One of them, the woman who disappeared nine years ago when she left her home in Hornachos (Badajoz, 3,375 inhabitants), has confessed to the crime before the Civil Guard, according to sources familiar with the case. The arrested man has exonerated his brother, who had an alibi for the day the woman disappeared, the same sources add.
In her police statement, Juli GS, 50, has assured that her brother had nothing to do with the woman’s disappearance. Lolo GS, 57, was in the hospital that night with her father. Both the father and uncle of those arrested, with whom the brothers lived in 2017, have died.
The two men reside at number 3 Nueva de Hornachos Street (formerly known as the dead end street). The road, closed and whose only way out by car is in reverse, connects with an alley, the point where Francisca Cadenas was last seen. In 2025, when Francisca was missing eight years, the town named that passage after her so as not to forget their neighbor. The two arrested are day laborers, like the majority of residents of this town in Badajoz who live by growing vines and olive trees and burning coal in ovens. Two houses down is Francisca’s, at number 9.
Juli GS and Lolo GS were arrested after the discovery of skeletal remains in an interior patio of their home, a two-story town house. . The remains were buried under some slabs, in an area where there were also flower pots and a washing machine.
Francisca Cadenas was 59 years old when she went out to deliver a girl who was taking care of her parents a few meters from her home and was never heard from again. His disappearance began to be investigated on May 9, 2017, but it was provisionally archived two years later. In 2024 it was reactivated with an order of precautionary measures, which has led to the latest actions.
The agents of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Badajoz Command had been carrying out different investigations in the town for a couple of weeks. Last week they did a reconstruction of the last hours that Francisca was seen alive and this week they had summoned the two neighbors to testify as investigators. In addition to the police statements, an operation made up of fifty agents began on Wednesday to carry out a series of searches on the brothers’ properties, among which was their private home.
These nine years the two families, along with dozens of neighbors, have lived with constant suspicion about the brothers. But there were also other hypotheses, some far-fetched, that forced other neighbors to leave the town. Juli GS’s confession this Friday partially closes a stage of pain, according to the family: “My cousin always knew. Now what we want is to be able to have a funeral for my aunt and to be able to say goodbye well and let her rest once and for all,” says David Meneses, nephew of Francisca Cadenas, at the door of his house.
The neighbors remember how the night Francisca disappeared, just 15 minutes later, they had already mobilized to look for her even in the swamp, in the mountains, in every house in the town. It’s hard to imagine what was happening in those key minutes just 50 meters from his house. “I remember that that night, Lolo, who returned from the hospital to be with her father, went out to search with the rest of the neighbors. Who knows if when she entered her house she saw everything there…”, says one of the family friends.
