Drama in Spain: Woman suddenly confesses to shooting a British pensioner | World | News

A nine-member jury has unanimously found a 48-year-old real estate agent guilty of the brutal murder of 80-year-old Monica Warren after he shot and stabbed the victim to death in her Costa Blanca home.

Before her trial began on Monday at a court in Elche, south of Alicante, prosecutors said they wanted to sentence her to 28 years in prison for murder and arson.

However, the prison sentence for the confessed murderer, identified locally only as Yolanda GR, was reduced to just over 15 years following her confession on the first day of her trial.

As a result, the trial ended on Wednesday, five days earlier than planned.

Her defense attorney, Joquin de Lacy, argued that she should be given mitigating circumstances and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.

The trial judge has postponed the verdict and is expected to announce his decision in a written judgment in the next few days.

Ms Warren was stabbed multiple times and shot three times in her home in Elche on the afternoon of May 4, 2022.

Yolanda was arrested and charged along with her teenage son, who died in June aged 18, a day before his murder trial was due to begin in a juvenile court in Alicante after he lost control of his Mercedes convertible on the AP-7 motorway near Campoamor, south of the resort of Torrevieja. He was out on bail at the time after initially being held on remand in a youth detention centre.

The surviving defendant claimed she did not know Ms Warren had suffered a “psychotic episode” when she killed her while driving around looking for villas to sell to a client after her victim let her into his house in heavy rain.

Prosecutors argued that Ms Warren’s killing was a planned murder and questioned the defendant’s decision to cite mental health issues as the reason after she failed to cooperate with investigators for two years before the case went to trial this week.

According to reports, the British pensioner may have been involved in a property dispute, but a proven motive could never be determined.

The arson charge relates to the confessed killer’s actions after the murder, when she doused the car she had driven to the dead woman’s house with petrol and set it on fire in an Alicante street, damaging several other cars. The prosecution claimed she was trying to eliminate evidence.

Ms Warren, who was born in Germany but became a British citizen through marriage, moved to Spain with her British-born husband John more than 20 years before her murder. A friend revealed she had worked as a model in London. Mr Warren died of cancer several years before the murder and lived alone.

A plumber who the British woman had called to her home to carry out an urgent repair raised the alarm after discovering a pool of blood. He told an operator that he was worried because he had seen two people in hoodies leave the pensioner’s house and drive off in a black Peugeot. They had told him that the British woman was ill and asked him to come back the next day.

Following the fatal stabbing and gunshot wound, Spanish police said that neither suspect had a criminal record, the weapon used had been found and her body had been moved from the scene of her killing to where it was eventually found – under a bed.

On the first day of the trial on Monday, the defendant said she “lost her head” and shot Ms Warren after seeing a “white silhouette” knocking on her door in the pouring rain.

She claimed that in the months before the shooting she had been driven insane by a “gray-haired” person who followed her everywhere, local newspaper Informacion reported.

She claimed she initially acted alone, but later asked her teenage son, who was sitting outside in her car, to help her move the victim’s body in a “state of shock.”