Víctor Oyarzabal

Víctor Oyarzabal, known as Basajaun, is revealed as the killer of Anne Arbizu and other girls whose deaths belong to a longer pattern of murders. His story links those crimes to the choices he made about his impulses, the periods when they seemed controlled, and the moment Anne’s death made Flora recognize how he selected his victims.

Identity and the pattern of murders

Amaia Salazar confronts Flora with the extent of Víctor’s crimes: he killed Anne and two other girls, and had killed many more before his marriage to Flora. Flora maintains that she did not know he was responsible for the Basajaun murders until after Anne died. She distinguishes the killings from the period of her marriage, saying that none occurred while she and Víctor were together and that they began again after their separation. Amaia challenges the limits of that account, asking whether Flora had suspected him and allowed the murders to continue before he killed Anne.

Flora says Anne’s death changed what she understood about the victims. The way Víctor chose them made her recognize his criteria, though the available account does not specify those criteria. Sarasola describes the girls as stripped of signs of maturity and made to resemble small children: naked, shaved, without shoes or makeup. He presents their deaths by suffocation as part of imagery of purity and a return to tradition, turning the physical details of the crimes into a horrifying ritual pattern.

Víctor, Flora, and Anne

Anne was Flora’s daughter. Flora describes her love for Anne as extraordinary and says that seeing Amaia’s son, who resembles Anne, brings both heartbreak and affection. She recalls that the short time she spent with Anne made her feel things she had never imagined, and that she had never been so happy. That happiness ended when Víctor killed her child.

Amaia asks Flora whether she killed Víctor because he killed Anne. Flora denies it. Amaia also asks whether Flora knew what he was doing, and presses her to distinguish suspicion from certainty. Flora says she was not sure until she went to Víctor’s house one night and he confirmed it. Her account therefore places her recognition after Anne’s death, while Amaia tests it against the earlier killings and the two girls murdered after Anne.

Drinking and therapy

Sarasola describes Víctor as the son of a dominant mother who repeated that pattern in choosing his wife. He says Víctor began drinking at a young age in an effort to control his murderous impulses, and that for a time this seemed to work. When Sarasola once asked how Víctor had managed it, Víctor told him he was attending therapy. He preferred a discreet therapy group in Irún to the local Alcoholics Anonymous group that met at the parish.

Amaia connects this history to Doctor Berasategui’s sinister file and asks Sarasola whether it recorded that Víctor had undergone therapy with him. Sarasola’s nod confirms the connection. The discovery reframes Víctor’s apparent period of control: his treatment and his drinking had seemed to contain his impulses, but the murders resumed after his separation from Flora. His identity as Basajaun thus emerges not as an isolated revelation, but as the convergence of a repeated killing pattern, Flora’s belated recognition, and a concealed therapeutic link.