After almost two weeks of
[0:57] searching, Gabriel's body was eventually discovered in the
[1:01] boot of a car. He'd been wrapped tightly in a
[1:04] blanket, but it hadn't always been there.
[1:07] In that car, his killer had actually buried his his body
[1:10] wants and then when they feared that the police were on to them,
[1:14] they dug up the poor boy and tried to transport him somewhere
[1:19] else in a desperate effort to cover their tracks.
[1:21] The eventual discovery and arrest of Gabriel's killer
[1:25] should have been the end of this nightmare, but it was only just
[1:29] the beginning. Behind bars, the killer managed
[1:32] to sell their side of the story to a production company in order
[1:37] to make a documentary on the murder that they committed.
[1:41] They literally profited from slaying a child in cold blood,
[1:46] and now Gabriel's parents are left desperately trying to put a
[1:50] stop to this documentary. The killer is bound to twist the
[1:54] story to fit their narrative, and that would smear little
[1:57] Gabriel's reputation and his legacy forever.
[2:01] This is the devastating story of the murder of Gabriel Cruz, an 8
[2:06] year old boy whose death broke hearts all across across Spain.
[2:11] But it's also the story of a mother's relentless fight to
[2:15] honour her son's memory and protect the rights of children
[2:18] everywhere, reminding the world that Todos Somos, Gabriel, we
[2:22] are all Gabriel. This series is intended for
[2:33] educational purposes, to memorialize victims, and to
[2:36] amplify important conversations. All opinions stated are mine
[2:39] alone. Now, before we get into this
[2:42] case, I want to give you a bunch of warnings because this is a
[2:45] very, very sensitive case. I mean, of course it is.
[2:48] We're going to be talking about the death of an 8 year old
[2:50] child. This isn't something we do all
[2:53] that often on this channel anymore.
[2:54] I think the cases where children lose their lives in the worst
[2:59] ways possible are the ones that really, really get me.
[3:02] They're the ones that keep me up at night for weeks afterwards.
[3:04] But Gabriel's case hit our team so hard, like as we were
[3:10] searching through pictures to use in this case, like it was
[3:13] nearly moving us to tears. I really, really wanted to cover
[3:16] this case. And so for that reason, I'm
[3:18] going to give you these warnings so that you can make the
[3:20] decision if this is a case that you want to hear about today.
[3:24] The sensitive topics that we're going to cover include
[3:26] discussions of kidnapping, missing children, racism, and
[3:30] murder involving a child. Of course, viewer discretion is
[3:34] advised. Now, let's uncover the tragic
[3:37] murder of Gabriel Cruz and the infuriating aftermath that his
[3:43] killer caused. On Spain's southeastern coast,
[3:46] right by the Mediterranean Sea, lies the city of Almeria.
[3:50] It's the capital of Andalusia. It's a place where life moves
[3:54] slow and community, community ties are unbreakable.
[3:58] Community really is everything to the people that live there.
[4:01] Families really stick together. You'll find houses that have
[4:05] generations living in them, the grandparents, the parents, the
[4:08] children and they all work in the same little shops that have
[4:12] been in their family for generations.
[4:14] On Tuesday February 27th, 2018, everyone was buzzing with
[4:20] excitement preparing for a national holiday, Dia de
[4:23] Andalucia, which is basically Andalusia Day and it marks the
[4:28] anniversary of Andalusia becoming an autonomous community
[4:32] with Spain. Schools were currently on break
[4:35] for Simana Blanca, which is White Week.
[4:38] It's basically a week where the whole schedule is cleared for
[4:42] the kids. They're not doing usual studies,
[4:45] instead they spend it going to cultural events to teach them
[4:49] about their Andalusian heritage and history.
[4:52] But in the small town of Nihar, which is just 40 minutes from
[4:55] from Al Maria, this Tuesday would be remembered for a far
[4:59] darker and way more tragic reason.
[5:03] Among the children playing out under the hot sun was 8 year old
[5:07] Gabriel Cruz. He was out in the countryside
[5:10] running around with his cousins, playing as they always did.
[5:14] But by the end of the day, to the shock and horror of the
[5:18] entire community, Gabriel had vanished without a trace.
[5:23] It would take 12 agonizing days until the horrifying truth
[5:28] behind his disappearance was revealed.
[5:31] But of course, Gabriel is so much more than the tragic end
[5:34] that he was unfortunately given. And so I want to spend some time
[5:38] talking about this wonderful kid.
[5:41] Gabriel Cruz was born on December 5th, 2009 in Al Maria.
[5:46] His parents were named Angel, that was his father and his
[5:49] mother was named Patricia Ramirez, which is is a really
[5:53] cool way of saying Patricia. I love it.
[5:55] Well, it's obviously the Spanish way, isn't it?
[5:57] It makes the the English way sound really boring.
[6:00] Sorry Patricia's. His parents loved him so so
[6:04] dearly and even though they separated when he was still very
[6:08] young, the two of them kept a good relationship for Gabriel in
[6:12] order to Co parent in the most successful way possible.
[6:17] They put their differences aside and they were really there for
[6:20] their son. And so despite his family set up
[6:23] not being that like typical nuclear family, Gabriel was
[6:27] still surrounded by love. He grew up in a very, very close
[6:31] knit family. He had a lot of cousins who
[6:34] practically doubled up as his friend group, his best friends.
[6:37] He would always be playing out in the streets with them and in
[6:40] the fields. And they actually lived right by
[6:42] this natural park, so they were always in there.
[6:45] Gabriel was just known to be a very, very kind, loving, well
[6:50] behaved kid as well. That was something that people
[6:53] said a lot. He was just such a little
[6:54] darling, such a little Angel. And ever since he was little,
[6:58] little, like tiny, Gabriel was obsessed with fish.
[7:03] I mean, every kid has that thing, don't they?
[7:06] When they're really young, they find something that they just
[7:09] stick to for some reason. And for Gabriel, it was fish, it
[7:12] was the ocean, it was marine life.
[7:14] He was telling everyone, even when he was still so young, like
[7:17] 8 years old, that he wanted to be a marine biologist one day.
[7:21] Literally from the moment he could talk, he was beginning to
[7:25] name and learn all the different species of fish.
[7:29] And even, I don't know all that stuff.
[7:31] You could show me two pictures of fish and I'd be like, they're
[7:33] the same picture. But Gabriel at like 3 and four
[7:37] years old could name so many different types.
[7:40] And he loved to draw these fish as well.
[7:42] He would draw them in all different colours, all these
[7:44] different species that he knew of.
[7:46] He would draw them and he would hand them out to his family
[7:49] members. And you know, they'd do the
[7:50] whole, wow, this is great. They'd put on the fridge.
[7:53] Apparently all his family members had at least one drawing
[7:57] of Gabriel's fish on the wall of their house.
[8:00] He was just a very, very passionate and positive and
[8:04] excitable boy. You know, I love the idea of
[8:08] drawing fish, bringing him so much excitement.
[8:11] But I guess that's kids for you, isn't it?
[8:13] It's just that magic of the most simple things.
[8:16] It's so pure and so sweet. So on the morning of February
[8:21] 27th, Gabriel was dropped off at his grandmother's house in less
[8:25] hearted Chuelas. Please again, give me some grace
[8:29] about the pronunciation in this video.
[8:31] We're doing all kinds of global cases these days, which I love
[8:35] doing. I love tapping into these
[8:37] different stories from different countries that I'm unfamiliar
[8:39] with. But of course, it comes with my
[8:42] horrific butchered pronunciation.
[8:44] So I apologize in advance. There's a lot of Spanish names
[8:47] in this case that I might Boo Boo, but I have tried my best
[8:51] anyway. But like I said, his grandma
[8:52] mother's house was in Las Horticuelas.
[8:55] It's a tiny town of about 100 people right in the middle of
[8:59] Cabo de Gatta Nihar Natural Park.
[9:02] I love Spanish as well. Like if I could learn any
[9:05] language, it would be Spanish. I love all the inflections and
[9:09] like the tongue rolls and stuff. But that's the bit that I'm just
[9:11] not good at. So again, apologies.
[9:13] So anyway, Gabriel arrives at his grandmother's house.
[9:17] It is the day before Dia de Andalucia, this big holiday that
[9:21] everyone's going to be celebrating, so there's already
[9:24] a lot of excitement in the air. He arrives there in the daytime
[9:27] and at about 3:30 PM, him and his grandmother sit and have
[9:31] some lunch together. And then he went out to play
[9:34] with his cousins, as he literally always did every time
[9:38] he was at his grandmother's house.
