The perpetrator spent the day drinking and taking drugs in a gay bar with the victims and then, when they invited him to their home, he stabbed them 57 times, killed them, covered up his actions. He was acquitted.
Some of the facts:
Some of the facts:
- Triviño and Luciano lived together in Spain were planning to get married. They were stabbed to death by Jacobo Piñeiro Rial in their apartment on 13 January 2006. The bodies showed a total of 57 stab wounds
- After killing them, Piñeiro took a shower and cleaned himself up. He filled a suitcase with some of their belongings to make it look like a robbery and then spilled clothing all over the place. He poured alcohol over everything, including his victims' bodies, turned on the gas spigot on the stove, and set everything on fire. The local fire department said that little evidence would have survived if it wasn't for their prompt response to the 5-alarm fire.
- Piñeiro hardly knew the men. Testimony revealed that Piñiero had spent the previous afternoon consuming cocaine and drinking at a gay bar called Strong at which Triviñio happened to work as a bartender. When his shift ended, he invited Piñeiro home. They spent the afternoon together until Luciano arrived around 10:30pm with two friends. Luciano's friends left after the late dinner but Piñeiro stayed overnight.
- There are no independent witnesses. Apparently, Triviñio was stabbed first but did not die. Piñeiro then stabbed Luciano twice while in the couples' room, and 22 more times as he followed his victim out of the room, into a corridor and out to the living room - where he died. Triviñio, in the meantime, had locked himself in the room and records show that he was able to call local authorities. The call was cut short when Piñeiro was able to break back into the room and finish him off by stabbing him 35 more times.
- His defense? . . . . His lawyer argued that Piñeiro was overcome by an "insurmountable fear of being raped and being murdered" and that his judgment was clouded by the alcohol and cocaine he had consumed in the previous two days (forensic experts had stated earlier said the effect of the cocaine would have rubbed off long before the killings and that, once he was arrested, there were no traces of alcohol in his body which did not match up with the huge amount of alcohol that Piñeiro said he had ingested). In other words, his lawyer used the well-known 'gay panic' defense.
- Piñeiro was acquitted of murder charges.
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