MOST WANTED: Alcàsser Murder Suspect Antonio Anglés Added In Closure Bid

Nearly 30 years after the murders of Miriam García Iborra, Antonia “Toñi” Gómez Rodríguez and Desirée Hernández Folch, Europe´s top policing agency Europol, has added the chief suspect, Antonio Anclés, to its most wanted list.

The new list aims to ensure that Europe´s most wanted criminals ” do not escape their past”.

Europol’s Deputy Executive Director Operations, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, said: “At the heart of this campaign is justice for the victims,”and “apprehend a long-term criminal and bring them to justice.”

The three teenagers, known as the Alcàsser Girls ( from their native town of Alcàsser), were kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered after hitchhiking on their way to a nearby nightclub on November 13, 1992.

The savagery of the attack caused shock waves throughout Spain and produced a media frenzy at the time that dominated Spanish airwaves at the time.

A 2019 Netflix documentary reignited interest in the case and it became a global story.

The authorities arrested and charged Miguel Ricart, but Anglés avoided capture, despite a massive police operation in the area.

His last known sighting in Spain was in Cuenca, and it is believed he made it to Madrid, where he may have taken a train to Lisbon, which was where he was last seen.

From there, the trail runs cold with two theories as to his then movements – one that he returned to Brasil ( where he was born and held Brasilian as well as Spanish nationality) or that he boarded a ferry to Dublin, though there is no evidence of him disembarking.

In February 2021, the Court of Valencia reactivated the search for Anglés, ordering the ship’s captain ( City Of Plymouth) and a worker from a Lisbon transport company (with whom he is supposed to have had a telephone conversation) to be interviewed again.

According to Spanish broadcaster La Sexta, Anglés was found aboard the City Of Plymouth as a stowaway and is believed to have jumped overboard, though there is no mention of any Dublin police report of the incident.