Yoranda opens the tomb of the Ainoa family

Yolanda Berrueta’s destruction of the family tomb at Ainhoa acquires a second meaning through the photographs Jonan Etxaide took afterward. What appears at first to be a record of the damaged tomb becomes a forensic trail: a small coffin, a bag mistaken for ashes, and a comparison with ordinary food packaging expose that the burial contains no human remains. The discovery redirects attention from the tomb’s visible damage to the child whose place in it had been concealed.

The Tomb and the Photographic Record

The explosion occurred on the night Yolanda Berrueta blew apart the tomb of her children at Ainhoa. Later, Amaia Salazar examined Jonan Etxaide’s photographs, stored in a folder labelled Ainhoa. The images showed the interior of the tomb and included close enlargements of its details. More than twenty-five photographs documented the coffins, while Jonan’s repeated attention to one small metal coffin indicated that its contents mattered more than the damage alone.

The photographs showed the twins’ coffins, identified by the initials D. T. B. and M. T. B., corresponding to Didier Tremond Berrueta and Martín Tremond Berrueta. The twins were confirmed to be inside the tomb. Jonan had also photographed an overturned, open metal coffin intended for ashes. Its initials, H. T. B., had been enlarged and turned so they could be read. A corner of a plastic bag was visible inside, and its bright blue-and-red logo looked out of place on a container presumed to hold human ashes.

The Sugar Bag

Jonan’s images turned that odd detail into a comparison. He had assembled photographs of at least twelve French food packages, including lentils, table salt, flour, and sugar. Each was in a transparent plastic bag with blue-and-red branding. In another enlargement, he placed the visible corner of the bag from the coffin beside a one-kilogram sugar package. The logos matched. The bag in the coffin was not a customary container for ashes but a food wrapper for sugar.

That conclusion changed the meaning of the small coffin. The remains presumed to be ashes were sugar, and the coffin therefore did not contain the child’s cremated remains. Amaia understood why Jonan had isolated the bag and pursued the resemblance across so many photographs: a seemingly minor piece of packaging supplied evidence that the tomb’s contents had been misrepresented.

The Child Behind the Initials

When Amaia presented the enlarged photographs to colleagues, she identified the small coffin’s intended occupant as Yolanda Berrueta and Marcel Tremond’s first daughter. The girl had been born a year before the twins and had died soon after birth at her parents’ home in Oieregi. The photographs thus connected the sugar-filled coffin not simply to the twins’ burial, but to an earlier child whose grave and remains were part of the concealed story.

The explosion made the tomb’s interior available to examination, while Jonan’s careful photographic record preserved details that could be compared after the fact. His photographs moved the investigation beyond what could be seen in the damaged grave: the initials, the open metal coffin, and the matching packaging together revealed that the supposed ashes were sugar and pointed to the missing remains of Yolanda and Marcel’s first daughter. The tomb’s contents, rather than the blast alone, became the event’s decisive investigative consequence.

Evidence After the Explosion

Jonan had left printed enlargements in Amaia’s mailbox in Pamplona. After his death, she collected them and brought them to the investigation, explaining that she had also sent the photographs to the station. Iriarte questioned why Jonan had left them at her home rather than sending them electronically to the police. Amaia nevertheless argued that the images were evidence in the case and should not be set aside on procedural grounds.

The posthumous arrival of the photographs made the explosion an investigation that continued through material traces. Yolanda’s act had opened the tomb; Jonan’s images allowed its contents to be read, and the comparison with a sugar packet transformed an apparent burial detail into evidence of substitution. The chain of discovery exposed a child’s place in the family history while leaving the whereabouts of her remains unresolved in the presented evidence.