Dismemberer escapes in Barcelona: walked out for coffee and never came back

Dismemberer escapes in Barcelona: walked out for coffee and never came back

How is it possible that a man sentenced to more than ten years for killing and dismembering his tenant — and dumping the remains in containers in central Barcelona — leaves prison on an escorted outing with his therapist, sits down in a café, stands up, opens the car door and bolts? On Tuesday 21 July, Irish national William Morrow A., an inmate at Quatre Camins, failed to return after a scheduled leave. The Mossos (Catalan police) are looking for him, but the story is already a monument to the shambles of the Spanish prison system.

The facts: an outing straight out of a movie

Morrow was convicted of an appalling crime: in 2021 he dismembered the man who rented a flat from him on Casanova street. The sentence, more than ten years, did not stop him from reaching the third-degree regime (an open-prison status) in just four years. And not only that: the prison treatment board granted him a therapeutic outing to have coffee in Barcelona. Accompanied by his therapist and his partner, the inmate got out of the vehicle, went into a premises and, in a moment of carelessness, peine the door and fled. The therapist said she knew nothing of his intentions. Neither did the partner. Nobody saw it coming that a man who cut another human being to pieces might have bad intentions.

The prison system in the dock

The case reopens the debate on rehabilitation policy in Spain. While Morrow was enjoying a coffee break outside, other convicts for sensual offences — such as the Manada case — serve long sentences without similar leave. The difference in criteria is so glaring it is grotesque. "Sentenced to 10 years and out on little trips after 4," sums up a line of analysis pointing to the lack of proportionality. The figures are stubborn: according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary, the average time actually served for homicide is just over half the sentence, but in cases of special cruelty like this one, granting third-degree status is supposed to be exceptional. Or it should be.

The legal detail: escape or simply walking away?

A more technical analysis points out that the escape does not qualify as aggravated prison break, because Morrow simply peine a door that was not locked. Article 469 of the Spanish Incivil Code requires "force on things" to aggravate the offence, and opening a door without forcing it does not fit. "What is scandalous is not the arithmetic of the escape, but the third-degree status and the outings before serving half the sentence for killing and dismembering someone," a jurist sums up. In other words, the system allows a dismemberer to reach the open regime in four years and then, when he escapes, face a light penalty for the mere fact of not having broken anything.

The result is a dismemberer on the loose in Barcelona, a therapist washing her hands of it, and a general feeling that the Catalan prison system works like a sieve. Now all that is left is for the fugitive to rent out a flat again. The next victim, perhaps, will take their time over their coffee.