He jumped from the gastronomy pages to the crime news, starring in one of the most shocking crimes of the last decade. It was the night of August 5, 2018, when, in an apartment in Vallecas, César Román -whom everyone then knew as the King of Cachopo- murdered his girlfriend, Heidi Paz, a 24-year-old Honduran woman. Not content with that, he dismembered the body to hinder its identification and conceal the homicide. Neither the head nor the limbs were ever found, but the victim’s torso, which ended up in a suitcase, would be discovered days later by the Police in a warehouse he had previously rented.
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By then, Román had fled, settling in Zaragoza where he would be discovered and arrested months later. He was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison for the homicide, with the aggravating circumstances of kinship and gender. From Alcalá Meco prison, he has maintained communication with some friends who were interested “in his mental health,” corresponding with them every few months. In one of the most recent letters he sent, dated July 10 and to which this newspaper has had access, the King of Cachopo does not shy away from his past, assuring that “there are irreparable things.” Despite this, he writes that he will try to “repair the damage caused” as “he owed it to Heidi and her family.”
His idea is to increase the amount of civil liability he must pay to his victim’s children, initially 142,229 euros to each, since “they have needs and even more so without their mother”. He is achieving this, he says, thanks to a job in the PVC workshops of the penitentiary center, which also allows him to fully pay the alimony for his daughter.
In the letter, he also speaks of a conversion experienced thanks to faith. “I was baptized with the Evangelical Church, I attend worship, and that contact with God through prayer helps me a lot to see life from another perspective,” he states, then adding that he is close to finishing his Law degree in prison. He has few subjects left and a Final Degree Project that will focus, precisely, on self-responsibility and Restorative Justice from the victimizer’s perspective. He hopes to finish the degree by the end of this year or early next, and when he gets out, work as a “mediator in the field of civil, commercial, consumer, family, criminal, and penitentiary law.”
“I am waiting for the Provincial Court to open the can for me (as we say for the first permit), because here they don’t dare to assume that responsibility,” says the King of Cachopo, who this December will complete half of his sentence, acknowledging that “time is now lighter than before.” “The only thing that seriously worries me is that my daughter has just turned 17 and I haven’t been able to talk to her since she was nine… I don’t know how all this will have affected her personal development and I already have serious doubts if one day I will be able to recover my relationship with her, but it is my responsibility to try.”
The letter ends with Román confessing that, from inside Alcalá Meco, he has found love again. Her name is Mar, they have been together for a year and a half, and they even have future plans. “She is an incredible girl who has given me a lot of strength and has filled my existence with hope and color. Now I just need them to let me out,” he concludes.
