Marco, the Italian turned serial killer who walled up his girlfriend's corpse

“A cold and heartless monster”. With these terms they refer in Torremolinos (Málaga) to Marco Gaio Romeo, the man that the National Police arrested on May 17 accused of the homicide of what until then had been his partner and the mother of his son, Paula, and who is now also charged with the death of another woman, Sibora Gagani, a young woman of Albanian origin living in Italy who disappeared in July 2014 and whose body was found this Tuesday walled up between the walls of the last home that the arrested man shared with the girl.

On the torso of the body, which was wrapped in plastic bags inside a camping bag and which showed signs of violence, a bouquet of flowers and various objects that could have belonged to the disappeared woman.

The agents had focused the search on a room in the apartment in which an alteration in the construction had been detected after comparing the distribution of the property with that of the adjoining house. The use of an innovative X-ray technique allowed the investigators to find the remains of the woman behind the wall, thanks also to the collaboration of the owner and the current residents of the house.

After demolishing a wall, a large chipboard box full of lime was found and, inside, the complete body of the woman in saponified conditions, as well as a plastic bag with a knife stained with dried blood.

Slim, tall and good-looking – he had shaved his hair and had grown a beard – Marco Romeo was “an apparently normal guy who greeted with a smile when he passed by,” says Silverio García, the doorman of a parking lot near EL MUNDO. Calle San Ginés, in the popular area of Carihuela, where Marco and Paula lived. Still shocked by the crime, Silverio can't believe what happened.

Marco is 45 years old and is originally from Nettuno, an Italian municipality in the metropolitan area of Rome. He left there in 2011 together with Sibora Gagani to settle on the Costa del Sol in Malaga. He likes going to the gym, archery, baseball and martial arts, as shown on his social networks.

He has worked in Torremolinos in the hospitality sector as a cook and pizza maker, but apparently he is “a problematic guy” and the jobs did not last long. At the América restaurant, next to the house he shared with Paula and where she was found stabbed, it barely lasted a month and a half.

That was his public facet, the best known, but Marco had another face, a more aggressive and violent one.. At work they knew that he had once hit Paula and those closest to the girl, 28 years old and mother of three children (the one she had with Marco and two from a previous relationship), had encouraged her to leave her.. “But she said no.. She was worried about the child,” Antonio Romero, the couple's neighbor and Paula's partner, comments with regret.

He was the first to arrive at the house on the day of the murder.. He heard Paula's screams and went down. He pounded on the door and asked Marco to let him see the young woman.. He replied that nothing was wrong and that they were only couple discussions. “Everything is fine brother,” he replied at the insistence of his neighbor. But “Paula was already dead,” he adds. When they got to the apartment, Marco had left and Paula was lying on the floor in a pool of blood.. “What I saw I will never forget,” he comments to EL MUNDO.

The National Police arrested the Italian a few hours after the event. “He was so calm, a few meters from the house, having a beer as if nothing had happened,” they comment with indignation at the América restaurant.

After his arrest as the alleged perpetrator of Paula's murder, Marco had collapsed when he saw a photograph of Sibora on a board in the police station and, at one point, confessed to investigators that he had killed the young woman and that he walled her up in the apartment they shared in this tourist town on the coast of Malaga. Then he had refused to ratify his confession before the judge, but there were sufficient reasons to return to García de la Serna's house and search it again.

The investigation, which has been taken over by the Investigating Court number 3 of Torremolinos, remains open and under summary secrecy. The alleged perpetrator of both crimes, who is currently in prison, had several previous complaints for gender violence, although none of them were deceased.. These were allegations made for two romantic relationships that the detainee had had in the past, one of which had even required the adoption of precautionary restraining measures by the authorities.