Man who raped and killed teen 30 years ago jailed after dad hunts him down
A man who brutally raped and killed an 18-year-old woman is to be jailed in Colombia almost 30 years later after being tracked down by her dad.
Martin Mestre, from Colombia, never gave up the hunt for killer Jaime Saade, who was in hiding in Brazil after torturing, raping and then shooting dead the teen.
Saade fled to Brazil after murdering Nancy Mestre on New Year's Day, 1994, in Barranquilla, Colombia, and trying to pass off the killing as suicide.
Now justice officials in Brazil have authorised the extradition of the killer, who was sentenced in absentia to 27 years in prison in 1996.
His detention only came after decades of detective work by Nancy's dedicated dad, who found his daughter's murderer in his new life in Belo Horizonte in 2020.
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Nancy Mestre poses with her parents and brother (Newsflash)Saade was living another life with a Brazillian wife and two children under the fake name Henrique dos Santos Abdala.
He was arrested in 2020 by Interpol, but Brazil's Supreme Federal Court at first denied his extradition to Colombia.
But Nancy's father refused to give up and now the Second Chamber of the Brazilian Supreme Court has voted to extradite Saade to Colombia.
As it delivered its ruling on April 18, Luiz Edson Fachin, a judge serving on the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, said: "Nancy is not just a Colombian victim, but is part of the hundreds of thousands who suffer the same fate every hour throughout the American continent, especially in Brazil."
The ruling reportedly says that Saade will be handed over to the Colombian authorities to finish serving his sentence for Nancy's rape and murder.
The Colombian authorities will have to account for the three years that Saade has already served in prison in Brazil.
Jaime Saade is to be extradited to Colombia (Newsflash)Speaking to BBC Brazil in 2022, Martin Mestre had said: "I will only have peace when my daughter's murderer is imprisoned in a Colombian penitentiary."
On the morning of 1st January 1994, dad Martin went to look for her at Saade's home and found the killer's mother mopping the apartment floor.
She told him that Nancy had been in an accident and was in hospital.
After arriving at the hospital, Saade's father told Mr Mestre that Nancy had attempted suicide and was in surgery.
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She had been taken to hospital by Saade, his father and another woman who also lived at their home.
Martin recalled: "It was little by little that I began to organise in my head what had happened. They raped her, abused her, and threw her in the back of a pickup truck. I said, 'My God, what did they do to my daughter!'"
Nancy had been shot in the head and remained in a coma for the next eight days before dying on January 9, 1994.
An investigation revealed that Nancy had been raped and shot in the head by her boyfriend, with police ruling out a suicide attempt.
Fleeing Saade was sentenced to 27 years in prison for murder and rape in 1996.
But part of the crime has still not been solved.
Police forensic experts discovered someone else had been in the room when Nancy died, with the authorities finding a blood type that matched neither Saade nor his young victim.
And while Mr Mestre was watching over his daughter in hospital, Saade fled the country.
Mr Mestre said: "Jaime began his flight the same day of the murder and he was never seen again in the country."
He finally tracked down Saade after learning that one of his brothers lived in Brazil.
He passed on what he knew to the authorities and they identified him as Henrique dos Santos Abdala after he left a fingerprint on a glass in a bar.
Now that Saade is finally set to be extradited to Colombia, Martin told local media: "God's timing is perfect. Everything has to be as he indicates that it should be.
"At no time did I doubt that we were going to achieve it. I asked God to give me tenacity and time to continue in this fight so that my daughter's crime would not go unpunished.
"That the murderer Jaime Saade will pay for what he did: the torture and sexual abuse that he did to my daughter in order to later murder her."
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