Between January 24 and March 18, 2003, a gunman killed six people in Madrid and three towns around it and tried to kill three more. The victims had nothing in common: a building doorman, a cleaner who worked at Barajas airport, a woman and a young man in a bar, a married couple walking home in the evening. At four of the scenes the gunman left a card from a Spanish deck, an ace, a two, a three and a four of cups, each marked with a blue dot on the back. The press called him the playing card killer, and for months the police did not know who he was.
On July 3, 2003, a former army corporal named Alfredo Galán Sotillo walked into a police station in his hometown of Puertollano, in Ciudad Real province, and said he was the man they were looking for. He was in his mid-twenties, had served in Bosnia, and had lately worked as a security guard at Barajas airport. He described the mark on the cards, a detail that had not been published. Within days he was in prison. He later retracted and said two other men had forced him to confess, but in March 2005 the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid convicted him of six murders and three attempted murders and sentenced him to 142 years and three months, with an effective limit of 25 years. In March 2026 he was reported to be still in prison, with release expected around 2028.
Galán came from Puertollano, in the province of Ciudad Real. Telecinco, reviewing the case in March 2026, reported that his mother died when he was a child and that he struggled at school. Vozpópuli, writing in 2023, also described him as having lost his mother and said he was raised by his grandmother and did poorly in his studies. His exact date of birth has not been made public. Periódico elCaribe, in 2025, gave his age at his surrender as 26, while Castilla-La Mancha Media and the Diario de Arganda put him at 25. In March 2026 Telecinco said he was 48.
According to Telecinco, he tried to join the Guardia Civil but did not pass the physical tests, and then enlisted in the army. He rose to the rank of corporal. A Dominican newspaper's 2025 retrospective said he had been a soldier for five years, with two deployments in Bosnia. Telecinco reported that his work in Bosnia was limited to humanitarian tasks. According to the forensic psychologist Victoria Trabazo, quoted by Telecinco, he came back from the first mission bringing gifts and from the second more withdrawn.
His time in the army included treatment for anxiety. Telecinco reported that after an anxiety crisis he was admitted to the psychiatric unit of the Gómez Ulla military hospital in Madrid, asked to be discharged of his own will, and was diagnosed, according to Trabazo, with an anxious and depressive adjustment disorder. El Debate, in a 2025 feature, said he had received psychiatric treatment for anxiety and neurosis, but that no mental disorder was identified during the investigation or at trial.
He usually lived at his sister's house near Alcalá de Henares, east of Madrid, the Diario de León reported in July 2003.
The first killing took place in central Madrid on January 24, 2003. The court's account, as reported by the Diario de León when the sentence was handed down, was that Galán left the house in Alcalá de Henares that day and drove into the city intending to kill someone if a favorable chance arose. He told investigators that he first followed a postal worker, who got away from him. He then shot Juan Francisco Ledesma Ledesma, the doorman of a residential building, who was killed in front of his two-year-old son. No card was left at the scene, and there was no apparent robbery, Telecinco reported.
Telecinco reported that a spent cartridge case was recovered at the scene and later proved decisive. Ledesma's death was the first of the six for which Galán was convicted.
One later retrospective, published by a Dominican newspaper in 2025, dated this killing January 28. The contemporary reports, the sentence coverage and the other retrospectives all give January 24.
On the morning of February 5, 2003, Juan Carlos Martín, a cleaning worker at Barajas airport, was shot dead in Madrid. Castilla-La Mancha Media gave his age as 28. A playing card, the ace of cups, was found with him. According to later accounts, the card had not been put there on purpose: it appeared near the body by chance, and it was only after newspapers began calling the gunman the playing card killer that he started leaving cards deliberately.
Later that day, in Alcalá de Henares, a gunman walked into a bar and shot three people. Mikel Jiménez Sánchez, 18, the son of the bar's owner, was killed, as was Juana Dolores Uclés, a customer, who Telecinco said was speaking on the telephone at the time. The owner was shot several times and survived. Telecinco and Vozpópuli reported that she survived by pretending to be dead. No card was left in the bar.
The reports differ on the ages of the two victims. Castilla-La Mancha Media described them in 2023 as a woman of 60 and a 17-year-old, while the Dominican retrospective of 2025 gave them as a man of 18 and a woman of 57, and Telecinco in 2026 also gave Mikel's age as 18.
