Yolanda Berrueta Testifies That Her Twins' Bodies Are Missing

Yolanda Berrueta’s testimony to Amaia Salazar transforms a claim of missing infant remains into a specific investigative lead. She says her twins died on the same night, that their coffins were empty, and that her former husband had given the children to people involved in secret offerings. Her account combines grief, suspicion, a remembered discovery at the hospital, and photographs of a car at Argi Beltz. It is testimony, not independent proof of every allegation, but it gives Amaia concrete details to examine.

The accusation and its stakes

Yolanda first explains that the house interests her not as property but because of what she believes is happening inside. She says the people there killed her children and withheld their bodies, leaving her with nowhere to mourn them. When Amaia asks whether she understands the seriousness of accusing them, Yolanda answers that she does: she did not witness anyone killing the infants, she says, but believes her former husband became involved with the group’s dark offerings and handed the children over to them. She presents the empty graves as part of the evidence for that belief.

Her account is therefore both a bereaved mother’s accusation and a claim about a concealed practice. Amaia’s questions distinguish what Yolanda saw from what she has inferred: Yolanda accepts that she did not see the children being killed, while insisting that she knows who was responsible for their deaths and the disappearance of their bodies. That distinction matters. The scene does not establish the full accusation as fact; it establishes the claims and observations that make the case investigable.

The deaths and the sealed funeral

Yolanda identifies the reported cause of death as cot death. Asked whether both infants were diagnosed with sudden infant death syndrome, she confirms that they were, and adds that both died on the same night. Their simultaneous deaths intensify her doubts, though the account does not itself establish another medical cause. Her grief is immediate and physical: she breaks down crying as she describes the deaths.

She recalls that there was a wake and a funeral, but that she was not allowed to see the children. Marcel Tremond told her it would be better to preserve a good memory and had the small coffins closed. Yolanda asks why others treated her as too fragile to look at her own children, arguing that being denied that last sight made the loss worse, not easier. The closed coffins become more than a painful detail of the funeral: in her account, they explain how the disappearance could have gone unnoticed by others.

Yolanda says she came to believe that the coffins were empty because the children had been taken away. She does not claim they might still be alive. She remembers that they had suffered cardiorespiratory arrest on the way from home to hospital, and describes their faces and fingers turning blue. Her allegation concerns the removal of their bodies after death, not a secret survival.

The box at the hospital

The most direct detail in Yolanda’s account is her description of a hospital room. She says she was weak after the deaths and that others assumed she could not get up, but that she found the strength to enter the room where a small metal box was kept. Inside, she recalls, a towel wrapped bags of sugar instead of her baby. The substitution gives physical form to her claim that the body had been removed.

Yolanda says she told Marcel Tremond what she had found. He replied that she must have gone to the wrong room. At the time, she considered that explanation possible because she had been given many tranquilizers and feared that grief and medication had confused her memory. In recounting the incident to Amaia, she returns to the unresolved contradiction: if she had mistaken the room, why would a box for the dead contain bags of sugar? Her certainty is grounded in the remembered object, while her account also preserves the doubt that once made her question herself.

Photographs and investigative leads

Yolanda connects her suspicions to Marcel Tremond’s visits to the Martínez Bayón property. After he told her to write down anything important, she remembered that she had followed him and opened a folder she had brought with her. The photographs show a vehicle parked in front of a fence that Amaia recognizes as belonging to the Martínez Bayón house; in one image, the metal mailbox is visible. Yolanda identifies the car as Marcel Tremond’s and says the property was where he went.

She explains that the displayed images are only the ones she had found so far. She took many more, she says, until the people at the property realized they were being watched and began parking inside the grounds. Some of the photographs show additional vehicles on the narrow drive. Inspector Iriarte raises a possible alternative: Marcel Tremond was an entrepreneur, as were the property owners, so their meetings might have been business-related. The photographs establish visits and vehicles, not their purpose; their importance lies in giving investigators a place and pattern to check against Yolanda’s larger allegation.

The testimony moves from an intimate absence—the children she says she could not see—to objects and records that can be tested: the hospital box, the funeral arrangements, and the photographs. Its force comes from that movement, but its limits remain visible. Yolanda’s conviction that the children were sacrificed and their bodies taken is not, by itself, confirmation of either claim; the account supplies Amaia with a detailed lead and a witness whose grief and uncertainty are both part of what she reports.