The story of the father who searched the world for his daughter’s killer and found him after 26 years

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They say justice takes time, but it comes. This is the case with Nancy Mestre, a young Colombian high school student who was raped and killed in the early morning of January 1, 1994.

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his killer, Jaime Saade Cormané, was caught in 2020 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He remained a fugitive from justice for 26 years, having escaped on the same day of the gruesome crime.

The business manager and member of a high society family was sentenced in absentia in his home country in July 1996. 25 years’ imprisonment for the crime of murder and 2 years for rape.

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Jaime Saade and Nancy Mestre, perpetrator and victim.

Jaime Saade and Nancy Mestre, perpetrator and victim.

Saade – sentenced to 27 years in prison by a Colombian court in absentia in 1996 for the murder and rape of Nancy Mestre – was arrested in 2020 by Interpol, but Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) denied his extradition to Colombia in the same year. Mestre didn’t lower his arms, he challenged the sentence and waited, even if the weather was unfavorable to him because the crime, according to the laws of his country, prescribes this year.

On Tuesday, the STF magistrates met again and by majority vote they approved Saade’s extradition. The decision was made by the Second Chamber of the Brazilian High Court, which reviewed the case.

Saade will be handed over to the Colombian authorities so that he can finish serving his sentence for murder. His extradition for rape has already been timed. Colombian justice will have to serve the period in which the man was imprisoned in Brazil.

a heartbreaking story

The story of Martín Mestre, a father who for years has been looking for his daughter’s killer, is a story of deep pain. The last time he saw his daughter was on his doorstep after toasting with his wife and two children. One of them, Nancy Mariana, who was 18, had asked permission to celebrate the New Year away from home and with Jaime Saade, with whom she had been dating for some time.

Mestre came out to greet them. “Come back at three,” he reminded her. “Take care of her for me,” he asked. The latter is Mestre’s memory of her daughter, according to the Spanish newspaper El País.

On the morning of January 1, 1994, Martín woke up and heard that his daughter had not come home at three in the morning as she had requested, and began a search in several nightclubs until she reached Jaime Saade’s house.

Martin Mestre and his daughter Nancy Mestre.

Martin Mestre and his daughter Nancy Mestre.

“Jaime’s mother was cleaning her son’s apartment, which was attached to her house. At dawn on the first day of the year. The whole floor was wet. The woman looked at him and said: your daughter has been in an accident, she is in the Caribbean clinic ”, was the cruel account that Martín received. Upon arrival at the medical center, Saade told him that his daughter had attempted suicide by shooting herself with a firearm.

Nancy was in the clinic and died days later, but the strangest thing was the disappearance of Jaime Saade, of whom nothing has been heard to clarify what happened. “In 1996, a Colombian judge sentenced Saade to 27 years in prison for the murder and rape of Nancy Mariana, despite her disappearance. Suicide was ruled out.” says the newspaper El País.

And before this sentence, Martín began the search for Saade from heaven and earth.

Martín took an intelligence course and with four fake profiles on social networks he began to get close to the Saade family,

The killer and the image of the murdered girl.

The killer and the image of the murdered girl.

Maestre’s experience together with two colonels who helped him in the investigation led them to find Saade in Belo Horizonte, Brazil after analyzing many conversations and posts they were reviewing from Jaime’s relatives.

Interpol tracked down a man who matched the features of Jaime Saade, but his name was Henrique Dos Santos Abdala, married with two children. The Brazilian police investigated him and thanks to the fingerprint found on a glass he used in a bar, they understood that it was him.

The different faces of the killer.

The different faces of the killer.

“God’s timing is perfect. Everything must be as He indicates it should be. At no time did I doubt that we would make it. I asked God to give me persistence and time to continue in this fight so that my daughter’s crime does not go unpunished. That the killer Jaime Saade Cormane will pay for what he did: the torture and sexual abuse he did to my daughter and then killed her,” Martín told El Heraldo de Colombia newspaper.

Source: Clarin

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