One of the best-known murders in Spanish criminal history shook a small town in the Maresme. It was on February 6, 1994 when Andrés Rabadán , a local young man who was 21 years old, killed his father by shooting three arrows at him with a medieval crossbow that the young man had given to himself for Christmas, after what seemed to be a family dispute.

The mystery of Andrés Rabadán is solved

The young Andrés Rabadán surprised everyone by also confessing responsibility for the sabotages that certain train lines had suffered along various sections of the Maresme region of Barcelona, which caused several convoys to derail dangerously, fortunately without leaving any victims.

For months, several neighboring towns were on edge due to the constant accidents that occurred and that clearly seemed to be intentional . The police, alerted by the continuous damage to the train lines, received anonymous letters threatening further attacks, which led to speculation that it was a network of saboteurs operating in a coordinated manner. But the solution to the case was much simpler.

The modus operandi in acts of railway sabotage

Andrés’s modus operandi was as follows: the young man approached the chosen point on the tracks (a place normally located between two neighbouring towns and out of sight of curious people who might scare him off), turned one of the screws twice and then left. The next day, he would return to the same place, continue to unscrew the same screw; and run away again. The reason why he proceeded in this way was because he knew that if he stayed too long removing the screws he would expose himself to someone else’s discovery . His twisted plan also involved sawing the rails, then masking them with a piece of duct tape to make it look like they hadn’t been damaged.

The researcher specializing in criminology Francisco Pérez Abellán maintains that “Andrés Rabadán enjoyed flaunting his intelligence” and that derailments were his way of attracting attention. In a statement to the judge in March 1995, Rabadán said that he did not know exactly why he did it, but that he had the idea that everyone was against him, and that he was fully convinced that nothing would happen to the passengers on the trains, since he had everything under control. Once he was arrested, the sabotage stopped.

Months later, patricide occurs

The reason for the argument that triggered the murder of Andrés Rabadán’s father was a trifle: the glass of milk that Andrés had asked for was too hot . This unleashed the boy’s uncontrolled fury, which went to his room to get his crossbow and shot him in the temple. Seeing that he was still alive, he ended his suffering by shooting two more arrows into the forehead and back of his head.

After committing the crime, Andrés Rabadán got out on his motorbike and met a policeman who was patrolling the area, to whom he confessed what had happened. The officer went to the house with the boy to check whether the victim was unconscious or not. He found the body lying in the kitchen, with three arrows in the back of his head, temple and forehead. Already dead, Andres placed a cushion under his head.

The case jumped immediately to the media, due among other things to the nature and coldness with which the patricide was perpetrated, causing a great stir at the national level . In his statements to the judge in March 1995, he explained that he did not know the consequences of shooting his father with the crossbow. But when the magistrate asked him why he shot the last arrows at him, the young man’s answer was to stop his father suffering, since he really loved him.

Family history

Andrés Rabadán’s mother committed suicide by hanging herself when he was 8 years old. She was a submissive and passive woman, who left three children in the care of a father whose temper was always evident. When Rabadan’s mother became pregnant for the first time, the father did not want to marry her and left her to live in Barcelona. Her brothers had to go to Matías Rabadán’s new home to demand that he face up to his imminent paternity and to ask him to marry her.

Andrew’s older sister remembers that his mother had told him on several occasions that she wanted to separate from his father, but that she did not have the money to do so. Shortly after he died, the sister left home, leaving her two younger brothers (Andrew and Joseph) with the father, who had several occasional partners over the years. It was then that they moved to an isolated housing estate and Andrés lost all the friends he had . From then on, he wandered around alone in different places, he liked to sit on the rocks and stare at the sea; he felt comforted by being alone.

In Andrew’s own words “(…) my mind was in pieces, I was not thinking clearly and I did not know what I wanted”.

