She Murdered Her Son And For Two Years Pretended That He Was Alive

On November 23, 2010, two brothers went to brush a wooded area of the farm they had just inherited in the town of San Luis in Menorca (Spain). Suddenly among the weeds they saw a red suitcase and when they opened it they found something that left them paralyzed.

Immediately the brothers went to the office of the civil guard to denounce the terrible finding.

The agents accompanied them to the place and once there they were able to verify that inside the suitcase there were human remains in addition to several objects.

The forensic examination determined that the remains could be between 1 and 3 years old and that they belonged to a child about 10 years old.

Even so, they could not establish the cause of his death since the bones did not present trauma or something that could confirm that he had had a violent death.

For the agents, this case was a great mystery. On the island no one had reported the disappearance of a child and at first glance in the suitcase there was nothing to identify him.

Inside they also found clothes, toys, several Naruto comics and a school case that could belong to the victim.

The comics were the ones that provided the first important information since these had been published at the end of 2007, which indicated that the death had occurred after that date.

Despite this finding, the frustration of the agents was increasing because they needed some clue that would take them to the child’s identity.

The news immediately jumped to the media, which left the inhabitants of the island in a state of shock, since Menorca is a very quiet place where this type of event does not usually happend.

In addition, everyone wondered who had been able to leave a child’s body in that way.

Who was the boy in the suitcase?

After examining the objects in the suitcase several times, the police found in the school case a clue that was key to the case.

When they carefully removed everything that was inside it, they saw that under an eraser he had written with a blue pen César JF.

The researchers immediately searched their database for children with the name of César JF. That’s when they located a minor who had not renewed his ID since 2006. His name was César Juanatey Fernández, born on March 6, 1999 in the town of Noia in A Coruña. Thanks to this, they discovered several things:

The first that the little one had his mother’s two surnames, a woman named Mónica Juanatey Fernández, which made him think that no one had recognized the child’s paternity.

They also found that the woman received social assistance for being a single mother and that she lived in Mahón, about 7 kilometers away from the place where the child’s body was found.

The second thing they discovered was that César apparently lived with his grandparents in Noia, A Coruña and that he had been enrolled in a school in that town until June 30, 2008. However, at the end of the course they had asked for the transfer of their school record.

And the third important thing is that despite that transfer of the file, the child had never been enrolled in any other school again.

To check the information, the agents contacted the little one’s grandparents. According to their version, César was in Menorca with his mother and although they had no relationship, they knew he was fine.

Because of this, the police called Mónica Juanatey on the phone to ask about her son, and her response left them quite surprised: César was fine and lived in Galicia with his grandparents.

Obviously this version contradicted the one given by the child’s grandparents to the police, so on November 26, 2010 the agents went to Monica’s home in Mahón to talk to her.

When they asked her again about her son, they noticed that the woman got nervous and that she didn’t stop looking back. The agents interpreted that Monica was acting like this because she didn’t want Víctor, her partner at the time, to find out about the conversation in which she also said again that her son was in Galicia with his grandparents.

Immediately the woman was arrested because everything indicated that she was involved in the dead of her son.

Mónica Juanatey Fernández

At that time, Mónica Juanatey Fernández was a 30-year-old woman originally from Noia in A Coruña (Spain).

Daughter of Víctor Juanatey and Josefa Fernández, the young woman lived in this municipality with her son César and with Alberto, her partner. This boy was not the biological father of the boy but he loved him as if he were his own son.

It can be said that Monica led a normal life in her village. She was a cashier in a supermarket and had also been hired by Seprona to carry out environmental cleaning work.

One of her main hobbies was social networks where she was very active.

Although she was about to marry Alberto, she met Victor through a chat and at the beginning of 2008 she decided to leave everything to go with him to Menorca, which was where the young man lived.

At that time Monica left her son in Noia with her grandparents and settled on the island where she rented an apartment for herself and soon moved to her partner’s home.

