The island of Tenerife is still shocked by new revelations in the case of Tomás Gimeno, the man who killed his two daughters in revenge against his former partner. According to the investigation carried out by the Spanish authorities, after committing the crime, he went to his parent's house to leave his dog, some credit cards and his bank details before disappearing, and he did it with the corpses of the two girls in the boot of the car.
Anna and Olivia disappeared on April 27th with their father after he didn’t return them to their mother, Beatriz Zimmerman, as they had agreed. Gimeno was last seen in the marina of Santa Cruz de Tenerife loading his boat with several bags, which at the time were thought to be clothes, but now at least two of them are thought to have contained the dead bodies of the girls. The next day, his boat was found empty, adrift and without an anchor in front of the harbour.
This week, the courts ordered the end of the search at sea for Tomás Gimeno and his 1-year-old daughter Anna, whom he allegedly murdered along with his sister Olivia aged 6, and threw into the water before committing suicide.
For a month, an oceanographic vessel, the Ángeles Alvariño, has been tracking the area where Olivia’s body was found on June 11th at a depth of almost 1,000 metres in a sports bag weighed down by the missing anchor. Next to it was another sports bag that had come open, which is presumed to have contained Anna’s body that hasn’t been recovered.
This area was searched after tracking the mobile phone signal of their father, where investigators have pieced together evidence that he sailed out to this point, threw the bags with his daughters inside overboard, then sailed for several more kilometres before drowning himself using a weight belt and two smaller oxygen tanks, that were recovered, to take him to a depth beyond the point of return.
The decision of the Violence against Women court that is instructing the case now understands that the search efforts have yielded everything that the technology of the search ship has allowed, but also the topography of the seabed, where it should continue, is unapproachable and inaccessible. The judge in charge of the case confirmed days ago the suspicions surrounding the file from the beginning: Tomás Gimeno put together a plan to murder his daughters in order to make their mother suffer.
“He killed them in a planned and premeditated way to provoke an inhuman pain to his ex-partner, the greatest suffering he could ever imagine,“ said the magistrate, who confirmed that without a body it will take 10 years for him to be officially pronounced dead.
The work of the Ángeles Alvariño has been acclaimed worldwide for the discovery of Olivia’s body, with the director of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), Javier Ruiz, saying yesterday that the discovery, thanks to the work of the underwater robot Liropus 2000 and the scientific ship Ángeles Alvariño is a "world milestone" since it was a very small object, a sports bag, at a significant depth.
“Proof of this is the number of wrecks that have remained for centuries on the seabed even though we know the area where they were lost, or more recently, the disappearance of large planes that have crashed into the ocean and have not been found. This world milestone is the result of close and precise collaboration and coordination between the Ministries of the Interior and of Science and Innovation”, he said in a statement, in which he also highlighted the finding of a duvet cover and an oxygen bottle.
The ship has already left Tenerife and is on its way to Cadiz for important maintenance due to the search work, in which it mapped an area of 250 square kilometres between approximately 100 and 2,000 meters deep and 392 hours of tracking were filmed.
Under normal conditions, and in addition to other minor maintenance, the Liropus 2000 underwater robot requires a complete overhaul every 120 hours. It is not designed for this type of operation with such intense use, so the number of breakdowns has been increasing throughout the search and its operability has been reduced. Despite the great work onboard by the engineers, who have carried out numerous repairs, the robot ended up working at 50% of its capability.
"Never forget Anna and Olivia"
In a statement released through social media, her family and friends, on behalf of Beatriz, have asked society to "never forget Anna and Olivia", remarking that despite the "hard moments" experienced in the last couple of months, Beatriz has been able to move on thanks to everyone's "support and love".
“It could not be and Anna and Tomás have not appeared, but Beatriz, as she has already said, is very grateful for the great work carried out by the Guardia Civil, the ship's crew, and the many professionals who have helped in this search. In addition, she understands that everything that possible has been done and that thanks to that great work at least the truth is known. For that, from the heart, from Beatriz, thank you very much”.