Diagnosis(s) of Andrés Rabadán

The first diagnosis issued certified that Andrés Rabadán suffered from a paranoid delirious schizophrenia, a mental pathology whose main characteristic is that the subject dissociates from reality and creates an unreal parallel world . It also establishes a new style of thinking in the form of delusions and a new form of perception which are hallucinations. As a result, he is sentenced to 20 years in a psychiatric prison. Generally, one third of schizophrenics show a favorable prognosis for improvement.

Later, one of the forensic experts who visited him suggested the hypothesis that Andrew had suffered a psychotic break . This type of crisis can be recognized by its sudden appearance (although there are indications that allow us to detect when it will occur) in situations of great stress prolonged in time. The people most vulnerable to suffering a psychotic break are those who are mentally and emotionally more fragile.

The appearance of suspicious or “strange” ideas and social isolation are two very notable features of the psychotic break. The subject’s central nervous system collapses, causing a temporary break with reality. In the event of a psychotic break, the psychiatric regulations to be followed require the person to be medicated for at least two years. If in this period of time the person stops showing delusions or hallucinations, the medication is withdrawn.

The Symptomatology of the Crossbow Killer

As explained by the defendant, he claimed to hear noises bursting in suddenly and at a very high volume in his head ; he also believed that he was being pursued by a number of individuals who were conspiring against him. Precisely because of this, he revealed that he kept various weapons in his house, so that he could defend himself if someone attacked him. When he decided to sabotage the train tracks, it was after an incident he had with his bicycle, when he was almost run over by a passing convoy. As a result, he vowed revenge.

After the murder, he said he felt as if he woke up from a dream and came to, which explains why he carefully placed a pillow under the head of his father’s body, evidence of his remorse for what happened . When the police picked up the crossbow, they saw that an arrow was still attached to it that did not go off. It was for Andrés.

Various speculations about his clinical profile

In order to diagnose schizophrenia, the requirement is that the person suffers from delusions and hallucinations for more than six months ; otherwise it will be considered simply a psychotic break. If ten years pass without a relapse, the outbreak is considered to have subsided and the chances of a repetition are low. Nevertheless, several psychiatrists have argued that Andrés Rabadán was not mentally ill.

There was also speculation that this was a case of psychopathy, as forensic reports were highly contradictory in this regard. Psychopaths are people who know very well what one wants to hear and improvise a message that really seems spontaneous in order to satisfy their own interests.

According to his psychiatrist, Andres did not point in this direction, because he often showed empathy and remorse; he also had a large circle of friends, even though he had moved away from them. According to Francisco Pérez Abellán, the case of the crossbow killer would be a clear example of psychopathy, since – he argued – Rabadán managed to convince everyone that he was crazy . The difference between a psychotic and a psychopath is that the latter can easily distinguish what he is about to do and yet he carries out his purpose.

Final comments

When an event has been so widely publicized and has caused so much social alarm because of its monstrous nature, both the media and society itself hastily try to attribute a mental illness to the subject who has perpetrated the crime. This happens because it is not conceivable that a mentally healthy person could do something like this, with which there is a tendency to look for a psychopathological reason to explain the reason for such a despicable act .

In fact, people with severe psychiatric disorders commit very few murders; it is the supposedly healthy people who, under certain pressures or circumstances, can go to such extremes. What happens is that we have little capacity to recognize that, under certain conditions, we could all end up performing unimaginable acts .

Andres once said that if he had not killed his father, he would have carried out any other atrocity; he was equally doubtful about his recovery, despite the fact that this was certified by the mental health professionals who treated him during his years behind bars.

He was released from Barcelona’s Men’s Penitentiary (‘La Modelo’) in March 2015, after serving a sentence for threatening one of the nurses at Barcelona’s Quatre Camins prison.

Bibliographic references:

  • Canal+ España/Nanouk Films/Spanish Television (TVE). Forgiveness. History of the Crossbow Killer [Documentary]. Catalonia, Spain. Cameo.
  • Nanouk Films / Briznormally / Televisió de Catalunya (TV3). The two lives of Andrés Rabadán (Film). Catalonia, Spain. Cameo