For several weeks she was working in a bakery in the town of San Luis and at the time of the arrest she worked in a cleaning company.

Everyone defines her as a woman of a reserved character, apparently normal and who did not relate to anyone, and she only did it through social networks.

She also had a blog called Galician terror where she wrote about scabrous topics with the nickname of Muki the former jailer.

The interrogation

During the interrogation, Monica admitted that her son had died accidentally.

According to her, the little one drowned in the bathtub and since she didn’t know what to do, decided to put his body in a suitcase and throw it through a torrent that was in the field.

However, in a second statement she confessed that she herself had drowned her son in the bathtub. Everything to hide a big lie.

It seems that although Monica’s parents had taken care of César when she left for Menorca, at the end of the school year in 2008 they decided to send the child with his mother because they could not take care of him.

It was from here that they believe that the real problem began for Monica because her current partner did not know that she had a child.

In order not to have to confess the truth, he decided to create a lie about the true identity of the child.

On July 1, 2008, César Juanatey arrived in Menorca to live definitively with his mother. However, Monica told her partner that the boy was her nephew and that she would only stay 10 days of vacation with them. In order to hold this lie, Monica demanded that her son call her an aunt and not mom.

When the police told Monica’s boyfriend the reason why she was detained, the man remembered that on one occasion he saw how she slapped the boy for calling her mom. After this he told her I’m not your mother, I’m your aunt.

On July 10, César was supposedly going to return to Galicia because the vacation had ended, which meant that Monica had expired the deadline to continue with her lie.

Since the child could not go back to his grandparents, she had to find a solution. Taking advantage of the fact that her partner had 12-hour shifts at work on July 10, 2008, Monica killed her son and left the body in a suitcase.

From that moment on, she had the cold blood to continue with her life as if nothing had happened.

But, how could he keep this lie for two years?

During that time, Monica made more lies. To hide the disappearance of the little one, she invented a fictitious life where she pretended that César continued with his routines in Menorca.

Although she didn’t have much contact with her parents from time to time she called them or sent emails to her cousin to tell César how the classes were going, even two days after the events she told them that the boy had made the first communion and that they had had a great time.

When her grandparents asked her to send César on vacation to Galicia, she always made up an excuse.

Monica had no limits and even impersonated her son’s identity on Facebook. She became a follower of the comics that the boy liked so much and communicated with his friends in Galicia using his name. Everything implied that the child went on with his life, that’s why no one suspected anything.

According to the investigation of the agents, Monica had everything planned. It is believed that on July 10, 2008 between 8 and 11 in the morning the woman prepared a bath for her 9-year-old son and drowned him. Then she put his body in a red suitcase along with some of his belongings, put in the car and took him to a field that was several minutes away. Once there, she got out of the vehicle and got rid of it, throwing him through a torrent.

When Víctor returned from work, Monica told him that César had returned to Galicia with her parents.

It is important to mention that while Monica was in prison awaiting trial, she married Agus, a boy from Barcelona that she met online while she was still with her partner from Menorca. This man became her main and only support.

During that time in prison he also took refuge in literature, winning a short story contest with a horror story.

The trial

On October 22, 2012, the trial for the murder of César Juanatey began in the provincial court of Palma de Mallorca.

Monica showed up with a low-head view, talking almost in whispers and saying she didn’t remember anything about what happened.

“I prepared César’s bathroom, I went to the kitchen to clean the dinner pots and I don’t remember anymore. The next image I have is in the bathroom with the child already dead... I still want him.”

Her defense lawyer alleged that Monica had suffered from a transient mental disorder and that at the time of the events she was not aware of what she was doing.

However, the evidence was forceful and there was no possibility of defense. In addition, during the trial it was clear thanks to forensic doctors and psychiatrists that when Monica took her son’s life she was aware of her actions.

On October 25, 2012, Mónica Juanatey Fernández was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of her 9-year-old son César.

She finally entered the prison of Palma where she has already served half of her sentence, in less than 10 years she will be a free woman.

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