The story of the horrendous crime of Nancy Mestre: will there be justice after 29 years?

“We saw that her heart was beating very slowly and we began to rub her little hands and sing her lullabies. We help her to die and give her over to God. We just thought: oh my gosh, get it!”

That is how Martin Mestrefather of Nancy Mestreremembers the last moments he shared with his daughter, after she was shot in the head by who would be her suitor, Jaime Saade.

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The story began on December 31, 1993 in full New Year’s celebration in Barranquilla. Nancy Mestre, an 18-year-old girl, shared with her family and then went to her suitor’s house to continue the celebration. Her father gave her permission until 3:00 am on January 1 to return to her house, but she never returned.

Martín Mestre still remembers how his daughter met the man who ended her life: “The girls in the last grade at Marymount School met this man and I didn’t know I was 10 years older than him. If not, I don’t let my daughter go out with an older person.”

On the morning of December 31, 1993, Nancy He told his father great news, he had passed the English exam he needed to be able to travel to the United States.

With the joy that characterized her, Martín remembers that her daughter came home and told her: “Daddy, I have two news for you, one good and one bad.. The good news is that I passed the test,” said Nancy. “And which one is the bad one?” asked Martín. “I’m going to the United States,” she replied.

Given the joy of the news, Mestre assures that his daughter He asked her for special permission: to spend New Year’s Eve with who would be her suitor. “She asked her mother and me for permission to go out that day because Jaime Saade wanted to take her to the family dinner, I had seen him once or twice,” she says.

The young woman was murdered at dawn on January 1, 1994. (Personal file).

When the clock struck midnight, Nancy Mestre celebrated with her family and around 1:00 am Jaime Saade came to pick her up. Before they left her, Martin asked the man to take care of her, but not before reminding him that they only had permission until 3:00 a.m.

Around 6:00 am on January 1, 1994, Martín woke up with a hunch, his father’s instinct told him that something was wrong. “I went looking for her everywhere she could be. I came out desperate.”

Upon arriving at the Saade family home, Martín found Jaime’s mother mopping the floor. “Since it was dark, I didn’t realize there was blood and then I realized it was my daughter’s,” she narrates.

When he asked for an explanation about what had happened inside the house, the woman only knew how to answer that Nancy had suffered an accident and that he was in the Caribbean Clinic.

With his heart in his hand, Martín drove to that place and there he found a devastating image: his daughter was undergoing surgery because she was shot in the head. The nurses informed her that she had arrived completely naked, covered with a sheet, “with traces of sand and some plants, as if she had been thrown into the bush.” The situation was heartbreaking and Martín was filled with anguish to learn that the life of his daughter hung by a thread.

This was just the beginning of an odyssey that has taken her entire life. What had happened in the hours when Nancy left her house? Who shot her? Why didn’t they tell her what had happened? Where was Jaime?

Precisely that last question haunted him over and over again, because while his daughter was struggling between life and death, that man whom he had seen a little more than twice, and who at that moment he did not know was about 10 years older than Nancy, he was missing.

”When I returned to the clinic with my wife, he was gone, he was gone.”, recalls Martin.

Relentless search

Nancy fought for her life for several days, but finally his heart stopped beating on January 9, 1994. The news was devastating to his family, who mourned his departure with unfathomable pain. But for Martín, the anguish over the death of his daughter was also mixed with the desire to find the culprit.

After saying goodbye, she was filled with courage and filed a complaint against Jaime Saade, the man who was with Nancy the morning she was attacked and who left the country shortly after. “I promised to look for him, so that he would respond”recalls Martín, not knowing that this search would take him 26 years.

At the same time, the authorities were also targeting Saade as the prime suspect. Nancy’s body had several bruises, traces of gunpowder on her hands indicated that she had tried to fight for her life.

The forensic report was clear, The woman from Barranquilla had been sexually assaulted and murdered by her partner, Jaime Saade.

Nancy Mestre (right) and her family. (Personal file).

Despite not having the technological resources of today, Martín managed. With a photograph by Jaime Saade began to draw it in all possible ways: bald, with a beard, in a cap, thin, with hair. “We sent them everywhere to get him arrested.”

“That’s where the Via Crucis of my life began, combining part of my work with part of the search for the murderer, doing the impossible and being attentive to all the authorities and trying to ensure that the case is not forgotten,” says Martín, who is bankrupt. the voice for his advanced age.

And so he did. 26 years keeping the memory of her daughter alive, hoping that the heinous crime that took away Nancy’s dreams would not be forgotten. “My biggest concern was that the case would be forgotten and that the authorities would never catch this guy.”