[9:39] They lived so close to a bunch of his cousins, so they would go
[9:42] out to this natural park and just play, do whatever 8 year
[9:45] olds do. His cousins only lived about 100
[9:49] meters down the road, literally like that is so close.
[9:53] And he would do that walk all on his own often.
[9:56] The house was literally like a stone's throw away.
[9:59] It would take Gabriel no more than 140 steps to get there.
[10:05] Well, maybe a few more because he did only have little legs.
[10:08] But you know, the path to his cousin's house was uneven
[10:11] terrain and it LED into the mountains of of the natural
[10:15] park. But Gabriel knew this route like
[10:18] the back of his hand. He had done it so so many times.
[10:21] It was normal for him to run back and forth between the
[10:24] houses multiple times in a day. So after saying goodbye to his
[10:28] grandmother, Gabriel set off down the path to his cousins
[10:32] house, but he never arrived. It wasn't until 6:00 PM that
[10:37] evening that his grandmother realized that something was
[10:41] terribly wrong. She had actually been waiting
[10:44] for Gabriel to return from his cousin's house for dinner, but
[10:47] he hadn't shown up yet. And I mean, he is an 8 year old
[10:51] boy at the end of the day. Maybe he was just so busy
[10:54] playing and not checking his watch or a clock and he had lost
[10:58] track of time. So his grandmother was worried.
[11:00] She was anxious, but she didn't let this feel feeling overwhelm
[11:04] her. There was a good chance that she
[11:05] could walk out of the door and walk that 100m route to his
[11:09] cousin's house and he she would find Gabriel along the way.
[11:13] So that's exactly what she did. She stepped out of her house and
[11:16] began walking. She was calling his name and
[11:18] looking everywhere of course, like going off path slightly,
[11:22] seeing if he was playing in the trees.
[11:24] But there was no response. There was no Gabriel.
[11:27] As the minutes ticked by, it became very apparent that
[11:31] Gabriel wasn't here. He wasn't on this route between
[11:34] the two houses. He hadn't even gone off route
[11:37] slightly because his grandmother had checked.
[11:39] She had looked everywhere she could possibly look around that
[11:42] area. She had checked his cousins
[11:44] house and Gabriel was nowhere to be found.
[11:47] And now everyone was worried, in a panic, his grandmother called
[11:52] Gabriel's parents and they said to contact the police
[11:56] immediately. And the moment that call came
[11:59] into the police station, of course, the police knew the
[12:01] gravity of this situation. This is an 8 year old boy that
[12:06] had been missing for over 3 hours at this point, in the
[12:10] middle of kind of nowhere, surrounded by these mountains
[12:13] and steep cliffs, uneven terrain, treacherous winding
[12:17] paths. He could be injured, he could be
[12:20] lost, he could be taken. The police knew that this wasn't
[12:24] just another call. This was every parent's worst
[12:29] nightmare. So they immediately sent out a
[12:31] search party and they started gathering volunteers as well
[12:34] from the local villagers. They posted a missing persons
[12:37] alert with a photo of Gabriel with his big cheesy grin, and
[12:42] that went viral on social media quite immediately.
[12:46] Actually, social media gets a lot of stick, rightly so.
[12:50] But I think, you know, when it's not rotting our brains, it is
[12:54] such a useful tool in situations like this.
[12:58] When it comes to mobilizing a large group of people in a
[13:01] matter of hours. Social media is so incredibly
[13:05] powerful. All it takes is for one post or
[13:07] for one photo to go viral and suddenly thousands of people are
[13:12] all rallying together, sharing information and doing everything
[13:16] and anything that they can to help.
[13:18] People all across Andalusia were seeing these viral social media
[13:23] posts and their hearts were breaking at the thought of this
[13:27] 8 year old boy being lost in the mountains and wanting to come
[13:31] home. And so people were travelling
[13:33] from all over to get to this natural park to help join the
[13:37] search to join the manpower. And by that evening, a massive
[13:41] search operation was underway because remember, it was getting
[13:44] dark as well. That was adding to everyone's
[13:46] fear and the urgency of this city situation is that this
[13:50] little boy, if we don't find him in the next few hours, he's
[13:53] going to be out in the pitch darkness of the night all on his
[13:56] own, terrified. So literally within hours of him
[14:00] being reported missing, there were 3000 volunteers at that
[14:05] natural park and 2000 members of the Guardia Seville, which is
[14:11] their Civil Guard In Spain. It's kind of like the National
[14:15] Guard in America. They're more like a military
[14:17] force, but they're they handle emergency responses, you know,
[14:21] situations like this, especially in rural areas like the natural
[14:25] park, like that uneven terrain, the mountainous landscapes.
[14:29] But it wasn't just the military out there.
[14:31] There were firefighters, police officers, divers in the bodies
[14:36] of water in the natural park and of course, thousands of just
[14:40] everyday volunteers that had dropped whatever they were doing
[14:44] that evening to go and help find this boy.
[14:47] Of course, this was on the eve of Dia de Andalucia, a day that
[14:51] is all about relaxation and celebration.
[14:55] But who could relax knowing that a little boy was out there in
[15:00] danger? Thousands of people spent that
[15:02] entire national holiday just scouring the mountains, and this
[15:07] search had to be quick, it had to be thorough, and most
[15:10] importantly, it had to bring Gabriel home.
[15:14] The Guardia Seville knew that they were working against the
[15:17] clock. Every hour that passed made it
[15:20] less likely that Gabriel would be found safe and well.
[15:24] Police often say that the 1st 72 hours of a missing persons
[15:27] investigation are absolutely crucial.
[15:31] Beyond that, the chances of that person returning home safe and
[15:35] well and alive begin dropping dramatically, especially for
[15:40] someone as young and vulnerable as 8 year old Gabriel.
[15:44] So the Guardia Seville start thinking of some possible
[15:47] scenarios. What could have happened to
[15:49] Gabriel and then they can act on that.
[15:51] They can search in different places.
[15:54] One of the first thoughts is that he had just gotten lost in
[15:58] this massive natural park. Maybe he had gone off to play on
[16:01] his own or been playing off the path on the way to his cousin's
[16:05] house and he just got lost. He might have accidentally
[16:09] missed the house or something and just wandered off and then
[16:12] it got a bit darker and he just didn't know how to get home.
[16:16] But his parents really did not believe this theory right from
[16:19] the off. His grandmother didn't either,
[16:21] because Gabriel knew this place like the back of his own hand.
[16:25] He had done that trip to and from his cousin's house.
[16:28] Hundreds, hundreds of times, they just found it kind of
[16:31] impossible that he would get lost in a place that he knew so
[16:35] well. He knew his way around that
[16:37] park. Well, at least the bit closest
[16:39] to his house, you know? But this is the worry that maybe
[16:42] he had gone too far into a place that he didn't know.
[16:47] And I mean, there was always the possibility that maybe he'd
[16:49] gotten injured. He'd wandered off and gotten
[16:51] injured or trapped somewhere, or like stuck on something, and he
[16:56] was just waiting and hoping to be rested, skewed to be found.
[17:00] He could have run off of the usual path, been playing or
[17:03] climbing a tree or something and fallen on that uneven terrain
[17:07] and broken a leg or something. But I mean, if that was the
[17:12] case, then he would have been found so quickly.
[17:16] As soon as volunteers and the police arrived at that natural
[17:20] park, they would have found him. Surely at this point, they had
[17:23] been searching for hours. And like I said, there were
[17:27] thousands of people there. So if he was still in that park
[17:31] somewhere, they would have found him by now.
[17:33] So now they're thinking, well, he must have been taken.
[17:37] He must have left this park somehow.
[17:40] And so another thing theory began to arise that maybe
[17:43] Gabriel had been abducted, kidnapped and taken away and
[17:48] held for ransom. Maybe it was some sort of
[17:50] criminal gang or I don't know. But honestly, it didn't make all
[17:56] that much sense as a theory because this wasn't a very
[17:59] common thing where they lived, and Gabriel's parents weren't
[18:03] very well off at all. They didn't have the kind of
[18:06] money that they could pay a massive ransom.
