Rosa Peral's Tapes (Las cintas de Rosa Peral)

Hi. This is Rosa.

And, as you know, I'm calling from prison.

I hope that, by doing this, people will see who I really am,

not the person the media has made me out to be.

Of course, it won't be easy

to explain myself and let myself be known.

Everything I've been through, for instance...

All of this... I don't know what to call it.

This lynching of me they did before, during, and after the trial.

And which continues today, six years later.

If this were happening to a man instead of a woman,

they wouldn't be thinking about whether he had any sort of relationship.

And maybe they would try to find the evidence they should be looking for.

They should be looking for evidence about what happened to Pedro

and how it happened.

THIS IS THE FIRST INTERVIEW ROSA PERAL HAS GRANTED

SINCE BEING SENTENCED TO 25 YEARS IN PRISON

Hey!

Let's go!

- Hi! - Say hi. You're all on camera!

- Hi! - Hi!

THIS FOOTAGE WAS RECORDED BY PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ

TWO MONTHS BEFORE HIS MURDER

I remember that we went skiing that year.

We went with Pedro.

And I remember my younger daughter clinging to me.

Well done, honey.

Saying, "I'll go with Mommy."

And my older daughter said, "I'll go with Pedro."

And I thought, "Wow. This is what I've been looking for."

Hi!

Gorgeous.

ROSA PERAL'S TAPES

Now to the crime involving the Urban Police.

The jury has reached its verdict.

They've found defendants Rosa Peral and Albert López

guilty of premeditated murder.

It all started in 2017,

when Rosa and Albert, both officers and lovers,

plotted to kill Pedro Rodríguez,

a police officer and Rosa's romantic partner at the time.

The events were set in motion

when the victim found out about the infidelity

and became an obstacle.

That's when Rosa and Albert devised a plan to take his life.

The verdict says the two drugged and murdered Rodríguez,

before placing his body in the trunk of a car

that they set fire to near the Foix reservoir.

The two members of the Urban Police

arrested for the murder of a fellow officer...

...accuse each other.

They admit to taking part in the crime, but only as accessories.

There are three theories here.

The one put forth by Rosa's defense, in which Albert was the perpetrator.

The one put forth by Albert's defense, which has Rosa as the perpetrator.

And the one put forth by the prosecutors, which is that they were co-perpetrators.

Rosa's story falls apart

once you look at her actions in the days following the crime.

She claims she was so afraid of Albert, she couldn't go to the police.

But she was an officer.

Rosa Peral may not be a saint,

but I can assure you, she's not a murderer.

For her, the flirting, the conquests,

and having someone was a kind of constant cycle.

She was always seducing someone.

Pedro wanted to end that relationship,

but Rosa Peral refused to accept it and planned to kill him.

I don't know if she did it.

I'm just a journalist.

But what I do know is that Rosa Peral did not get a fair trial.

Do you swear by everything you just said to me?

Or do you want to confess

that this crime was a diabolical and perverse proof of love

that would unite you and Albert forever?

I did not plan anything with Albert. I did not kill Pedro.

And I absolutely stand by everything I've said.

MAY 2, 2017

DAY AFTER THE MURDER

One of the things that troubled me from the beginning,

and which I kept going over,

was how it all happened.

It seemed unfair to me that since the perpetrators

had burned the body and erased any evidence of the manner of death,

they would benefit and be indicted for homicide rather than murder.

Since I can't prove how they killed him...

PROSECUTOR FOR THE STATE

...I can't prove it was done with malice, which would make it murder.

And this, as a prosecutor, tormented me.

They thought homicide carried too light a sentence,

given the seriousness of the crime.

They needed it to be considered murder to give them a harsher sentence.

ROSA'S LAWYER

So they tried to put together a case that would constitute murder,

seeking out evidence that wasn't evidence,

but rather was conjecture and mere suspicion.

There are no fingerprints. We don't have a murder weapon.

The victim's body doesn't provide any clues.

In light of all that, what do we do?

