A Barcelona Provincial Court jury has unanimously convicted Luis B. of murdering his business partner, Diego Vargas, in May 2020. This verdict concludes one of the region’s most challenging ‘no-body’ criminal cases. Prosecutors successfully argued Luis B. killed Vargas during a dispute over a faked robbery of their shared illegal marijuana plantation in Sant Andreu de la Barca.
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Despite the absence of a body, a murder weapon, or any forensic evidence, the Mossos d’Esquadra built a compelling circumstantial case against the accused, convincing the nine-person jury. The verdict, delivered on Thursday, concludes a trial that has exposed the violent underworld of the local drug trade. Both the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution are now demanding a 15-year prison sentence for homicide.
A Fatal Confrontation
The case dates back to 11 May 2020, the last day Diego Vargas was seen alive. Evidence presented at trial, previously covered by Barna.News in its overview of the murder trial without a body, revealed Vargas had discovered Luis B., a man he reportedly considered a father figure, had deceived him. Luis B. had allegedly staged a robbery of their shared marijuana crop, valued at an estimated €70,000 to €80,000, to keep the profits for himself.
On the morning of his disappearance, Vargas sent a chilling audio message to his lover. “The day has come. I realised it was Luis who robbed me,” he said. “It was him and now I’m going to look for him.”
At 11:01 AM, Vargas made a missed call to Luis B. This was their customary signal for Luis to open the gate to their shared industrial warehouse in the Baix Llobregat town. Vargas then drove his electric blue Audi A4 into the facility. Neither Vargas nor his car were ever seen again. His phone, receiving 121 unanswered calls from his worried wife, Cristina, and others, subsequently fell silent.
The Digital Trail
Investigators faced a near-total lack of physical evidence. However, they meticulously pieced together a digital trail that ultimately implicated Luis B. While CCTV cameras never captured Vargas’s Audi leaving the industrial estate, they did spot Luis B.’s white Iveco van departing approximately 90 minutes after Vargas’s arrival.
Later that day, geolocation data placed Vargas’s mobile phone in the municipality of El Papiol. Concurrently, traffic cameras captured Luis B.’s distinctive van – identified by 18 matching features, including specific roof damage – travelling on a nearby road towards Gavà. This directly contradicted Luis B.’s alibi. He had voluntarily gone to the police station after the disappearance, claiming Vargas left the warehouse around 12:30 PM in his own car, heading for Gavà. The jury concluded that Luis B. took Vargas’s phone in his van to create a false trail.
Whispers in the Underworld
The jury found the motive for the murder was to silence Vargas, who had threatened his partner after discovering the deception. According to Vargas’s wife, he told Luis B. over the phone, “If I go down, you go down with me.”
As ABC Cataluña reported, prosecutors argued this threat posed an existential risk to Luis B.’s much larger criminal enterprise. Far from being a small-time grower, Luis B. provided logistics for a major drug trafficking organisation involving Albanian nationals. In fact, on the afternoon of Vargas’s murder, a meeting was held at the warehouse to discuss the logistics of smuggling several tonnes of cocaine via a submarine.
This larger conspiracy was partially exposed through conversations on Encrochat, an encrypted platform used by organised crime. These messages proved decisive for the jury. In the chats, Luis B.’s own associates identified him as responsible for Vargas’s disappearance.
“Luis has turned into a hitman for us,” one commented. Another noted seeing Vargas’s Audi partially covered with cardboard at the warehouse during the cocaine meeting. “He’s crazy, he thinks he has it all under control… they are going to track cameras and mobiles and they are going to see he is involved,” a third message read.
The Verdict and What’s Next
The jury also highlighted inconsistencies in the defendant’s testimony (he denied all charges during the trial) and his behaviour after the disappearance. He changed his story about where he ate lunch on the day of the murder and, despite his close relationship with Vargas, did not participate in the family’s desperate search efforts.
Luis B., in pre-trial detention since June 2022, will now be sentenced by the presiding magistrate of the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya. While the prosecution requests 15 years, his defence, having lost the plea for acquittal, is now arguing for a five-year sentence, citing undue delays in the legal process as a mitigating factor.