Photograph by Jaime Saade, modified by Martín Mestre.

Year after year, Martín was in charge of reminding everyone that there was a fugitive murderer. He spoke with the Police, with the extinct DAS and even with Interpol, an entity that was in charge of issuing a red circular against Saade.

While conducting his search, he received several calls from people who had allegedly seen the man in various countries in Latin America. But none of these calls found his whereabouts.

Even a few days after Nancy’s death, Martín Mestre received a letter from an anonymous woman who claimed to have witnessed the events. In the letter this woman said:

”My conscience does not let me live in peace because of the horrifying case and seeing it in days gone by on a television newscast made up my mind, albeit in a cowardly way, because I have not dared to go to the authorities for fear that they would also kill me. they will kill”.

The woman, who claimed to be present near the place for several minutes, stated that she reached “I heard tremendous screams of men and that was when I decided to go up as well and I was able to see three or four naked men, of whom, from the defendant’s photographs, he was one of them, and they shouted “You can’t let her go because she saw us and told her.” It’s going to tell everyone.”

This anonymous version, however, has never been confirmed in investigations by the authorities.

In his inquiries, Martin Mestre discovered that his daughter’s murderer had a brother who lived in BrazilThat is why he focused his attention on the South American giant. “But the country is so big that one could not establish in which city one could be. And he could go further, that was the problem”.

After supporting the intelligence work with the Police and Interpol, it was established that Jaime Saade was apparently in Belo Horizonte. “They had to be sure that there was an arrest warrant, because they were not going to arrest a person who had an expired warrant.”

The investigations led the authorities to identify a doctor in that city, with a physical resemblance very similar to that of Saade, but he had another name: Henrique Dos Santos. The lack of clarity about the identity of this man led them to be cautious so as not to arouse suspicion among the possible fugitive.

The definitive clue came thanks to a fingerprint on a glass that Dos Santos used and which was collected by the Police. The result was accurate, the man posing as a doctor in Brazil was really Nancy’s murderer. This allowed them to capture him, at first, for using a false ID.

The young woman was murdered at dawn on January 1, 1994. (Family archive).

With this, Interpol gave the news of the arrest to Mestre. Martín remembers that he went into a state of shock, because he had achieved what was believed to be impossible and in the minutes that that long-awaited call lasted, it broke.

Martín Mestre could not help but remember that heinous crime of which his daughter had been a victim. “I started to cry I didn’t know why I was crying, if it was emotion or anger, I just cried and cried”. She then called Nancy’s mother and they began to thank God because justice would finally be done, but things were not easy and since they killed her nothing has been the same for them.

“The girl from heaven or wherever she was had seen that we fought for justice.”

a new setback

After being captured for the crime of false identification in 2019, Colombia requested the extradition of Jaime Saade to serve the 27-year sentence for the murder of the young woman from Barranquilla.

This led to the fact that in 2020, the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil voted to define the sending of Saade to Colombia. The result was a new coup for the Mestre family, of five magistrates, one declared himself prevented and the rest voted: two in favor and two against. That tie only meant one thing, Saade could not be sent back to the country.

“How is it possible! In Brazil, the tie favors the prisoner and they are going to release him”, says Mestre full of indignation.

“We are waiting for the final decision. Let’s hope it’s God’s will. I can’t do anything else, I can’t make false expectations with what happened.”

Martin Mestre He has dedicated his entire life to searching for his daughter’s murderer and trying to answer the questions that have haunted him since the morning of January 1, 1994. Answers that only Jaime Saade, who will be extradited to Colombia, can give him.

Brazil endorses the extradition of Jaime Saade to Colombia

The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil authorized this Tuesday, April 18, the sending to Colombia of Jaime Saade Cormane, who was found guilty of the murder of the young woman Nancy Mestreoccurred in the early morning of January 1, 1994.

According to the Brazilian high court, in the decision Minister Nunes Marques presented a tie-breaking vote, and Edson Fachin readjusted the vote. Both accompanied the rapporteur of the case, Gilmar Mendes, to finally accept the extradition request made by the Colombian government.

In the debate on Tuesday, Marques found that there are documents in which it appears that Saade committed new crimes, “which interrupted the prescription of the first one. According to him (Marques), a report by the Federal Police detailed the history of crimes of ideological falsification and use of false documents before public organizations in Brazil”.

In addition, one of the members of the Tribunal explained in his vote that “Nancy is not just a Colombian victim, but is part of hundreds of thousands who every hour suffer the same fate throughout the American continent, especially in Brazil.”

Source: Elcomercio