Doctor Sarasola

Doctor Sarasola is a senior psychiatric authority whose oversight of prison treatment places him at the center of Amaia Salazar’s inquiry into a pattern of violent offenders and matching suicide messages. The evidence establishes his position and access; it presents his involvement as a question under investigation, not a confirmed conclusion.

Psychiatric Authority and Suspicion

Sarasola is the director of psychiatry, not the director of the clinic where a murder occurs. When Amaia points out that the victim had come to see him and that their relations were strained, he counters that the hostility was one-sided and that the killing took place in the parking area. Amaia answers that his role nevertheless matters: as director of psychiatry, he authorizes external treatments, including services provided in prisons. Sarasola confirms that responsibility.

The inquiry connects that authority to a disturbing recurrence: at least two prisoners Sarasola treated had murdered women and later died by suicide, leaving the same distinctive signature. Amaia presses him on whether he knew about and encouraged the recruitment of mentally ill prisoners whose cases possessed a particular quality of interest, or whether Belástegui was in reality the head of psychiatry. The clinic’s policy, Sarasola explains, is to select psychiatric patients considered promising for research, with staff instructed to identify cases that might advance knowledge and improve patients’ and families’ quality of life. That public rationale makes the boundary between research and the alleged cultivation of violent offenders a central unresolved issue in the investigation.

The Rosario Connection and Limits of the Case

Before Amaia directly questioned Sarasola, Doctor Franz advanced a separate theory about his possible role in Rosario’s escape from the clinic. Franz argued that Sarasola had manipulated events: a visitor had appeared, medication had remained hidden in the leg of Rosario’s bed, and Sarasola had arrived at an opportune moment to take her away. He could not identify a persuasive purpose, suggesting either that Sarasola was unbalanced or that ambition for notoriety had distorted his judgment. Amaia initially regarded the account as far-fetched, reasoning that Sarasola knew the clinic too well to have entered it unnoticed and that no connection between him and the institution had been established.

That skepticism matters: the novel distinguishes suspicion from proof even as the investigation widens. Amaia later focuses on the authority Sarasola does possess over prison psychiatric treatment and confronts him about its possible connection to the recurring offender pattern; the Rosario allegations, however, remain Franz’s interpretation rather than a demonstrated explanation of Sarasola’s motives or actions.

The Suspected Inducer Behind the Signature

The case against a single hidden influence rests on details that separate the recurring signature from the murders themselves. Ramón Quiralte confessed to killing his wife but denied amputating her arm; a photograph of his cell wall showed that he had scratched the word “TARTTALO” into the plaster with the handle of a toothbrush. Amaia compared this with the matching inscription left by the Logroño offender, noting that both the unusual spelling and the handwriting appeared to recur. In her assessment, the abusers’ violence, substance use, and relationships to their victims fit familiar patterns, while the postmortem removal of the same arm—and the disappearance of the limb—did not.

Jasón Medina’s case makes the distinction more difficult, not less. He confessed to raping and strangling Johana Márquez, then violating her body, but was perplexed when asked about the missing arm. He had left the scene to fetch a rope and imitate a crime he had read about; when he returned, the arm was gone. Amaia reasoned that Medina had acted impulsively and that someone else must have been present at precisely the right moment, perhaps following him. This model of an offender who identifies and steers violent men gives the suspicions surrounding Doctor Sarasola their investigative force, but the pattern and access do not establish that Sarasola was the inducer.

Exceptions, Unlinked Cases, and the Limits of the Pattern

As the inquiry widened, Amaia found two more women born in the valley who had been killed by their partners, one in Bilbao and one in Burgos. Their deaths had been noted in funeral-home obituaries in the valley, but the available records did not establish whether either woman’s body had been mutilated. Their cases enlarged the field of investigation without confirming that the missing-arm signature connected them to the others.

Johana Márquez also complicates the pattern. Unlike the other women Amaia was comparing, Johana had not been born in the valley and was living there when she died; her stepfather, Jasón Medina, had no known history of violence and did not fit the profile of the other killers. Amaia recognized the similarities in the crimes but also treated these differences as evidence that resemblance alone could not settle who had removed the arms or why. The distinction leaves Sarasola’s authority over prison treatment relevant to the inquiry, but does not establish that he selected, directed, or influenced any of the offenders.