Dana Leonte's family to hold funeral in Vélez-Málaga seven years after her murder

The family of Dana Leonte, the 30-year-old Romanian woman who was murdered in the village of Arenas in Malaga province's Axarquía in June 2019, will finally be able to lay her to rest almost seven years after she was killed. On Friday 20 March, her relatives will receive the skeletal remains that have been found since September 2019 at various locations around the village.

They have announced that a wake will be held on Friday and a burial on Saturday 21 March at the cemetery in Vélez-Málaga. The family says it will be an intimate and highly symbolic ceremony to bring closure to "such a painful chapter" in their lives.

In a message posted on social media, Dana's brother, Florín Leonte, has announced that the family will finally be able to say goodbye to Dana “as she deserves” and has expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of support received since her disappearance and subsequent death became known.

Speaking to SUR on Wednesday 18 March, Florín explained that “after almost seven years” the family feel they can “close this chapter”, although they insist that true justice will only be served when the jury trial takes place at the court of appeal in Malaga, for which no date has yet been set, but which they are confident will be scheduled this year.

Florín Leonte is also acting as a private prosecutor and has custody of the couple’s daughter, who is now seven years old and who was placed in his care by court order in September 2020 after a court in Malaga ruled that she should be placed in foster care, deeming it inappropriate for her to remain with her father’s family. “I have tried to ensure she grows up in a safe environment, far from the family of my sister’s alleged murderer,” he told SUR at the time.

Dana Leonte’s remains have been kept in the custody of the Malaga Institute of Legal Medicine (ILM) in Malaga city since they were found. The case is now entering the decisive phase of the trial. Malaga's Public Prosecutor’s Office, in a submission signed by the senior prosecutor for violence against women, Flor de Torres, is seeking a 17-year prison sentence for Dana's ex-boyfriend and father to their daughter, Sergio Ruiz, who it accuses of murder and an offence against moral integrity.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the accused struck Dana on the head with a wooden stick at the property in Arenas, dismembered her and ‘scattered her remains’ across various locations in the Axarquía village, making it difficult to find her and exacerbating the emotional distress suffered by the family.

The private prosecution representing the family is seeking a 20-year prison sentence, arguing that this constitutes a case of premeditated murder with the aggravating factors of family and gender. In her account, lawyer Antonia Barba maintains that Sergio Ruiz struck Dana, wrapped her in a duvet, dragged her down the stairs and disposed of the body in the countryside, subsequently using the victim’s phone to pretend she was still alive and make out that Dana's disappearance was voluntary.

The Guardia Civil's investigation and forensic reports support this theory: in September 2019, a dog located a femur with an fracture which would have been caused before her death and soft tissue remains in an area of Arenas; in the weeks that followed, other bones – a tibia, ribs, vertebrae, pelvis and the other femur – were found scattered across various locations within Arenas. Furthermore, officers found a wooden stick with a strand of Dana’s hair embedded in it, reddish stains in the suspect’s home and on his car, as well as genetic traces on key fabrics and surfaces.

A forensic linguistics report, prepared by the expert Sheila Queralt, concluded that the messages sent from Dana’s mobile phone after the time of the crime were not written by her, but by Sergio, due to the type of language, the spelling mistakes and the abbreviations used, which reinforces the hypothesis that conversations were simulated to construct an alibi. Added to this is the geolocation analysis of the phones, which places them together on the route between Arenas and Vélez-Málaga and links the defendant’s mobile to the area where the skeletal remains were found on as many as 14 occasions in the weeks that followed.

The defence team for Sergio Ruiz, who has been on bail since June 2020 after paying 8,000-euro bail, on several occasions requested that the preliminary investigation be closed, citing undue delays and arguing that the proceedings “have far exceeded a reasonable timeframe”. However, the judge had already agreed in 2022 to proceed with the case against him for manslaughter or murder and for an offence against moral integrity, having found sufficient evidence that he had struck Dana with a stick and concealed her remains.

While awaiting a date for the trial, Dana's family is now focusing its efforts on the wake and funeral. “It is very hard to know that we only have part of her body, but at least we will be able to lay her to rest,” Florín told SUR. The brother wants the little girl to grow up knowing, when the time comes, “that her mother didn’t leave, that she was taken from her”, and he is confident that the court will impose “an exemplary sentence” on the man they continue to hold responsible for a crime that shocked the Axarquía and the entire province.