[18:09] There was certainly nothing about them that would have
[18:11] attracted this kind of crime. It wouldn't have been a
[18:14] premeditated like let's kidnap their son because they have the
[18:19] money to pay. But I guess it doesn't have to
[18:21] be down to a criminal gang for it to fit the kidnapping theory.
[18:26] Maybe Gabriel could have been kidnapped, but not for money.
[18:31] Something else. For the next several days,
[18:34] police and hundreds, thousands still volunteers, kept searching
[18:39] the countryside, on foot, on horseback.
[18:41] There were still divers in the bodies of water, but they found
[18:46] absolutely nothing. There were 0 clues in that
[18:51] natural park that could lead to Gabriel, but their efforts were
[18:54] still on 100%. They had all these volunteers,
[18:58] they had helicopters surrounding the natural park, they had
[19:01] drones. They were basically using every
[19:04] single tool at their disposal because they were very aware
[19:09] that time was running out. Day turned into night, and then
[19:13] night back into day and day back into night, and they just kept
[19:17] pressing on through the rugged terrain, refusing to give up
[19:21] hope for this little boy. Of course, as this physical
[19:24] search was going on, Gabriel's parents and Kel and Patricia
[19:28] were doing everything they possibly could.
[19:30] They were giving appeals on the news.
[19:32] They gave several interviews. They were just pleading for
[19:35] their son's safe return anywhere and everywhere that they could.
[19:39] The whole community really rallied behind the two of them.
[19:43] Everyone was donating money. They were scraping together what
[19:46] they could from colleagues and friends and family and and
[19:50] neighbors and even just people on social media that wanted to
[19:53] help out. In this case, they were donating
[19:55] what they could so that they could come up with reward money.
[19:59] They managed a €10,000 reward for any information that could
[20:04] lead to Gabriel's safe return, which is insane.
[20:08] Actually 10. €1000 in such a short space of time for a
[20:11] community that is not necessarily known to be very
[20:15] wealthy, people really were scraping together what little
[20:18] money they had leftover to give to this cause to to make sure
[20:23] that this little boy was safe. Everyone was feeling Ankle and
[20:27] Patricia's pain because even if you don't have children of your
[20:31] own, you just know that this is every parent's worst nightmare
[20:35] and they wouldn't have been able to think about anything else
[20:39] until that boy was found. In one of Patricias appeals, she
[20:43] pleaded. I'm saying this as a mother
[20:46] without any grudges and purely because we want him with us.
[20:50] He's a very special little boy and very beautiful.
[20:53] He needs to be with his parents, he needs to grow big and has
[20:58] lots of things to do and life to live ahead of him.
[21:01] I personally don't speak Spanish as we have previously mentioned,
[21:05] so watching the interviews before we'd actually translated
[21:09] them, of course I didn't know what was being said, but all of
[21:12] the emotion is clear as day. Pain is a universal language,
[21:18] and you feel Patricia through the screen when you're watching
[21:22] her talk about this stuff. It moves me to tears.
[21:26] You can see that she is a desperate mother, pleading for
[21:29] the safety of her child. But she wasn't angry.
[21:33] She wasn't blaming anyone for this.
[21:35] She was just begging for her little boy to come home to her
[21:40] safe. She came up with a way to use
[21:42] Gabriel's love of the ocean and his love of fish, many different
[21:47] fish, as a way to try to get him back.
[21:50] She wanted everyone in their community to draw pictures of
[21:54] fish and write little messages on them for Gabriel and then
[21:58] stick them in their windows on the off chance that if he did
[22:01] see any of them, he would know how many people were looking for
[22:05] him. She also asked everyone to post
[22:08] their fish drawings onto social media using an account called
[22:11] Todos Somos Gabriel. We are all Gabriel.
[22:15] This hashtag became a symbol of solidarity and collective grief.
[22:21] It was a way for the Spanish people to show their support and
[22:24] empathy for the Cruz family. And before long it felt like the
[22:28] whole country of Spain was just a sea of fish waiting for
[22:33] Gabriel to come home. On Saturday March 3rd, 2018, it
[22:37] is now 5 days since Gabriel went missing.
[22:41] His father and Kel made another desperate plea.
[22:45] But in that moment, as he was trying to articulate how he was
[22:48] feeling, it all just became too much and Angel couldn't hold it
[22:53] together anymore. He broke down in tears right
[22:56] then and there in front of the reporters, and he fell into the
[22:59] arms of his girlfriend, Anna Culia Quezada.
[23:03] We're not entirely sure how long Anna Julia had been his
[23:07] girlfriend. We're not entirely sure how long
[23:08] they've been together. Some reports said a year, some
[23:11] reports said several years, but I think we can guess that it was
[23:15] at least a year. She was originally from the
[23:18] Dominican Republic, but she had moved to Spain as a teenager on
[23:22] the recommendation from her own family.
[23:24] They wanted her to move and get a better life for herself.
[23:28] So at the age of 16, she moves to Spain.
[23:31] All on her own, I believe she'd actually had a child in the
[23:34] Dominican Republic, a daughter that she left at home with her
[23:38] family. And at 16 years old, she is now
[23:41] in Spain all on her own, trying to make a life for herself.
[23:45] Well, honestly, it wasn't even just about making a life for
[23:48] herself. It was about making more money
[23:51] in Spain than she ever could have in the Dominican Republic
[23:54] so that she could send that money back home for her baby to
[23:58] provide for her family back home.
[24:00] So Anna Julia gets a job working in a brothel.
[24:04] She is still very, very young. Literally all she has on her in
[24:07] Spain is a suitcase with a few clothes and her passport.
[24:12] And she starts working at this brothel.
[24:14] And one day, one of her clients falls madly in love with her.
[24:19] Anna Julia was beautiful. She had striking features.
[24:23] She had big, expressive eyes, and there was something about
[24:27] her presence that was hard to ignore.
[24:30] So this guy, this client of hers, starts telling her that he
[24:33] wants to make a better life for her.
[24:35] He wants to take her away from this brothel, and he wants to
[24:38] treat her like the queen that she is.
[24:41] And she's thinking, OK, OK, go on then.
[24:45] So she ran away with him practically.
[24:47] She left the brothel. She made a life for herself with
[24:51] this man for a few years. And eventually, when she was
[24:54] like, actually up on her feet all on her own in Spain, she
[24:57] left this guy. After splitting up with her
[25:00] first boyfriend, she very quickly found a second
[25:03] boyfriend. And this guy, I think, was a
[25:06] dodgy little character. I don't know why.
[25:08] We don't know too much about him.
[25:09] What we do know is that the two of them set up a bar are
[25:13] together, although I think all of the documentation was in Anna
[25:17] Julia's name. Maybe he was a CD guy, I don't
[25:20] know. But she sets up this bar that
[25:23] the two of them work in and things are going pretty well
[25:27] until they don't go pretty well anymore.
[25:29] Their relationship started to sour and eventually when they
[25:33] split up, her boyfriend took the bar and he didn't want her to
[25:38] work there anymore. So now she's left with no
[25:41] boyfriend, no job. The bar that she had put all of
[25:45] her effort and her investment into is no longer hers.
[25:49] She's kind of back at square one.
[25:50] But this situation doesn't only affect her.
[25:54] It affects her family back home in the Dominican Republic.
[25:57] It affects her daughter because now she had no money to be able
[26:01] to send back home. And they're used to receiving
[26:04] money. So what's going to happen now,
[26:06] Anna? Julia very quickly realized she
[26:09] needed to do something. She needed to make it work.
[26:11] She needed a plan. And it was around that time that
[26:14] she met Angel Cruz. Of course, he had already split
[26:17] up from Patricia and he liked Anna Julia and the two of them,
[26:24] the two of them hit it off right off the bat.
[26:26] As soon as the two of them got together, Anna Julia was
[26:29] financially dependent on Ankle. I think she kind of saw this
[26:33] relationship as a replacement for her having to go out and get
[26:38] a job now that she had a man who had money that was good enough.
[26:42] But apparently Ankle's family didn't like Anna Julia right
[26:47] from the start. And I'm not entirely saw what it
[26:49] was. We couldn't find any major
[26:51] examples of things that she'd done.
[26:53] So I'm going to theorize that it was kind of in, in the
[26:57] subtleties. You know, maybe she was just a
[26:59] bit of a cow, you know, one of those people that is just not
[27:02] pleasant to be around. And apparently she didn't like
[27:05] Gabriel, her partners 8 year old child.
[27:09] It is kind of just giving like wicked stepmom energy.
