Amaia Salazar—Judge Markina: investigator and judicial collaborator

Amaia Salazar—Judge Markina: investigator and judicial collaborator describes a working relationship forged in the Lucía Aguirre murder investigation. Judge Markina’s authority first gives the case a legal foothold when Ramón Quiralte confesses but withholds the victim’s body; later, Amaia brings the judge evidence that may connect the crime to a broader pattern. Their exchanges turn on the distinction between what has been established and what still needs investigating: Markina can act on a confession, while Amaia asks him to consider what the physical evidence may reveal beyond it.

A confession and a judicial response

Judge Markina enters the investigation after Quiralte admits killing Lucía Aguirre but says that, without a body, there is no crime and refuses to disclose where her remains are. Markina does not accept that tactic. He points out that Quiralte has both confessed and acknowledged knowing the body’s location, and orders him held in prison until he provides further information. His response establishes him as a judge willing to use the available evidence rather than be distracted by the suspect’s bravado.

Markina’s manner contrasts with the firmness of that decision. He is one of the youngest judges Amaia knows, with a model-like face and worn jeans; his easy smile can lead defendants to underestimate him. Quiralte appears to make that mistake, treating the young judge’s appearance as an invitation to overplay his hand. Markina’s imprisonment order makes clear that the informality of his appearance does not imply softness in court.

The two men’s next contact creates the route to Amaia. Quiralte tells Markina that he will reveal the body’s location if Amaia herself visits him in prison. Markina passes this offer to her, explaining that the suspect has asked to see her and promised to disclose where Lucía’s body is. The judge thus acts as the intermediary between a prisoner attempting to dictate terms and the investigator whose presence he demands.

The prison meeting and its aftermath

At the prison on the hill of Santa Lucía, Amaia meets Markina, the prison director, and a court secretary before seeing Quiralte. Markina rises to greet her and explains that Quiralte made the offer that morning. He also notes that his own arrival in the court coincided with Amaia’s leave, giving their first face-to-face professional encounter a practical, case-centered beginning.

Amaia makes the limits of her purpose explicit when Quiralte greets her familiarly and asks after her and her baby. She ignores his offered hand and tells him that she has come only because he promised to reveal the location of Lucía’s remains. Markina has enabled the meeting, but Amaia refuses to let Quiralte recast it as a personal visit or a favor between them. The distinction matters: the suspect’s information is the reason for the encounter, and the investigation remains its governing purpose.

After the body is found, Amaia asks Markina about Quiralte’s claim that a conversation with her earlier might have spared him four months in prison. Markina confirms that Quiralte said this, while observing that it is difficult to see how he expected that outcome after confessing to the crime. Amaia responds that she thinks she understands what he meant. The exchange shows her reading the remark not simply as a complaint about detention but as a clue to the case’s sequence and to what Quiralte believed he had been waiting for.

A new line of inquiry

Amaia’s collaboration with Markina deepens when she asks him to consider evidence beyond Quiralte’s responsibility for Lucía’s murder. A forensic examination identifies a clean, post-mortem cut made after the heart had stopped and the blood had begun to clot. Its toothed edge resembles a cut in the Johana Márquez case, where the possible tool had not been identified. Amaia brings Markina this kind of discrepancy: Quiralte may have killed Lucía, yet the removal of her arm may point to an additional offender or a connection that the original investigation did not pursue.

The forensic comparison has important limits. Doctor San Martín says the cuts appear to share a technique and to have been made by a right-handed adult with considerable force, but photographs alone cannot establish the bones’ age, distinguish surgical amputation from grave desecration, or identify a particular tool. He would need the remains themselves to make molds and compare them. The relevant samples are held by the Guardia Civil, whose reluctance to share information obstructs the comparison. Amaia therefore presents a promising investigative direction, not a completed forensic identification.

She explains to Markina that the established case against Quiralte need not be discarded for another line to be opened. Neither she nor the forensic examiner doubts his authorship of Lucía’s murder, she says; the unresolved question concerns the post-mortem amputation and its resemblance to other cases. Markina interrupts to invite her to explain the theory in person and asks her to bring the forensic report. His response is a concrete form of judicial cooperation: he does not pronounce the suspected connection proven, but gives Amaia an opportunity to support a broader inquiry with the available evidence.

Professional regard and investigative significance

The proposed connection rests on a recurring, unusual combination of features. Amaia notes that Quiralte and the Logroño offender both left the same message on a wall, with the same distinctive spelling, while the post-mortem removal of the same arm and the disappearance of the limb recur across cases. The men themselves fit familiar patterns of partner or family violence, prolonged abuse, substance use, and impulsive aggression; the missing arm is the element that does not fit neatly. Amaia argues that the repeated detail may be a single person’s signature rather than a feature explained by the killers’ ordinary methods. She also recognizes the competing possibility of imitation, while doubting that press reports contained the withheld detail about Johana’s amputation.

Markina’s conduct suggests that he takes Amaia’s investigative judgment seriously. When the commissioner tells her to obtain the judge’s approval for a related investigation, he notes that Markina has spoken highly of her as an investigator while discussing the Aguirre case. That praise does not erase the distinction between judicial oversight and police work: Amaia must still explain her reasoning and provide the forensic report. Their collaboration is defined instead by a productive division of roles—she identifies the pattern and its uncertainties, while he supplies the legal forum in which a new line can be considered.

The relationship is therefore professional rather than personal in the evidence presented. Markina’s early decision keeps a confessing suspect in custody; his later invitation enables Amaia to pursue a question the confession alone cannot answer. Across those stages, the case shifts from locating Lucía’s body to examining whether a distinctive post-mortem act links separate murders. Their cooperation gives that shift judicial attention without confusing a suggestive resemblance with proof.