Killing of Helena Jubany

Helena Jubany Lorente was a 27-year-old librarian, journalist, and writer from Mataró, Catalonia, born 27 February 1974. She had interned at the local newspaper El Punt, a local television station, and the Robafaves bookstore before taking a position in 2000 as a children's librarian in Sentmenat, after which she moved into an apartment and lived alone in Sabadell. She was active with the Nature Section of the Unió Excursionista de Sabadell, a local hiking association.

In the months before her death, Jubany received two anonymous gifts left at her door, each accompanied by a handwritten note referencing a planned surprise. The first, on 17 September 2001, was a bottle of horchata and small cakes. The second, on 9 October 2001, was a bottle of peach juice; Jubany found its taste strange, had it analyzed at a laboratory in Sabadell, and learned it contained benzodiazepine, a sedative.

On 30 November 2001, Jubany left home at midday and never arrived at the Sentmenat library where she worked. Investigators concluded she had gone to an apartment at 48 Calvet d'Estrella Street in Sabadell belonging to two acquaintances, teacher Montserrat Careta and criminal lawyer Santiago Laiglesia — both later identified, like Jubany, as members of the Unió Excursionista de Sabadell — where she was drugged and restrained. She was held sedated, with benzodiazepine levels 35 times normal (not by itself enough to cause death), until she was taken, still alive, to the building's rooftop terrace and thrown into an adjoining courtyard on Guell i Ferrer Street between 3 and 5 a.m. on 2 December 2001. She died of the impact of the fall; an autopsy found she had been in a semi-coma when she went over. A neighbor found her body, naked and with burns on several parts, later that morning. Her father, Joan Jubany, had already grown concerned after she missed a planned lunch with him the previous day and, after learning from her workplace that she had not shown up for work, reported her missing.

The investigating judge, Manuel Horacio García of Sabadell's Tribunal de Instrucción No. 3, linked the case to Careta, who lived in the building from which the fall occurred. On 12 February 2002, Careta was arrested and detained at Wad-Ras prison in Barcelona; a search of her apartment turned up containers of Noctamid, a benzodiazepine-based sedative, and a box of matches resembling those found on the rooftop. The judge also indicted Laiglesia, Careta's partner, and Ana Echaguivel, a fellow hiking-association member who was arrested on 23 March 2002 after a calligraphy analysis linked her to authorship of part of the second anonymous note. On 7 May 2002, Careta was found dead in her cell, in what her lawyer, Joaquim Escudé, described as a suicide; she left a note maintaining her innocence. Echaguivel was released on bail the following month. No trial was ever held.

In October 2005, the judge closed the case, ruling the evidence against Laiglesia and Echaguivel insufficient to sustain the charges. Relatives of both Jubany and Careta have since said they believe the true perpetrator or perpetrators remain unidentified, and have pushed for the case to be reopened, citing gaps in the original investigation — including that no fingerprints were taken from Jubany's car or the crime scenes — and arguing that Careta could not have carried out the killing alone. A linguistic study published in December 2018 concluded Careta was unlikely to have written the anonymous notes. The perpetrator and motive remain formally undetermined, and under Spanish law the case becomes legally unprosecutable in 2025. In 2007, family and community members established the Helena Jubany Cultural Association, which awards an annual short-story prize in the capital of the Maresme comarca.