Diana death reconstruction exposes killer's 'lies and contradictions'

The student and model from Pozuelo de Alarcón vanished when she was walking back from the local fiestas in A Pobra do Caramiñal, (A Coruña province, Galicia) to the holiday home her family had spent every summer in since she was a toddler.

She was known to be alive at 02.20 on the morning of August 22, 2016, when she sent a WhatsApp message to a friend in Madrid saying she thought she was being followed by one of the fairground men, who was later ruled out as a suspect.

A 16-month search ensued, during which police said they had their eye on a suspect whom they were waiting to slip up, whilst Diana's family and the general public believed she was alive and held hostage.

Hopes were dashed on New Year's Eve 2017 when the 18-year-old's naked body was found in a well in an industrial estate in Asados, in the Rianxo area, 15 kilometres from A Pobra.

José Enrique Abuín Gey, 43, was finally arrested after trying to kidnap a 33-year-old woman walking in the dark on Christmas Day, but who was rescued by passers-by when she was almost in his car boot.

The reconstruction started in A Pobra, with Abuín Gey claiming Diana had spotted him stealing vats of petrol from the caravan park where the fairground organisers were staying.

He said Diana had been walking along the seafront esplanade when he accidentally reversed into her in his grey Alfa Romeo, and he demonstrated with a dummy how he had 'accidentally' strangled her.

The entire scene was said to 'look contrived', and police have already ruled out Abuín Gey's having run Diana over, since there were no marks on his car, her body or any of the roads to evidence this.

Also, as the family's solicitor Ricardo Pérez Lama said, the location was wrong because it was not on Diana's route home and there was 'obviously' no reason for her to have been there of her own free will.

Police and the family do not believe Abuín Gey's claims that the young woman's death had no sexual motive involved – partly because of the attempted Christmas Day kidnap and partly because Diana's body was naked and her underwear found in the warehouse in Asados.

Abuín Gey showed how he allegedly placed Diana's body in the back seat and drove to Rianxo, crossing the bridge over the river Arousa in the port of Taragoña where he admitted to having thrown the victim's iPhone in the water – a fact he could not deny, since it had been traced to the bridge where the signal had disappeared at around 04.15, and was found months later by a fisherman.

He showed how he had tied bricks to Diana's body before throwing her down the eight-metre-deep well from where police divers recovered her body on New Year's Eve.

Other than her handbag, in the well, and an item of underwear in the warehouse, her other clothing – pink shorts, a white top, a zip-up hoodie and black lace-up shoes – were nowhere to be seen.

Hitherto unknown to the police, Abuín Gey went on an unexpected 40-kilometre journey after disposing of Diana's body – he drove to his house in Outeiro, Rianxo and then carried on past it to the town of Padrón, where he pulled up in a plot of wasteland near a restaurant in the parish of A Escravitude and dumped her clothes.

These have never been recovered.

Pérez Lama says Abuín Gey's version is 'full of contradictions and lies'.

“All these scenic routes are great, but they don't match up to the reality,” he said.

The young woman's mother, Diana López-Pinel, wanted to see the reconstruction close up, but police would not let her, only allowing her to view it from a distance.

She said that although she felt she needed to do it, “having my daughter's murderer so close by was very hard.”

Sra López-Pinel and her younger daughter Valeria, who was 16 when Diana disappeared, reportedly wept when they saw the last place that the victim was known to be alive.

Following the reconstruction, the case is now nearly finalised and the ultimate hearing and sentencing is now on the horizon.