A month later, on March 7, 2003, in Tres Cantos, north of Madrid, the gunman shot a man who was with a young woman. The man was seriously wounded and survived, and the woman escaped. A two of cups was left at the scene.
Telecinco reported that the bullets fired in Tres Cantos matched those from the earlier shootings in Madrid and Alcalá de Henares, and that a police sketch of the gunman was made from the testimony of the surviving bar owner.
On the night of March 18, 2003, in Arganda del Rey, southeast of Madrid, a married couple of Romanian origin who lived in the town were shot as they walked home. The Diario de Arganda named them as George and Diona Magda and said both were barely 40. Telecinco spelled the names Gheorgie and Doina Magre. The husband died at once. His wife was taken to hospital and died two days later, according to the Diario de Arganda and Telecinco. The three and four of cups were left with them. The Diario de Arganda reported that neighbors heard the shots but took them for fireworks after a Real Madrid match. Vozpópuli reported that the couple left two children, aged 10 and 14.
There were no more attacks after March 18.
For more than three months nothing happened. Then, on Thursday, July 3, 2003, Galán went to the police in Puertollano. The Diario de León reported that his brother went with him. According to the Dominican newspaper's 2025 account, he first approached a local police officer while drunk and was not taken seriously, and the same day he confessed at the station of the national police, saying he was fed up with how ineffective the police had been. The Diario de León, reporting the sentence in 2005, said he surrendered to the local police of Puertollano and repeated his confession before the Guardia Civil and the duty judge.
What made the officers listen was the cards. He told them about the blue dot on the back, which had been kept out of the press. He also said he had thrown the pistol away after the last killings.
The Diario de León reported in July 2003 that police had found a spent cartridge case at his sister's home near Alcalá de Henares, linked to the killing of the doorman in Madrid. Telecinco, in 2026, placed the discovery of a Tokarev round at his father's house in Puertollano instead.
Later accounts, including Telecinco's, reported that he said he started killing to find out what it felt like, and felt nothing.
Detectives of the homicide squad believed he had acted alone, the Diario de León reported on July 8, 2003, but did not rule out that someone close to him had known. They wanted to question his brother and his sister. In five statements to police and judges, Galán insisted that none of his relatives or acquaintances knew. The head of the force said there were very reasonable grounds to charge him, but remained cautious, and investigators considered asking a judge for permission to dig through the landfill at Almodóvar del Campo, near Puertollano, where the pistol was supposed to have ended up. Finding it, the paper said, would be the definitive proof.
The pistol was not found. By September 2003 workers had been moving rubble at the landfill for two months. Castilla-La Mancha Media reported that Galán later said he had sold a weapon to two men, and that the search of the Puertollano landfill turned up nothing.
Castilla-La Mancha Media reported that he spent his first night in prison, on July 7, at Herrera de la Mancha in Ciudad Real province. He was later moved to Soto del Real, near Madrid, where he was held under special surveillance.
Vozpópuli reported in 2023 that before Galán surrendered, a suspect with far-right links had been held for about a month, although investigators believed he was not the killer.
On September 4, 2003, according to Castilla-La Mancha Media, one of the victims picked Galán out of a lineup, with some doubts, and the judge ordered him prosecuted for six completed homicides, three attempted homicides and illegal possession of a weapon. Six days later he appeared before the Madrid investigating judge and changed his story.
He now said he was innocent. The Diario de León reported on September 11 that he blamed the killings on two acquaintances he described as skinheads, to whom he said he had sold the pistol, which carried his fingerprints. He said they had told him the details of the crimes, which he claimed explained why he knew facts that had not been published, and that they had threatened to kill him and harm his two sisters if he did not confess. He admitted lying when he said he had thrown the pistol into a landfill. He refused to name the two men until he and his family were given official protection, which the judge did not order. Police gave more weight to his first account and suspected the new one was a strategy to avoid a long sentence.
On October 31, 2003, the man wounded in Tres Cantos identified him without doubt as the person who had shot him, Castilla-La Mancha Media reported. A forensic psychiatric report dated December 10, 2003, described him, in the words the broadcaster quoted, as a human predator with no sign of remorse.
The trial opened on Monday, February 7, 2005, before Section 16 of the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid, in the court buildings on Plaza de Castilla. Galán wore a cap to cover his face. He used his right not to testify and did not answer even his own lawyer's questions, Castilla-La Mancha Media and Telecinco reported.
