María del Carmen García was sentenced to prison after killing her 13-year-old daughter’s rapist by pouring gasoline over him and setting him on fire after he taunted her.
A devastated mother was handed a jail sentence after she burned her daughter’s rapist alive following his release from prison.
Spanish woman María del Carmen García’s daughter Verónica was just 13 years old when she was raped at knifepoint by her neighbor Antonio Cosme in 1998. The rapist was sentenced to nine years in prison for the crime, but in June 2005, he was on day release when he approached María at a bus stop near her home outside of Alicante.
Cosme showed no remorse for his heinous crime and even taunted María by asking, “how her daughter was.” He then went into a local bar that María’s family frequented.
Meanwhile, María, who was left feeling a combination of rage, fear, and hysteria over his question, went to a nearby petrol station and purchased a container of fuel.
She entered the bar where Cosme was, poured gasoline over his head, and set her daughter’s rapist on fire. Cosme suffered burns over 90% of his body and died in the hospital days later.
María was reportedly found wandering around the port on the evening of the killing and confessed. She claimed she had intended to scare or badly injure him to give him an idea of what he put her daughter through.
María was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail for the killing, which was later reduced to five-and-a-half years on appeal. Her case garnered sympathy from across the country, and there was a significant effort to keep her out of prison.
Petitions received thousands of signatures, medical records showed she had been experiencing severe depression and anxiety, numerous appeals were made, and a request was even made for her to be included in Spain’s Easter reprieve list.
In 2011, after she had served a total of one year and 10 days in prison, a court agreed to suspend her sentence pending an application for an official pardon, citing “special circumstances” and taking into account that she had no previous criminal record and had pleaded insanity at the time of the offense.
However, in 2013, María returned to prison after the regional high court of Alicante rejected a plea by her lawyer to order a stay on her imprisonment after the Spanish government denied her request for a partial pardon. In 2017, María was granted the ability to leave the prison between the hours of 11 am and 7 pm before her release in 2018.
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