Francisca BALLESTEROS
AKA "The Poisoner of Melilla"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Poisoner
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: 1990 / 2004
Date of arrest: June 7, 2004
Date of birth: 1969
Victims profile: Her daughter Florinda González Ballesteros, five months old / Her husband Antonio González Barribino, 41 / Her daughter Sandra González Balllesteros, 15
Method of murder: Poisoning (Colme)
Location: Melilla, Spain
Status: Sentenced to a term of 84 years in prison on September 26, 2005
Francisca Ballesteros (born 1969) is a Spanish serial killer who between 1990 and 2004 killed her two daughters and her husband and attempted to kill her son.
Crimes history
Francisca Ballesteros was born in Valencia. A few years later, she moved to Melilla.
After marrying Antonio González Barribino, Ballesteros gave birth to a girl named Florinda. In 1990, Ballesteros suffered from postpartum depression and wanted to end her marriage, but she finally desisted. She decided to kill her family and flee to Valencia. Ballesteros poisoned Florinda, who was only five months old, with Colme, a drug used to treat alcoholism. After the death of the baby, Ballesteros decided to wait to kill the rest of her family.
In 2004, 14 years after murdering her daughter, Ballesteros, who had met many men through Internet, decided to kill the rest of her family, flee to the city where one of the men that she had met online was living, and marry him.
On 12 January 2004 Ballesteros killed her husband Antonio González Barribino with Colme and with the sedatives Zolpidem and Bromazepam. On 4 June 2004, Ballesteros killed her daughter Sandra with the same medications and attempted to kill her 12-year old son Antonio, who was admitted to the hospital with poisoning on June 4, 2004. The autopsy, of her daughter Sandra, revealed that she had been poisoned.
On June 7, 2004 Ballesteros was arrested and confessed to the murders.
On September 26, 2005, Francisca Ballesteros was sentenced to a term of 84 years in prison.
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