[27:13] She really didn't have any reason to dislike Gabriel.
[27:17] My own personal theory is that it's probably one of those
[27:19] situations you hear of it sometimes where a partner will
[27:23] get jealous of their partner's children or of their partner's
[27:28] parents and that how close they are with other members of the
[27:31] family. But despite Anna Julia's rocky
[27:35] relationship with the whole family and Gabriel when he went
[27:39] missing, she really dedicated herself to the investigation.
[27:43] She stood right next to ankle as he did all of these different
[27:47] press conferences and appeals for information as he sobbed in
[27:51] her arms. In fact, she was sobbing right
[27:54] next to him too. They were both wearing shirts
[27:57] with his face on. She physically joined the
[28:00] searches of the mountainside with all the volunteers.
[28:03] She was knee deep in this investigation the way that
[28:06] everyone else was. She was especially keen to keep
[28:09] raising the amount of reward money that they had on this
[28:12] case. They already had €10,000, but
[28:16] Anna Julio seemed to think that a higher reward money was the
[28:19] only way that they would get Gabriel back.
[28:23] But around this time, police had begun to notice some strange
[28:28] things about the way that Anna Julio was acting.
[28:31] She seemed very hot and cold, especially when it came to the
[28:35] rest of the family. When the cameras were off she
[28:39] would be all lovey dovey cuddling and kissing ankle and
[28:42] being very visibly supportive for the whole family.
[28:47] But as soon as the cameras would cut off, she would become
[28:51] distant and detached. She would just kind of walk away
[28:55] from ankle when they'd just been cuddling and she'd been kissing
[28:58] him while he was crying, Like, it seemed like when the cameras
[29:02] shut off, so did her ability to care about this situation.
[29:06] But her behavior gets even more bizarre.
[29:10] For example, at one point, police asked if they could take
[29:13] her phone in for the investigation, you know?
[29:15] And she said, oh, no, sorry, you can't.
[29:18] I lost my phone. So there was nothing for police
[29:20] to search. And so they don't think too much
[29:23] of it. But then a few days later, she
[29:25] has a phone. So it's it's not lost.
[29:28] You have your phone. And she's like, oh, yeah, my
[29:31] friends found it in a Bush. So police are like, OK, well,
[29:35] now that you have your phone back, can we search it?
[29:38] And she says, no, sorry, I literally just lost it again.
[29:43] What? What do you mean?
[29:44] How, how have you lost your phone twice in a week?
[29:49] And it's conveniently the times when police want to look at it.
[29:53] And I mean, police are trying to be empathetic with this woman
[29:56] because inconsistencies and bizarre behavior can sometimes
[30:01] just be a very genuine reaction to the stress and pain of having
[30:06] a missing stepchild. But but there's no denying that
[30:10] it is suspicious, isn't it, to lose your phone twice and then
[30:15] something else happens. On March 3rd, Anna Julia was
[30:19] joining the searches of the mountainside on foot.
[30:23] She was out searching by the ravine.
[30:25] She was all on her own for some reason, and she found something.
[30:29] She found the first proper piece of evidence.
[30:33] In this case, it was a white vest.
[30:37] She immediately recognized it to be Gabriel's white vest, and she
[30:41] even told the police that she had helped him get dressed, get
[30:45] ready on the morning that he disappeared.
[30:47] And she knew that he had been wearing a white vest underneath
[30:51] his tracksuit. So she knew that this must have
[30:53] been his. So it was taken in for
[30:55] investigation. It was like DNA tested, and sure
[30:59] enough, it had Gabriel's DNA on it.
[31:02] So this seemed like a massive breakthrough, but the police
[31:06] were confused and quite frankly suspended officious of the whole
[31:10] thing because they had already searched that exact area and not
[31:16] found anything. There wasn't a white vest there
[31:19] before. Anna Julia probably didn't know
[31:22] that the police had already sent out a team to search that patch
[31:26] of the land. But now this white vest has come
[31:29] out of nowhere, and she had been the one to find it, so could she
[31:36] have planted it? Police wanted to keep an eye on
[31:40] Anna Julia Cazada, so they set out on a secret surveillance
[31:45] operation. They had some officers secretly
[31:49] follow her around and see what she was up to outside of her
[31:54] immediate work on the investigation.
[31:56] They wanted to see what kind of woman she was when she went home
[31:59] at the end of the day. And in less than 24 hours of
[32:03] starting this surveillance operation, they would uncover A
[32:07] horrifying truth that had been hidden in plain sight right from
[32:12] the very beginning. On Sunday, March 11th.
[32:15] It was 12 days after Gabriel had gone missing.
[32:18] And on this particular day, the surveillance team and followed
[32:22] Anna Julia as she drove about 15 minutes away from where
[32:27] everything was going on. Her and Ankel were moving into
[32:30] this new, big new house, and they were completely gutting it
[32:34] from the inside and they were redoing everything.
[32:36] It was going to be their dream home.
[32:38] But for the time being, while they can't live in there, they
[32:41] were living in a hotel room. So on this particular night,
[32:44] Anna Julia drops Ankel off at the hotel, and she herself keeps
[32:49] driving 15 minutes out of town. Officers park up in the shadows,
[32:53] and they look at this property, and it seems very, very empty.
[32:57] So they watched as Anna Julia parks up outside this house.
[33:01] And as she gets out of her car, she's like looking over her
[33:04] shoulder. She's looking around a lot.
[33:06] She's making sure that no one is watching her.
[33:09] She thought that she was all alone that night at the house.
[33:13] What she didn't know was that there were police officers
[33:16] watching her every move from the shadows.
[33:20] So Anna Julia, Yeah, enters the house.
[33:23] She's in there for a few minutes, and then she later
[33:26] emerges carrying something large, wrapped up in a blanket.
[33:31] The officers watched closely as she placed whatever this large
[33:35] object was in the boot of her car and shut the trunk.
[33:40] Then she got in the front and just drove away.
[33:42] The surveillance officers felt sick to their stomach because
[33:48] they already felt like they knew what she had just put in the
[33:51] boot of her car. I mean, what else could it be?
[33:55] So the surveillance officers called into the main police team
[33:59] and they immediately sent out a bunch of officers to go and get
[34:02] her to go and arrest her pretty much.
[34:05] But they had to bloody chase her down first because this woman
[34:09] was just driving and driving and driving out of town, as far out
[34:13] of town as she could possibly get.
[34:15] She was driving for about four hours and they were destined
[34:18] desperately trying to get to her, trying to pull her over,
[34:21] but she was just too far ahead of them.
[34:23] Police eventually managed to get her about 75 kilometers out of
[34:28] town. They managed to pull her over
[34:31] and then they asked her to step out of the car and open the boot
[34:34] for them. The officers could tell that she
[34:36] was hesitant to do what she had been asked, but ultimately she
[34:40] had no choice. The jig was up.
[34:42] And so she goes and opens the boot and reveals something that
[34:47] shattered the police officers to the core.
[34:50] After 12 agonizing days of searching and holding out hope,
[34:55] they had finally found Gabriel Cruz.
[34:59] But it was too late. His lifeless body was wrapped up
[35:03] in that blanket and stuffed into the trunk of this car by his own
[35:08] stepmother. He was partially naked, wrapped
[35:11] up in that blanket. He was only wearing his
[35:13] underwear, the rest of his clothes nowhere to be found.
[35:17] Of course, Anna Julia was arrested right then and there,
[35:21] and it was actually caught on camera.
[35:23] Someone was filming this whole thing from their window.
[35:26] And as the officers arrested her, you can hear her shouting.
[35:30] It wasn't me. I collected the car this
[35:33] morning. So what she's trying to say that
[35:35] someone else had stuffed her stepson's dead body in that car
[35:41] and she just went and collected the car and had no idea that it
[35:44] was in there? Of course, she had no idea that
[35:47] the surveillance teams had watched her do all of this from
[35:50] the very beginning. She carried the body herself out
[35:54] of that renovation property and she shot him in the trunk of
[35:58] that car. They had all the evidence they
[36:00] needed because they had seen it all with their own damn eyes.
[36:04] It turns out that the day before this Anna Julia had found out
[36:09] that police had plans to search the renovation property and she
[36:14] panicked knowing she had buried Gabrielle body in the rubble in
[36:20] the foundations of the home that she was hoping to soon be living
[36:25] in with Gabrielle father. She had buried this 8 year old's
[36:29] dead body in the ground and now she had to do something about
[36:33] it. So in a frantic attempt to try
[36:36] to cover her tracks, she dug up his little body and attempted to
[36:41] move him again before the truth could be discovered by the
[36:44] search teams the following day. I have a theory that the police
[36:48] were trying to kind of bit her into doing something here.