We broaden our perspective

and seek out secondary elements that would allow us to reach a conclusion.

Because they're secondary, they need to be more substantial.

I look at it like a trail of breadcrumbs or a yellow brick road.

A path that can only take you in one direction,

to the defendants' guilt.

On Saturday I went to the police station

and said, "I'll tell you everything I know and put an end to this."

MAY 13TH 12 DAYS AFTER THE CRIME

My first shock came when I was talking

and they said, "We're taking you to the cells."

I said, "This is a mistake."

"I came here to tell you what I know."

"I'm through staying quiet. I'll tell you what I know."

"This can't be happening to me."

I was worried about my daughters.

"How do I tell them we won't sleep together tonight?"

I don't even remember the moment when they transferred me to prison.

After four days with no food, no showers, no talking to anyone,

not even my daughters, with no news from the outside world,

stuck in a dungeon for four whole days,

they took me to a kind of basement, what they called the punishment area.

That's where they punished the women.

It wasn't the typical cell for new inmates.

They didn't know what to do with me. I didn't know I was all over the news.

I hadn't seen the press or watched TV.

I wanted to disconnect from everything.

Here is one of our first exclusives, brought by our colleague, Miquel Valls,

on the black widow of the Urban Police.

They say Rosa is unfaithful, dishonest, manipulative, and cold.

And that her boyfriend is not her first victim.

Regardless of the presumption of innocence,

she is a dangerous person.

The truth is that there have been many high-profile cases in Spain.

JOURNALIST

This is one of them.

JOURNALIST

A young, good-looking, sexually promiscuous woman,

who is also a police officer, is accused of murdering her partner.

We love a crime of passion.

All the juicy ingredients were there for us to dive right in.

The situation is becoming more complicated for Rosa Peral.

While in prison, she tried to hire a hit man

to kill her daughters' father.

Rosa poisoned her boyfriend, Pedro, before ending his life.

She's a great manipulator.

Charming, very seductive.

During the time frame they're looking into,

how many relationships was she involved in?

It is believed she was involved in three or four at the same time.

It seems that, after her partner went missing,

she did not make an effort to search for him.

Why did she wait 15 days to report it?

Doesn't act threatened...

She was the main suspect from the beginning.

This points to her being the murderer.

This was a premeditated crime, one in which she appears to be

the manipulator, the orchestrator, and the brains of the operation.

I've heard outrageous things on TV.

I've heard things that I can't believe people would say.

I'm surprised to hear people talk about the right to information.

The right to what information? What type of information would that be?

Because, before I went to trial, people already knew me.

They knew my name, my face.

They knew about the case. What had been told to them.

Logically, it was very difficult

to clear one's mind

before reading the evidence and whatever else there was to read.

Very difficult.

Jury trial number 25/2019 begins

over a presumed crime of premeditated murder

against Albert López Ferrer and Rosa María Peral Viñuela.

This was the most high-profile trial in years.

JOURNALIST

It wasn't just about seeing Albert and Rosa on the dock,

but hearing what they said, how they defended themselves.

The first day I thought, "I don't know how I'll last six weeks on this trial."

Because... And that's how it should be. It's a great responsibility.

That is to say, for a prosecutor to sign an indictment

asking for 25 years in prison,

you must take it seriously.

You are "ruining" a citizen's life, so to speak.

Jury trials always have some tension.

And you have to remember that you have nine people,

nine citizens who are a bit frightened.

PRIVATE PROSECUTOR

Even more so in this case, with all the media attention.

They look at you as if saying, "What am I doing here?"

I'd like to share with you

one of the questions Rosa frequently asks me.

"Am I being judged for the people I've slept with

or whether or not I killed Pedro?"

I wanted to highlight the importance of this issue,

which was a big part of this trial,

the idea of separating the sin from the crime.

The attorney herself knew

that in any crime with sentimental aspects,

we have to look into private lives.

So I see this as a catchy defense slogan, but...

that's about it.

Rosa, I'd like to ask you some questions

about your relationships with Rubén, Albert, and Pedro.