Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #601

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Mom Burnt 13yr-old Daughter's Rapist Alive After He Taunted Her While Out of Prison
By Reanna Smith
A devastated mom was hand- ed a jail
sentence after she burnt 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 sickening crime and even taunted María as he asked "how her daughter was". Cosme
then went into a local bar María's family frequent- ed.
In the meantime, María, who had been left feeling a combination of rage, fear and hysteria over his question, went to a nearby petrol station and pur- chased a con- tainer of fuel.
She entered the bar Cosme was at, poured the gasoline over his head and set her
daughter's rapist alight. Cosme suffered burns over 90% of his body and died in hospital days later.
María was report- edly found wan- dering around the port on the evening of the killing and con- fessed. She claimed she'd intended to scare or badly injure him to give him an idea of what he put her daughter through.
María was sen- tenced to nine- and-a-half years in jail for the killing, which was later reduced to five-and-a-half years on appeal. The mother's case garnered sympathy from across the coun- try and there was a huge effort to keep her out of prison.
Petitions received thousands of sig- natures, medical records showed she'd been expe- riencing severe depression and anxiety, numer- ous appeals were made and a request was even made for her to be included in Spain's Easter reprieve list.
In 2011, after she'd served a total of one year and 10 days in prison, a court
agreed to sus- pend her sen- tence pending an application for an official pardon, citing "special cir- cumstances" and taking into account the 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 par- tial pardon. In 2017 María was granted the abili- ty to leave the prison between the hours of 11am and 7pm before her release in 2018.
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iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine