José Sáez’s Nearly Forty Years in the Hospital

José Sáez García’s nearly forty years in the hospital are more than a measure of time: they become the central evidence in Alice Gould’s account of his motive and opportunity. His confinement began at the request of his uncle, Severiano García del Olmo. After thirty-eight years, the hospital allowed him to leave on a single occasion, and that rare absence overlapped with his uncle’s murder.

Confinement and Its Cause

Severiano García del Olmo had José Sáez García admitted to the hospital. Alice’s later reconstruction presents this act of confinement as the source of José’s hatred toward his uncle. The duration matters: this was not a brief interruption in his life but almost four decades spent inside the institution, a grievance Alice connects to revenge.

The Exceptional Leave

The hospital had introduced an open regime, under which patients could move more freely and, in some circumstances, leave the grounds. José’s experience makes the limits of that change stark. After thirty-eight years in the hospital, he was permitted to go out only once, for three days. The second day of that leave coincided with Severiano’s murder. The new freedom thus supplies not a general release from institutional control but a narrow, consequential interval in which José could be outside.

The Murder Evidence

Alice sets the timing beside the manner of death. She concludes that Severiano did not die from blows with a sandbag: his chest had been crushed and his internal organs ruptured, injuries she compares with those inflicted on Remo, whom she identifies as another of José’s victims. In her account, José had killed Remo about a month earlier. The resemblance between the two deaths turns the hospital record and the rare leave into a pattern: a proven act of violence, a matching killing, and an opportunity that coincided with the victim’s death.

What the Interval Reveals

Alice’s reasoning joins motive to circumstance. She portrays José as hating the uncle who had him confined and as seeking revenge, while the nearly four-decade stay explains the depth and duration of that grievance. The three-day absence then gives the suspicion a precise temporal anchor. The period is therefore both biographical history and forensic clue: years of confinement establish the conflict, and the exceptional leave helps Alice argue that José used it to kill Severiano García del Olmo.