Malaga 'TikTok serial killer' faces 41 years over rape and murder on Valencia coast

Prosecutors have also accused Jurado Montilla of an offence against moral integrity, alleging that he concealed Estepa's death and the location of her body while remaining in telephone contact with her family between September 2023 and January 2024.

José Jurado Montilla, from Campanillas in Malaga, was already known to police and the courts before the latest case. Known in his adolescence as 'El Titi', he was convicted in the 1980s of killing four people in Malaga and has since acquired the nickname 'Dinamita Montilla'.

More recently, he has been dubbed the 'TikTok serial killer'.

The latest case concerns Ester Estepa, a 42-year-old woman from Seville who crossed paths with Jurado Montilla on the Valencian coast in the summer of 2023. She subsequently disappeared without a trace, and her body was found months later in an area of Gandía, after which Jurado Montilla became the main suspect in her death.

According to the indictment, the killing took place between 1am and 8.30am on 23 August 2023 in an area near the junction of the N-337 and N-332 roads, close to Bairén castle in Gandía.

Prosecutors allege that Jurado Montilla, "in order to satisfy his sexual desires", tried to have sex with Estepa but she refused. A struggle then broke out during which he allegedly grabbed her forcefully by the thighs, causing a small bruise on her left thigh and several bruises on her right.

When he failed to "break Ester's will", prosecutors allege that Jurado Montilla used a blunt object, which could have been a stone, a log or something similar, and struck her hard on the head.

They say he either intended to kill her or accepted that his actions could result in her death. The blow caused severe head trauma, including fractures to the base of the skull and the parieto-occipital region.

Estepa lost consciousness and was left in a state of "total vulnerability", which prosecutors allege Jurado Montilla exploited to carry out the sexual act.

She died shortly afterwards from acute post-traumatic cardiorespiratory arrest caused by damage to vital neurological centres resulting from the head injury.

The following day, Jurado Montilla allegedly left the area where Estepa's body was located, abandoning it without reporting what had happened or where she was.

Between September 2023 and January 2024, prosecutors allege that he called Estepa's mother several times, "giving her hope" that her daughter could still be alive while concealing the fact that she had died and where her body was located.

The prosecution is seeking 41 years in prison, taking into account the aggravating circumstance of reoffending because of Jurado Montilla's previous conviction for four killings in Malaga.

In June, he was also sentenced to 24 and a half years in prison for the murder of David, a young university student whom he killed by shooting him with a shotgun in Los Montes de Málaga. That conviction is not yet final.