[36:52] They let her know that they would be searching the
[36:54] renovation property because they had a feeling that something was
[36:58] there. I'm not sure if their their
[37:01] theory was that she had literally buried his body in the
[37:04] foundations of the house, but maybe that she'd hidden
[37:07] something there and that she might want to go back and and
[37:10] recover it or hide it. I think they could well have
[37:13] planted that idea in her head and sent the surveillance team
[37:16] to go and watch how she reacted. So now they had caught her, they
[37:21] had her, they had Gabriel's body, and they took Anna Julia
[37:26] back to the police station where she confessed that she had
[37:30] murdered that 8 year old boy. It was February 27th, the day
[37:35] that Gabriel had been taken to his grandmother's house.
[37:38] He'd had lunch with her and then he'd gone out to go and find his
[37:41] cousins and play with them for the rest of the day.
[37:43] But he never returned because Anna Julia had found him.
[37:47] She saw him walking along the road and she pulled over in her
[37:51] car and offered him a lift. And of course this is his
[37:54] literal stepmom. Well, actually not quite because
[37:58] she was just his girlfriend, so I guess not technically stepmom,
[38:02] but this was his stepmother figure.
[38:04] Of course he trusted her. Of course he didn't think
[38:07] anything about this. For Gabriel, this was so normal
[38:11] for this woman to invite him into the car and offer him a
[38:15] lift. But when they started driving,
[38:18] they drove right past the cousin's house and just kept
[38:21] driving. Anna Julia took Gabriel to that
[38:24] renovation house. I'm not sure what she told him.
[38:28] I'm not sure if she gave him a reason as to why they were going
[38:31] there. But point is, they went there,
[38:34] just the two of them. And when they got inside the
[38:36] house, Anna Julia claims to the police that the two of them got
[38:40] into an argument. She said, I saw Gabriel with an
[38:44] axe. I told him, put it down, you
[38:46] could hurt yourself. And then he started to scream.
[38:49] You can't boss me around. You're not my mother.
[38:52] You're black. You're ugly.
[38:54] Your nose is ugly. I don't want you to be with my
[38:57] father. I want my father to marry my
[39:00] mother. I want you to go back to your
[39:02] country. Of course, that is very, very
[39:05] upsetting. That is such a loaded accusation
[39:08] to make, and there is no proof whatsoever that Gabriel had said
[39:13] any of these racist things to Anna Julia.
[39:16] It's her word against an 8 year old who no longer has a voice to
[39:20] defend himself because she murdered him.
[39:24] Anna Julia says that when Gabriel was saying all of this
[39:27] to her, she lost it in a moment of rage.
[39:31] She put her hand over his mouth, covered his mouth to silence
[39:35] him. She said so that he he could no
[39:37] longer say all these awful racist things to her.
[39:40] But after a while of having her hand over his mouth, she
[39:44] realized with horror that he was no longer breathing.
[39:48] She insisted. I didn't want to hurt the child.
[39:51] I just wanted him to be quiet. I didn't want to kill the child.
[39:55] But once she realized that he was no longer breathing, Anna
[39:58] Julia said that she went into a state of shock.
[40:01] She sat there and smoked a few cigarettes.
[40:04] She painted a door in the. House, Remember, they were
[40:08] renovating. They were getting this house
[40:10] ready to move into. So she painted a door and then
[40:14] began to dig a grave in the rubble of this house that she
[40:19] was hoping to share with Gabriel's father.
[40:22] She was going to bury his son in the foundations of their home.
[40:28] But here's where things get even more horrifying.
[40:32] According to the Cruz's family lawyer, about an hour after she
[40:36] had taken her hand off Gabriel's mouth, she realized that he was
[40:41] still alive. He had tragically clung onto
[40:46] life for anywhere between 45 to 90 minutes.
[40:50] It could have been over an hour and a half.
[40:53] But when Anna Julia discovered that Gabriel was still alive,
[40:57] instead of going to get help calling an ambulance trying to
[41:00] save this boy's life, instead she decided to finish the job.
[41:06] She strangled him and ended this 8 year old boy's life for good.
[41:12] With her bare hands. Anna Julia killed Gabriel Cruz
[41:17] all by herself. No one else was involved and he
[41:21] had tragically been dead since the day that he went missing.
[41:26] Gabriel Cruz was only 8 years old when the woman that was
[41:30] supposed to protect him murdered him and then buried him in the
[41:35] rubble. When the news broke of Anna
[41:38] Julia's arrest, the whole country was enraged.
[41:42] People across Spain were angry, they were shocked, they were
[41:46] heartbroken because of course now they know the truth of what
[41:50] happened to this little boy that they were all desperately
[41:53] searching for and hoping to see come home.
[41:56] What happened to Gabriel was so horrific.
[41:59] Literally everyone that heard of this case was demanding for
[42:03] justice and everyone felt like Anna Julia deserved the absolute
[42:08] harshest punishment possible. It actually got so intense that
[42:12] people in Spain were calling for them to bring back the death
[42:15] penalty even though it had been gone for decades.
[42:17] They felt that Anna Julia was the first person in a while that
[42:21] genuinely deserved to lose her life because of the crime that
[42:25] she had committed. There was a petition on
[42:27] Change.org for Anna Julia to receive life imprisonment and it
[42:31] got 130,000 signatures in one day.
[42:36] Plus 190,000 people signed another petition to send Anna
[42:41] Julia back to the Dominican Republic in order to serve her
[42:44] sentence. The people of Spain wanted her
[42:48] removed immediately and banning from ever returning to Spain.
[42:52] But as this outrage grew, so did the far right groups who started
[42:58] taking advantage of this situation in a really ugly way.
[43:02] Horrific racist messages targeting black women and
[43:06] immigrants were flooding social media using Anna Julia as an
[43:11] excuse to spread general hate. And they were twisting this
[43:16] tragedy into a platform for racism and it is so incredibly
[43:20] disgusting. On the day that Gabrielle Body
[43:23] was found and Anna Julia was reported to be arrested and
[43:27] responsible for his death, Twitter was sounding off as it
[43:31] always does and the phrase effing black was trending.
[43:36] It's just heartbreaking. It's devastating and infuriating
[43:41] that these horrible, horrible people have seen the murder of
[43:45] an 8 year old young boy and decided to make it nothing about
[43:49] that young boy and just about the ugly hatred in their own
[43:53] hearts. There is absolutely no excuse in
[43:56] the whole entire world for this kind of hate.
[43:59] No kind of crime can justify spreading this shit.
[44:03] Racism and xenophobia are wrong in any context, no matter the
[44:08] situation. Period.
[44:10] There's a Spanish anti racism organization called SOS Racism
[44:14] or and they came out and said that in the aftermath of this
[44:18] case, it had brought about some of the worst racism and
[44:22] xenophobic feelings against the black and immigrant community
[44:26] that they had ever seen. And I think the fact that it
[44:29] became trending on Twitter is all the evidence that you need
[44:33] for that. It is so heartbreaking.
[44:36] My heart goes out to all the other black girls that were
[44:39] seeing how the world was speaking about Anna Julia.
[44:43] But now that Anna Julia had been discovered and arrested,
[44:48] everyone had found out the truth about this situation, about this
[44:52] case that they had been kept in the dark about for 12 days.
[44:57] And Kel had to learn that the reason that he will never see or
[45:01] speak to his son again is because his girlfriend had
[45:06] murdered him. This woman that he had loved and
[45:10] brought into his life and trusted around his son had taken
[45:14] him away from him forever. And Angel was just in shock.
[45:19] Gabriel's mother, Patricia, had said that she'd always had a bad
[45:23] feeling, She had a gut feeling that Anna Julia was behind her
[45:28] son's disappearance. She had noticed all this
[45:30] shadiness and the inconsistency right from the beginning when
[45:34] she would switch on for the cameras and then switch off when
[45:37] it was over. I guess that's a very sticky
[45:39] situation for Patricia to find herself in because you don't
[45:42] want to go to your ex husbands and accuse his new girlfriend of
[45:46] doing something to your son. If she was wrong, that would
[45:49] have looked awful. And it's just heartbreaking that
[45:52] she was right, her gut feeling was right.
