Arizkun, site of Garrido's church desecration, is a crucial crime-scene location in the investigation of repeated attacks on Iglesia de Arizkun. The desecrations damaged church property and involved human remains taken from a family cemetery; their significance lies both in the violations themselves and in the clues they offered about who was carrying them out and how the crimes were connected.

The Desecrations and the Investigation

The attacks were initially treated as a series of church desecrations whose authorship had to be established. Antonio Garrido eventually admitted that he had carried them out. The admission confirmed his responsibility for the damage, while the discovery that human remains from a family burial ground had also been used made the case more than an act of vandalism: it linked the church scenes to the disturbance of burials and to a wider pattern of violence.

The investigation placed the Arizkun crimes alongside other suspected offenses by the man in custody. Amaia Salazar told James that the suspect arrested the previous day was responsible for the desecrations, had recently tried to kill a woman in Elizondo, Amaia's hometown, after holding her captive for two years, and was probably responsible for disturbing the graves at Juanitaenea family estate and burial ground. With the suspect due to give a statement, the church case had become one strand in a much broader inquiry.

From Apparent Coincidence to a Signature

At first, Amaia Salazar treated the severed arm as possibly incidental. The victim had been amputated from the elbow with a toothed but sharp implement, such as an electric knife or jigsaw. She considered whether the killer might have cut off the hand to take a wedding ring or frustrate identification, but neither explanation made much sense in a murder committed inside the victim’s own home. The uncertainty mattered: the mutilation could not yet be assumed to belong to the killer’s method.

A prison-wall photograph provided a more distinctive clue. Someone had scratched a word into the plaster with the handle of a toothbrush; although the wall had since been painted over, the grooves remained legible in a photograph taken at an angle. The word was “TARTTALO.” Its unusual spelling became significant when Amaia learned that the Logroño female murder site killer had died by suicide in his cell, leaving the same message in the same handwriting. The shared inscription linked cases more specifically than a general resemblance between violent crimes could.

Amaia’s comparison of the cases sharpened the distinction between the men who committed the killings and the person who appeared to connect them. The suspected perpetrators shared familiar features of domestic violence: a family relationship to the victim, prolonged abuse, substance misuse, and impulsive violence. What did not fit that pattern was the postmortem removal of the same arm in each case, with the limb missing from the scene. Because details of the amputation in the case of Johana Márquez had been withheld from the press, Amaia doubted that the similarity could be explained by imitation of published reporting. She instead read the repeated amputation and inscription as a single individual’s identifying signature.

The case of Jasón Medina showed how that signature could be separated from the underlying murder. Medina confessed to forcing and killing Johana, and to sexually abusing her after death, but appeared genuinely perplexed when asked about the missing arm. He said he had left to fetch a rope so he could imitate a crime he had read about; on returning, he found that Johana’s arm was gone. Amaia reasoned that the trophy-taker had arrived during Medina’s absence, at precisely the moment an impulsive crime created an opportunity. Her conclusion was that this person knew how to identify potential followers and had been tracking Medina. In the Arizkun investigation, the church desecrations thus belonged to a wider pattern in which the visible offender and the organizing hand behind the violence were not necessarily the same.

Material Clues and the Wider Network

A search of the old pilgrims’ hospital where the suspect had been hiding yielded a practical clue to the desecrations: in an upper-floor storeroom, investigators found old hospital furnishings and medical instruments resembling the scalpel examined by Doctor San Martín. The suspect had apparently been living there for at least fifteen days, with food and provisions to remain longer. Amaia Salazar recognized the significance of the building when Subinspector Zabalza reported the discovery. Antonio Garrido had told Nuria Otaño that he would take her to “the hospital,” a remark that had seemed inexplicable; the stored instruments now offered a possible source for the medical tools used in the crimes. Amaia instructed Zabalza to send photographs to Doctor San Martín for comparison and summoned him to Pamplona.

The church investigation also widened toward the psychiatric clinic. Amaia argued that the suspect responsible for the desecrations had called its psychiatric department that morning, that all the killers had received therapy, and that at least two had been treated at the clinic. She believed the clinic had connections to three of the killers and suspected she could establish links to the others. Her concern centered on Doctor Sarasola: he had asked for her to take charge of the Arizkun investigation and had appeared, as if by chance, when Rosario needed to be transferred. Amaia presented these circumstances as a pattern warranting scrutiny, not as a proven case against him; Judge Markina replied that he lacked grounds to question Sarasola on the accusations then available.

Later, when Amaia stated in Berasategui’s presence that Garrido had admitted to the successive desecrations at Iglesia de Arizkun, she added that the attacks had involved human remains taken from a family cemetery. Berasategui’s lawyer challenged the relevance of the disclosure, but Berasategui smiled broadly and directed his attention to Amaia, seeming pleased by the detail. The exchange gave the desecrations a further significance: they were not only an offense against the church and the dead, but also part of the violence that held Berasategui’s attention.

The Case’s Expanding Scope

At the point Amaia Salazar assessed the pattern, investigators had identified three cases, and she suspected there might be more. A possible explanation—that an amateur group was copying notorious crimes—was considered, but the case-specific amputation detail had not been released to the press, making simple imitation less convincing. Garrido’s admission established his responsibility for the church attacks; it did not, by itself, settle how many related cases existed or who might be coordinating them. Arizkun thus became part of an investigation whose boundaries were still open.