Michael Coy
IT was the most sensational Spanish case of its era. A man killed his own children, as a way of ‘getting at’ his ex-wife.
After 14 years of flat denial, José Bretón has now confessed that he killed them. These new revelations are contained in a book by Luisgé Martín, appropriately entitled Hatred, soon to be released. Bretón, who is still serving two life sentences, made the admissions in letters written to the author.
The Bretón Case (in Spanish, the ‘caso Bretón’) refers to the events related to the disappearance and death of the siblings Ruth Bretón Ortiz, 6, and José Bretón Ortiz, 2, on October 8, 2011, in the city of Córdoba, Spain.
Bretón began plotting the terrible crime in September of that year when his wife, Ruth Ortiz, told him she was leaving him. The case received intense media coverage, especially after the National Police’s leading research official categorically denied that the burnt remains could be human, classifying them as ‘rodent bones’.
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On July 22, 2013, the Audiencia Provincial of Córdoba sentenced José Bretón to 40 years in prison for murder. In March 2015, the sentence was reduced to a maximum of 25 years.
It was in September 2011 that Ruth Ortiz told her husband about her intention to divorce him. José Bretón then conceived the idea of murdering their children in revenge. Bretón committed the crime on October 8, having picked his children up the day before to take them to Córdoba for the weekend.
Between 5 and 7 October 2011, Bretón collected firewood and bought over 270 litres of diesel fuel in large quantities at a petrol station in Huelva. At the same time, he came up with an explanation for the disappearance of his children and decided to pretend that he had lost them in a park. In order to offer some information about the alleged disappearance, he carried out a kind of experiment with his nephews—the children of his sister Catalina 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.
After killing his two children with heavy doses of prescription drugs, he prepared a funeral pyre. He had already arranged its essential elements in a quiet part of the estate, among several orange trees and without visibility from the outside. He laid his children down and set a large bonfire, which he stoked with firewood—about 250 kilograms—and gasoil—about 80 litres. The fire reached temperatures of up to 1200 °C, achieving a similar effect to that of a crematorium. Given the magnitude of the temperature, the children’s flesh disappeared quickly, leaving only a few bones. Bretón remained by the bonfire until 5:30 pm, fuelling it with diesel oil to keep the temperature high enough to completely destroy the remains.
He then drove to the City of Children, a large play park in Córdoba. At 6:01 pm, he texted his brother Rafael, making him believe that he was with his children near the park. He then did the same with their mother, who called him from her house. When José thought that enough time had passed to make the fictional disappearance of his children credible, he called his brother again at 6:18 pm, telling him that his children were lost. He made several phone calls to relatives and convinced his brother and brother-in-law to go to the playground to start the search.
At around 6:41 pm, Bretón called the Spanish emergency number 112 and notified the authorities of the ‘disappearance’. He went to the Córdoba police station at 8:43 pm to file a report.
Bretón’s trial began on June 17, 2013, with the election of a jury, consisting of seven women and four men. He denied killing the children or supplying them with pills. Ruth Ortiz said in her statement that she decided to divorce Bretón because her life was unhappy. When Bretón informed her that the children had disappeared, she knew that she wouldn’t see them again.
The petrol station workers from Huelva gave evidence in court. Bretón’s parents and siblings refused to testify. Bretón’s brother-in-law claimed that while he did not think Bretón would have killed the children, he was certainly responsible for their vanishing. Some residents around Las Quemadillas stated that they had noticed an unpleasant burnt smell, but did not see any column of smoke.
Psychiatrists and psychologists who examined Bretón diagnosed that he did not suffer any mental disorder. Bretón pleaded not guilty. The public prosecutor claimed that there was obvious evidence that proved that Bretón had murdered his children in the cruellest possible way and then burnt the corpses.
On July 12, the jury decided unanimously that Bretón was guilty and condemned him to 40 years of imprisonment (20 per murder).