[45:55] But honestly, the person that I can't stop thinking about in
[45:58] this situation is Ankel. And how devastated and and
[46:01] broken he must have felt to look back at the two weeks, at the
[46:05] last two weeks of his life, knowing that he was sleeping
[46:08] next to his son's murderer. The idea that Anna Julia had sat
[46:14] and comforted him while he panicked and and sobbed and
[46:17] desperately searched for his son she had encouraged him to hold
[46:21] on to. And that whole time she had been
[46:24] hiding his body in the rubble of the home that they were going to
[46:29] share together one day. And this whole time, Angel
[46:32] suspected nothing. Not a single thought crossed his
[46:35] mind that Anna Julia was responsible for all of this
[46:39] pain. How can you even start to deal
[46:42] with your grief and the loss of your child when you know that
[46:45] the person responsible is the person you love and the person
[46:49] that you brought into your life? And let me remind you, this
[46:53] woman, Anna Julia, is a mother herself.
[46:57] And I mean, she wasn't ever really all that close with her
[47:00] two babies. She had two, of course, she had
[47:02] that one that she had leftover in the Dominican Republic when
[47:04] she was still very, very young. So that's a whole a whole thing
[47:08] in itself. But she had had another baby
[47:10] while she was over in Spain and she wasn't very maternal with
[47:14] it. But you know, the point is she's
[47:17] had two babies and you would think she would understand how
[47:20] evil it would be to kill another woman's baby.
[47:24] And especially because Anna Julio knows what it is like to
[47:28] lose a child. She knows what it is like for
[47:31] one of her children to die. At the point of this case, she
[47:35] had given birth to 2 girls, but only one of them remained.
[47:39] Several years before this, Anna had both of her daughters in
[47:44] Spain. Her daughter from the Dominican
[47:46] Republic had come over and she had both of them in the same
[47:49] house. But one night, when her oldest
[47:52] daughter was just four years old, she fell to her death from
[47:57] a high window in the middle of the night.
[48:00] At the time, her death was ruled an accident, but now that Anna
[48:03] Julia had confessed to murdering a different child, the police
[48:09] feared that there was so much more to the tragic death of her
[48:13] own daughter 2 decades prior. Now at the time of this incident
[48:17] when the police came, Anna Julia was saying it was such a tragic
[48:21] accident that her daughter must have opened this window in the
[48:24] middle of the night. Her explanation was that back
[48:28] home in the Dominican Republic, the house that they were living
[48:30] in had a very similar looking like window slash door.
[48:35] The difference being that it was on the ground floor of their
[48:38] Dominican Republic home. So her theory was that her
[48:42] daughter, her four year old, had woken up in the middle of the
[48:44] night and in the darkness and confusion, she had thought she
[48:48] was back home in the Dominican Republic and opened this window
[48:51] thinking it was their ground floor door window.
[48:55] And she had walked out and fallen to her death.
[48:58] And you know what? That was kind of believable back
[49:00] then. No one was accusing her of any
[49:02] wrongdoing. I mean, she is a woman that has
[49:05] just lost her four year old child.
[49:08] So yeah, no one was looking at her weirdly back then.
[49:11] They kind of took it for what it was.
[49:13] But now they're looking back at this story, knowing what Anna
[49:16] Julia is capable of and the fact that she seems to think killing
[49:21] children is OK. Her explanation of that whole
[49:24] door window situation seems less like the truth and now more like
[49:29] a carefully crafted story to get away with yet another murder of
[49:35] a child. We actually still don't have any
[49:37] answers when it comes to the death of her daughter, and I'm
[49:41] not sure that we ever will because of course it was so long
[49:44] ago and they hadn't suspected any wrongdoing at the time so no
[49:48] evidence was taken. But now that people accuse her
[49:51] of that story being fabricated, of course they're accusing her
[49:55] of her story surrounding Gabriel's murder to be
[49:58] fabricated. She stuck with her story that
[50:01] Gabriel was holding an axe and saying all of this racist,
[50:05] intimidating stuff to her. And so she acted in
[50:09] self-defense. She covered his mouth to silence
[50:12] him and accidentally suffocated him.
[50:15] So based on this story that she was telling the car and telling
[50:18] the police, she pled guilty to reckless homicide.
[50:22] And you know what gets me? Like is this the only way that
[50:26] you could defend yourself from an 8 year old to murder him?
[50:31] Like sure, she says that he had an axe and she was scared of
[50:34] what he could do with it, but in order to kill him, in order to
[50:38] suffocate him, she got up close to him and put her hand over his
[50:42] mouth. So you're telling me you're
[50:44] scared of this 8 year old with an axe, but you're going to get
[50:47] up close in order to immobilize him and kill him?
[50:52] It's just not adding up for me whatsoever.
[50:54] If you were genuinely that scared of this 8 year old with
[50:57] an axe. I mean, there's certain
[50:59] situations where an 8 year old, an angry 8 year old with an axe
[51:03] could be very fucking scary. But in that situation, would you
[51:06] not just run out of the house if you genuinely fear for your life
[51:09] or you fear that this kid is going to act with this weapon?
[51:12] I don't know. My, my last thought would be,
[51:15] oh, better get up close. I don't know.
[51:18] During her confession to the police, Anna Julia confessed
[51:21] that she had gotten rid of all of Gabriel's clothes that he was
[51:25] wearing on the day that he went missing.
[51:27] On the day that she murdered him.
[51:29] She had put all his clothes in this glass container and then
[51:33] hidden it in a flower Bush. And she actually told police
[51:35] exactly which Bush. So they went and recovered it.
[51:38] All of his clothes were there. Well, the ones that he had been
[51:41] reported missing in, which was like a red and black tracksuit
[51:45] and trainers. But this circle us back to that
[51:49] mysterious white vest that Anna Julia discovered herself out in
[51:53] the mountains when she was out searching alone.
[51:56] And we'd already guessed that she had planted it there
[51:59] herself. And now it's confirmed, I guess.
[52:02] But now we know what we know, it's incredibly clear that with
[52:07] that white vest, Anna Julia was just trying to throw police off
[52:11] of her scent. She had grabbed a vest from
[52:14] their house that she knew smelled like Gabriel, had
[52:18] Gabriel's DNA on it, so she could take it out into the
[52:22] wilderness and say I found this, it belongs to him and they would
[52:25] test it and it would come back confirmed.
[52:28] She really thought that that would almost cover her tracks,
[52:32] but instead it just made police look at her even closer.
[52:35] Instead, it meant that she got put on surveillance and was
[52:39] found carrying his dead body. When this whole white vest thing
[52:44] was brought up in court, Anna Julia actually tried to say that
[52:48] she planted the white vest there because she wanted to be caught
[52:54] and arrested. Not because she was trying to
[52:57] derail anything, but because she knew that if she planted that
[53:01] vest, police would get suspicious of her and then she
[53:04] would get caught. In fact, in her words, she said
[53:08] I wanted to get caught because I was unable able to say it with
[53:11] my own words. I wanted them to apprehend me.
[53:14] But the judge wasn't believing it for a second.
[53:17] In fact, he didn't believe any part of her story, and he called
[53:21] her incredibly manipulative. He said the evidence reveals a
[53:24] lack of feeling and humanity that she herself recognizes and
[53:29] which, if confirmed, would represent pure cruelty.
[53:33] On September 20th, 2019, Anna Julia Cazada was found guilty of
[53:39] Gabriel Cruz's murder and she was sentenced to Spain's
[53:42] equivalent of a life imprisonment sentence.
[53:45] She was also convicted of two offenses of psychological abuse
[53:50] against Gabriel's parents because despite knowing that she
[53:54] had murdered their son and buried them in the rubble of her
[53:58] renovation home, she chose to join this 12 day search of the
[54:04] mountainside, hoping to find a child that she knew wasn't
[54:09] there. She was encouraging this
[54:11] investigation, this search and rescue, knowing that they would
[54:15] never find him. She literally planted fake
[54:17] evidence. She was orchestrating an
[54:20] emotional roller coaster that not only Gabriel's parents were
[54:24] going on, but the whole of Spain and the whole time.
