Police dismantle the cult network

The dismantling of the cult network is the culmination of Amaia’s investigation into suspicious deaths of young girls and the movement of their bodies. By combining a map of deaths along the Baztán River with evidence linking families, medical workers, lawyers, and former members to occult meetings, the police turn a scattered set of bereavements into a case against a network. The final operation produces arrests and searches, but its discoveries—including an empty coffin amid the remains of children—make clear that the investigation’s ending does not restore what the victims were denied: even an identity and a grave.

Background and the old group

Amaia traces the investigation back to a communal group established in a farmhouse at Orabidea during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Elena Ochoa had attended meetings there with Rosario before leaving when the rites became too savage. The group had begun with cultural and spiritual gatherings, then moved toward occult practices and animal sacrifice; the possibility of human sacrifice was raised. Amaia’s account places the group in a wider period of youthful experimentation with occultism, drugs, and alternatives to conservative society, while distinguishing this particular group through the reported escalation of its rites.

The investigation also points to activity at a farmhouse in Lesaka. A reliable informant described similar practices there and a leader who moved between the two groups without living with either. Amaia connects this history to Berasategui, whose presence at the Orabidea property was identified by a witness and acknowledged by its owners. She also identifies people associated with the meetings, including Nurse Hidalgo, Yolanda Berrueta’s former husband, and Valentín Esparza. Though the gatherings were initially presented as help for grieving families, the informant told Amaia that their purpose was different. The suspected network thus reaches beyond a single household or meeting place, joining occult practice to people whose public roles and private associations appear far apart.

A pattern along the river

The geographical pattern gives the investigation a way to test those connections against the cases. Jonan’s files included addresses of infants whose deaths had been investigated, along with Amaia’s sister, but excluded Yolanda Berrueta’s children. When Amaia remapped the victims and set aside the Ainhoa cases, the remaining locations formed a line that followed the Baztán River rather than the N-121 road. The line ran from Erratzu through Arraioz, Elbete, and Elizondo, and onward to Oieregi, where Haizea’s case extended the pattern. The river became a clue that reorganized the evidence, not proof by itself of a common perpetrator.

Further searches for baptism records widened the map while narrowing the cases. The inquiry added deaths in Elizondo, Oronoz-Mugaire, Narbarte, Doneztebe, and Hondarribia; in the four Hondarribia cases, the team reduced the possibilities to two after learning that one child was a German visitor who died during the family’s holiday and another had been baptized. Amaia asked for older cases to be marked in another color, including her sister, the girl associated with Argi Beltz, a girl in Lesaka, the daughter of the lawyers Lejarreta y Andía in Elbete, and the child whose father had confronted the forensic doctor in Erratzu. The resulting map followed the river from its source to its mouth, crossing places where it was known as the Bidasoa.

The family histories supplied another set of converging indicators. Amaia’s review found that the victims were girls; many of their families were in poor financial circumstances when the children died and later experienced improved fortunes. In at least four cases, including those of Yolanda Berrueta and Valentín Esparza, parents had said at the time of the deaths that things would improve from then on. These similarities sharpened suspicion and guided further inquiry, but Amaia acknowledged that some central claims—such as whether a child was missing from a tomb—could not be confirmed by obtaining a new judicial inspection.

The operation and its discoveries

After the storm, officers, the forensic doctor, agents from the Ertzaintza, the judge, and the commissioner assembled at the scene. The resulting actions reached across the suspected network. The lawyers Lejarreta y Andía were arrested at their office, protesting and threatening legal action. The Foral Police at Elizondo took responsibility for Argi Beltz in Orabidea; the first indications were that Rosario had hidden there during the period when she was missing. At Nurse Hidalgo’s home in Irurita, officers found her hanging from a rope attached to her walnut tree. In Pamplona, Inma Herranz wept and claimed that she had acted under coercion.

The search at the tomb produced one of the operation’s most consequential findings: the coffin was empty, with the remains of girls arranged around it as a macabre offering. Forensic doctors in San Sebastián faced weeks of work to identify and date the remains. The discovery gave physical weight to the investigation’s concern about substituted or missing bodies, while leaving the victims’ individual identities unresolved at the moment the operation concluded.

The authorities also issued a search warrant for Xabier Markina, identified as Tabese. The aftermath was not limited to the suspected network: Internal Affairs reviewed the shooting of a judge. Iriarte was questioned more extensively, while Amaia was left alone after submitting a written report. Her report covered the investigation but omitted her private intimacy with Markina, separating the official account from a part of her personal life implicated in the case.

Aftermath and significance

The operation brings the investigation’s institutional response into view—arrests, searches, forensic work, and an outstanding warrant—without suggesting that every question has been answered or every victim identified. The empty coffin and the remains around it expose the gap between a completed police action and a completed reckoning: forensic identification will take weeks, while the map has already made the scale and reach of the suspected pattern visible.

Afterward, Amaia stops at Muniartea Bridge and watches the Baztán River, swollen by the storm and then flowing quietly again. She wonders whether the river is clean and whether the offense has been washed away, and her tears fall onto the cold stone before slipping toward the water. The image closes the dismantling not with certainty that the past has been repaired, but with the question of whether uncovering the network can bring any measure of release from what it did.