June 13, 2021- 6:31 p.m.
A DAD suspected of killing his two daughters and dumping them 3000ft under the sea planned to cause their mum “inhumane pain”, says a judge.
The criminal investigation in to fugitive Tomas Antonio Gimeno, 37, should be handed to a domestic violence court, she added in Spain.
Gimeno’s daughter Olivia, six, was found lifeless in a sports bag more than 3,000 feet underwater off Tenerife last Thursday, next to a second holdall which was empty.
He and his youngest daughter Anna, one, are still missing but are presumed dead.
Gimeno vanished after warning ex-partner Beatriz Zimmerman she would never see her children again after she began a new relationship with a wealthy Belgian.
Judge Priscila Espinosa Guterriez, in a nine-page written ruling, said evidence from the April 27 disappearance of the trio showed he did not plan “to snatch them from their mum and take them to an unknown place”.
Instead, he planned “to kill them in a planned and premeditated fashion to cause his ex-partner inhumane pain”, she announced.
She added: “He allegedly deliberately tried to create uncertainty regarding the fate his daughters had suffered by hiding their bodies on the ocean bed after killing them, choosing a place deep underwater and far from the coast where he thought they would never be found.
“All this happened after he told his ex-partner and his close circle he was going to disappear with the girls and they wouldn’t be seen again.”
The judge ruled that the investigation should now be transferred to a specialist domestic violence court.
She also revealed that Gimeno had taken the boat he allegedly used to dump their bodies at sea on a “test run” around 6pm the same day.
Court officials announced on Friday that six-year-old Olivia had died of pulmonary edema, a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs, filling numerous air sacs.
Olivia was at a tennis class when her dad did the test run.
The dad-of-two was filmed on CCTV carrying the sports bags he allegedly stuffed his daughters’ bodies into from his Audi A3 to his boat at a marina in the Tenerife capital Santa Cruz.
The empty vessel, minus the anchor, was discovered off Puertito de Guimar on the east corner of the island just over 10 miles south of Santa Cruz hours after he and the girls vanished.
A Spanish Oceanographic Institute search vessel is continuing to comb the ocean bed in the area where Oliva’s body was found.
A diving bottle and duvet cover belonging to the youngsters’ father was discovered last Monday more than 3,000 feet underwater near the same area.
Police investigators have concluded that Gimeno allegedly drugged and killed the girls at his home before putting them in separate holdalls, taking their bodies out to sea and tossing them into the ocean with the anchor attached.
Opened medicine packets containing sedatives and muscle relaxants were discovered in his living room, Catalan newspaper El Periodico said.
It emerged after the abduction that Gimeno had threatened his estranged wife over her new relationship with an older Belgian man named locally as Eric Domb.
He is said to have beaten up Eric, 60, before snatching his daughters.
The alleged attack was not reported to cops for fear it would inflame an already-tense situation.
A minute’s silence took place for Anna and Olivia at midday on Friday in Santa Cruz.
Jose Manuel Bermudez, the mayor of Tenerife capital Santa Cruz, said after the gruesome discovery: “There are no words to express the terrible desolation I feel.
“From respect for the mother’s pain and with all the caution the terrible news that is reaching us deserves, I want to express to the family all the solidarity of the citizens of Santa Cruz.”
Cristiano Ronaldo’s partner Georgina Rodriguez was among celebs who used their social media accounts to highlight the girls’ disappearance in the days after they went missing.