[54:28] She knew how it would end or she knew that they would never find
[54:33] Gabriel at the very least. So on top of this like life
[54:36] imprisonment sentence that she has for the murder itself, she
[54:40] also got a good few years thrown on top of that for what she had
[54:44] done to Ankelle and Patricia. She was also made to pay the two
[54:47] of them at €250,000 each in moral damages and another
[54:54] 200,203 euros to the state to cover the cost of that that
[55:00] massive operation that she had encouraged.
[55:05] During the trial, a possible motive for this crime came to
[55:09] light. It seemed that Anna Julia wanted
[55:13] her and Ankel to move back to the Dominican Republic.
[55:17] But Ankel didn't want to move while Gabriel was still so
[55:22] young. He didn't want to leave his son.
[55:23] So the jury believed that Anna Julia started to see Gabriel as
[55:29] an obstacle to her relationship with Ankel.
[55:32] So the jury decided that the killing was deliberate and
[55:36] premeditated. She was trying to get rid of
[55:39] Gabriel so that she could have his father alter herself in the
[55:44] way that she wanted him. And because the victim of her
[55:47] crime was a child, this crime automatically qualifies for a
[55:51] sentence under Spain's permanent reviewable prison law.
[55:55] So when I said this is Spain's equivalent of the life
[55:58] imprisonment, it isn't exactly the same.
[56:00] The difference is that she doesn't have an end date on her
[56:04] sentence. They will keep her in prison
[56:07] until they believe that she is fully rehabilitated.
[56:11] And if the authorities never think that she is rehabilitated,
[56:15] then she will stay behind bars for the rest of her life until
[56:18] she dies. So there's no set date for
[56:21] review. It really is just like, we'll
[56:23] wait and see. We'll watch her make progress
[56:26] and then when we think she might be ready for a review, then
[56:29] we'll give her one. This type of sentence has caused
[56:32] a huge debate in Spain because a lot of people actually want to
[56:35] get rid of it. But there is still a lot of
[56:37] support for it because it's basically a way to make sure
[56:40] that dangerous criminals stay locked up as long as is
[56:44] necessary until they are deemed to no longer be a danger to
[56:48] society. They are not getting out of
[56:50] prison. And Anna Julia is actually the
[56:52] first woman in Spain to get this permanent, reviewable prison
[56:56] sentence. But the story doesn't end here,
[56:59] actually gets much worse. Spain doesn't have a law like
[57:04] America's Son of Sam law, which prevents criminals from
[57:07] profiting off of their own crime by selling their story, making a
[57:12] book, making a movie a documentary.
[57:14] But because Spain doesn't have a law like this, two years into
[57:18] her prison sentence, Anna Julia partnered with a production
[57:22] company to make a true crime documentary about the case of
[57:27] Gabriel Cruz. She sold them the exclusive
[57:30] rights to her side of the story, so she is now monetarily
[57:34] profiting from the murder that she committed.
[57:38] As you can probably guess, this went down like a stack of bricks
[57:42] in Spain. They hated the idea of this.
[57:45] There was a massive public outcry of the idea that this
[57:49] documentary could be made with the help of the murderer
[57:52] herself. When Patricia found out about
[57:55] Anna Julia's plans, she was devastated and she wasn't about
[57:59] to let this happen without a fight.
[58:01] She called on the producers to scrap the production of this.
[58:05] She was meeting with lawyers. She was trying absolutely
[58:08] everything she could to get in the way of this because she just
[58:11] knew that the way that this documentary would be made, it
[58:15] would stain her son's legacy. Of course, the documentary would
[58:20] be made from Anna Julia's point of view and so she would say
[58:23] that Gabriel was this eight-year old evil racist wielding an axe
[58:28] and saying all these awful things to her.
[58:30] When no one actually really believes that he said any of
[58:34] that. His parents just didn't think he
[58:36] had it in him to be a racist 8 year old.
[58:39] They hadn't raised him like that.
[58:41] Of course this black woman that he was supposedly being racist
[58:45] towards was his stepmother, someone that had been welcomed
[58:48] into his family. And of course I know that that
[58:51] doesn't necessarily mean anything.
[58:53] In a lot of cases, people can still be racist towards people
[58:56] that they claim to love. But I don't know, this is an 8
[59:00] year old boy and so many people, literally everyone that knew him
[59:04] doesn't think that he was capable of such hatred, the
[59:08] hatred that Anna Julia claims that he was capable of.
[59:11] Patricia was just distraught with the idea that this
[59:15] documentary could be made and everyone that saw it would know
[59:19] this version of her son that wasn't true and he no longer had
[59:23] a voice to defend himself. Gabriel's life and his legacy
[59:27] would be tarnished by this documentary and his mother knew
[59:31] that she had to fight back against it.
[59:33] Patricia actually found out that Anna Julia had a phone in prison
[59:37] and she was contacting journalists to be able to film
[59:40] this documentary behind bars. So again, Patricia was trying
[59:45] her best. She was contacting everyone to
[59:47] try to put a stop to this. She was trying to figure out how
[59:50] this is even possible, that this woman has a phone in prison and
[59:53] she's managing to work because after all, she sold her story.
[59:58] She is profiting from it. She's able to what, have a have
[1:00:02] a job in prison? And then in 2023, we found out
[1:00:06] exactly why this is allowed to happen, and that's because Anna
[1:00:10] Julia had been given permission from the court.
[1:00:15] To be able to to record parts of this documentary in prison, to
[1:00:18] be able to make the whole damn thing.
[1:00:20] And so Patricia was even more heartbroken to find out that
[1:00:24] this was all okayed by the government.
[1:00:27] And she was asking how, how on earth is this allowed?
[1:00:31] And it turns out it was so that Anna Julia would be able to pay
[1:00:35] her civil liabilities, basically all the money that she owes to
[1:00:39] Angel and Patricia for the psychological damage that she
[1:00:43] had caused, all the money that she owes to the state for the
[1:00:47] operation, all those search and rescue teams needed paying.
[1:00:51] And this was how the court decided that Anna Julia was
[1:00:56] going to get that money from selling her story and making
[1:00:59] this documentary. It was a decision that had been
[1:01:02] made without Patricia or Ankel. It seemed that the only way Anna
[1:01:07] Julia would be able to pay off all of these debts is to make
[1:01:12] herself the star of her own true crime documentary.
[1:01:16] As always with the law, it's just confusing and sometimes I
[1:01:20] think it's better at making life easier for the criminals than it
[1:01:23] is at protecting victims. On May 11th, 2024, Patricia
[1:01:28] publicly announced that she was starting a legal battle to stop
[1:01:32] the production of this true crime documentary.
[1:01:35] She filed A complaint against Anna Julia and the prison
[1:01:38] department for allowing the documentary to be recorded
[1:01:42] behind bars. Patricia said we are not actors,
[1:01:45] Gabrielle. Death is not a spectacle.
[1:01:48] She was making it clear that her real life family tragedy was not
[1:01:53] something to be exploited by the murderer herself.
[1:01:58] And basically, Patricia is asking important moral questions
[1:02:02] here. Should it be legal to make a
[1:02:05] true crime documentary when the victim is a minor and the family
[1:02:09] hasn't given permission? In fact, they've done the exact
[1:02:13] opposite. They have begged for it not to
[1:02:15] be released. And here's the thing.
[1:02:17] At the time of recording this episode, the Senate acknowledges
[1:02:21] that what Anna Julia is doing is wrong, but no action has been
[1:02:26] taken so far to stop her from doing it.
[1:02:28] Throughout all of this unimaginable grief, Patricia has
[1:02:33] shown so much goodness, so much strength, so much nobility, and
[1:02:39] she's opening up some really important conversations.
[1:02:43] Plus, the controversy surrounding true crime stories
[1:02:46] isn't just about documentaries anymore, especially now that
[1:02:49] they're being turned into dramas for our entertainment, you know,
[1:02:53] based on a true story. And this is where the wider
[1:02:55] conversation comes in. It's less about killers
[1:02:58] themselves selling their stories and more about how these very
[1:03:03] real cases are being dramatized and embellished for profit.
[1:03:10] It strips out the humanity and the and the cold hard facts of
[1:03:13] what truly happened to these people.
[1:03:16] I mean, remember the whole controversy with the Netflix
[1:03:19] series Monster? The Jeffrey Dahmer story, the
[1:03:22] one with Evan Peters in it? I'm sure many of you guys know
[1:03:25] that Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer.
[1:03:27] He murdered 17 young men who were most people of color
[1:03:31] between the years of 1978 and 1991.
[1:03:35] The show ended up being one of Netflix's most watched series
[1:03:39] ever. And that's actually why things
[1:03:42] got so very controversial. This series was incredibly
[1:03:46] dramatized. It was a drama based on a true
[1:03:49] story and the victims families just hated how far it was from
[1:03:55] the truth and they hated how their loved ones had been
[1:03:58] portrayed because it wasn't them.
[1:04:01] In fact their families said that it re traumatized them, dragging
[1:04:06] their loved ones stories back into the spotlight in such a
[1:04:09] sensationalized way. They felt like Netflix was
[1:04:14] exploiting their pain for entertainment without even
[1:04:18] taking care to make sure that their facts remained.
[1:04:21] Legally Netflix didn't need consent from anyone to make that
[1:04:25] drama, but morally they probably should have got it.
[1:04:29] Especially when Netflix is the giant of entertainment.
[1:04:33] It's in almost every single household on this planet.
[1:04:37] They're new shows, they're trending shows are always hot
[1:04:41] topics of conversation. They're always everywhere.
[1:04:44] And for those families, they wouldn't have been able to
[1:04:46] escape that. And then on TikTok, people had
[1:04:49] an issue with the series for it being labeled under the LGBTQ
[1:04:53] plus category on Netflix, A fucking serial killer drama.
[1:04:58] Which, yeah, maybe the evil serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was
[1:05:02] gay, but is that really the fucking representation that we
[1:05:05] want as a community? Absolutely not.
[1:05:08] Why is that something we want to see spotlighted for our
[1:05:12] community? Isn't the point of having the
[1:05:14] LGBTQ plus category supposed to be to celebrate LGBT stories, to
[1:05:20] help people in the community to find something relatable,
[1:05:24] something to be proud of? Who, who was going to see the
[1:05:27] Jeffrey Dahmer drama under the LGBT tab and think, yeah, that's
[1:05:32] exactly what my community is? After the backlash, Netflix
[1:05:35] removed the LGBTQ plus label from the series.
[1:05:40] But of course, the murkiness of true crime cases as
[1:05:44] entertainment remains. Of course, I am a part of this
[1:05:48] community sharing these stories. I'm very aware of that.
[1:05:51] And these concerns are totally valid when it comes to the true
[1:05:54] crime world as a whole. And at the heart of it all, I
[1:05:57] think it really comes down to empathy and how these stories
[1:06:02] are told and with what intentions.
[1:06:05] People are fascinated by true crime as a genre, and I think
[1:06:09] that's not going to go away. I think it's in our human nature
[1:06:13] to be morbidly interested in these things that we can't
[1:06:16] understand. But it's how we tell victims
[1:06:19] stories and why it matters to tell them is so important to
[1:06:25] keeping this community accountable.
[1:06:27] Talking about these cases can help to prevent similar
[1:06:31] occurrences in the future. It can help people prepare
[1:06:34] themselves for the harsh reality that you can't trust everyone
[1:06:39] you meet. I mean, I get young girls coming
[1:06:41] up to me all the time, like when I'm on a night out and they'll
[1:06:44] be like, your videos have changed how I operate.
[1:06:48] Like me and my friends don't walk home alone anymore.
[1:06:51] I only live around the corner from the club, but I make sure
[1:06:53] one of my friends goes with me. And that's because they have
[1:06:56] watched true crime documentaries or true crime YouTube videos and
[1:07:00] they have heard the very real and heartbreaking stories of
[1:07:05] other girls that had walked home from a night out on their own
[1:07:08] and something awful had happened to them.
[1:07:11] And it's because of that awareness and education from
[1:07:14] other cases in the past that these girls are preventing the
[1:07:18] same thing happening to themselves and their friends.
[1:07:20] And that is one of the most important things for me when it
[1:07:23] comes to true crime education is is not repeating history.
[1:07:28] Of course, it shouldn't have to be down to victims or potential
[1:07:31] victims to be on high alert and to know every possible thing
[1:07:35] that could happen and prevent against them.
[1:07:38] But unfortunately that is the world that we live in.
[1:07:40] I think it's so important for everyone to stay educated on
[1:07:45] previous true crime cases, whether it's the police, the
[1:07:48] government to know how to operate in future and how to
[1:07:51] prevent crimes like this. And it's important for the
[1:07:55] regular guys and that are walking the streets and that are
[1:07:58] scared. Like, I'm not saying I have all
[1:08:01] the answers when it comes to the very complex world where true
[1:08:05] crime meets entertainment, but when a murderer themselves is
[1:08:09] profiting from their own crime with a massive production
[1:08:13] company and a documentary and it's being filmed behind bars,
[1:08:17] it's a totally different thing. I guess there's also the
[1:08:19] question of does the public have the right to hear the murderers
[1:08:24] side of the story, even if it means that that murderer profits
[1:08:28] from it And, and where do you draw the line on that?
[1:08:32] Like I said, I don't have the answers to all of these
[1:08:34] questions. I just think they're important
[1:08:36] conversations to be having and maybe one day we can get some
[1:08:39] answers. But what we do know is that it
[1:08:42] took one very brave mother who lost her 8 year old in the most
[1:08:46] tragic and horrific way to remind politicians, the media,
[1:08:50] the police and the rest of the world that these stories involve
[1:08:55] real lives and real pain. And if we lose sight of that,
[1:08:59] then we're no better than those who exploit these tragedies for
[1:09:04] profit. Now, before we wrap up, I want
[1:09:06] to take a moment to acknowledge some of the very serious topics
[1:09:09] that we've discussed in this video, particularly around
[1:09:12] missing children. As you know, we like to give a
[1:09:14] shout out to a charity in the end of every one of our
[1:09:16] episodes. And today we want to bring
[1:09:18] attention to the International Center for Missing and Exploited
[1:09:21] Children, also known as the Global Missing Children's
[1:09:25] Network. It started in 1998 as a
[1:09:27] collaborative effort to bring together 20, nine different
[1:09:31] member countries across 5 continents, and that includes
[1:09:34] Spain. It includes the UK, includes the
[1:09:38] US, and all of it is to help recover missing and abducted
[1:09:42] children. They're involved in training law
[1:09:44] enforcement and working with experts to create countrywide
[1:09:49] protection programs for children on their website, which is
[1:09:53] LinkedIn. The description of this episode
[1:09:55] below. You can donate to support their
[1:09:57] mission and learn more about the incredible work that they're
[1:10:00] doing. The Internet can be a very, very
[1:10:03] dark place and devastatingly, children are exploited on the
[1:10:08] Internet every single day. And the Global Missing
[1:10:11] Children's Network's website actually offers a form where
[1:10:15] anyone can easily and anonymously report Child
[1:10:19] Exploitation images or videos found online.
[1:10:22] This is a global problem and they are providing a global
[1:10:27] solution by giving people a safe place to report these images.
[1:10:32] Like I said, the link is down below in the description of this
[1:10:35] episode and in the description of every single one of our
[1:10:38] episodes. You'll be able to find our link
[1:10:40] tree and this has an abundance of incredible charities and help
[1:10:45] lines if you've been affected by anything that we've discussed in
[1:10:48] today's video. What should have been a simple
[1:10:51] and safe short walk to his cousin's house turned into a
[1:10:56] national tragedy. Gabriel's memory is still very
[1:11:00] much alive in Spain. You can see it in the
[1:11:03] classrooms, in town halls and even still in the streets where
[1:11:07] drawings of fish are everywhere. Patricia's slogan, Todos Somos
[1:11:12] Gabriel, became this very powerful symbol of solidarity.
[1:11:16] It's become about more than just morning, Gabriel.
[1:11:20] It's about the importance of community and the need to
[1:11:22] protect children, both in life and after they're gone.
[1:11:27] Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode,
[1:11:30] whether you watched on YouTube or listened to the podcast.
[1:11:34] We are so, so grateful. We feel so passionate about this
[1:11:37] case. It's one that I wasn't aware of
[1:11:40] until very recently, but this is such a huge case over in Spain.
[1:11:43] I realized as we've been doing our research and I really wanted
[1:11:48] to do it, especially for our Spanish followers.
[1:11:54] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[1:11:56] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[1:11:59] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[1:12:02] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[1:12:05] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
[1:12:08] follow Usual Disclaimer on your podcast app so that you get
[1:12:11] notifications when we post new episodes.
[1:12:14] If you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a rating
[1:12:17] and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[1:12:20] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[1:12:23] See you next time.

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