Telecinco reported that the court found Galán fully aware of his actions and free of any condition that kept him from telling right from wrong, and that psychopathy was considered but not accepted as a mitigating factor. The evidence against him included the cartridge case, clothing used in the crimes and identification by survivors, according to the Dominican newspaper's 2025 account. Vozpópuli reported that he declined to make a final statement.
The judgment was notified on March 9, 2005. Section 16 sentenced Galán to 142 years and three months in prison for six murders and three attempted murders committed in the Community of Madrid between January 24 and March 18, 2003.
The court recognized one mitigating factor: he had confessed to the authorities before he knew that the proceedings were aimed at him, a confession the court described as important enough to make the trial and conviction possible. The Diario de León said the confession he made in Puertollano was the main evidence on which the sentence rested. Even so, the court imposed the penalties in their highest grade, citing his manifest contempt for human life and the social alarm and unease the crimes caused. It ordered that prison benefits and the time needed for parole be calculated on the total of all the sentences, with a maximum effective term of 25 years. The Diario de León noted that this was an unusually long term outside terrorism cases.
The Diario de Arganda later set out the components of the total as separate terms for each killing, for the three attempts and for illegal possession of a weapon. Compensation of about 600,000 euros was reported by Telecinco and by the Dominican retrospective. The court declined to make the Spanish state liable for the compensation as a secondary payer, because the crimes were not committed at a state-owned establishment, and left open a separate administrative case to examine how the weapon came into Spain and his mental state. Lawyers for the victims welcomed the verdict but said they would appeal to the Tribunal Supremo over that point. The defense announced an appeal as well. Castilla-La Mancha Media reported that Galán signed his own copy of the ruling.
The outcome of the appeals has not been reported; later accounts give the 142-year total and the 25-year limit without mentioning any change.
Galán has been in custody since July 2003, and he was reported still in prison in March 2026. In January 2023, on the twentieth anniversary of the first killing, Castilla-La Mancha Media reported that he had been refused every request for prison leave, that he was described as a model prisoner who cooperated with the prison, and that his release was expected around 2028. In September 2025 the Dominican retrospective said that under the law in force when the crimes were committed he could serve a maximum of 25 years and was expected to leave prison in about two years. In March 2026 Telecinco reported that he remained in prison and could be released around 2028, after completing 25 years under the law in force at the time of the crimes.
The case returned to public attention in June 2023, when Netflix released a three-part documentary series about it, built on interviews with journalists, investigators, survivors and victims' families, Vozpópuli reported. Vozpópuli quoted the journalist Francisco Javier Barroso, who covered the case, as saying he had feared for his own safety at the time. Castilla-La Mancha Media marked the twentieth anniversary of the first killing in January 2023 with recollections from reporters who covered it. One, Manoli Barragán, recalled the face he showed as he was led out of court as that of a wounded, defenseless animal, as if lost; another, Cristina Medina, said the case marked her career.
In Arganda del Rey, the Diario de Arganda published its own account in June 2023, twenty years after the couple were killed on their way home.
His age and birth year. El Debate gave his year of birth as 1977. Periódico elCaribe put his age at 26, Castilla-La Mancha Media and the Diario de Arganda at 25 when he surrendered, and Telecinco at 48 in March 2026. An exact birth date has not been made public.
The ages of the bar victims. Castilla-La Mancha Media described them as a woman of 60 and a 17-year-old; the 2025 Dominican retrospective gave a man of 18 and a woman of 57; Telecinco gave Mikel Jiménez Sánchez's age as 18.
The names of the Arganda couple. The Diario de Arganda gave George and Diona Magda; Telecinco gave Gheorgie and Doina Magre.
The date of the first killing. Most reports give January 24, 2003; the 2025 Dominican retrospective gave January 28.
The two men he blamed. Galán's September 2003 claim that two skinheads committed the killings and forced him to confess was not accepted by the police or the court, and he did not name them in the reports.
Whether there were other victims. He was convicted of six murders and three attempted murders. The reports attribute no other killing to him.
Before 2003: Alfredo Galán Sotillo of Puertollano serves in the Spanish army, rising to corporal, with service in Bosnia.
January 24, 2003: Juan Francisco Ledesma Ledesma, a building doorman, is shot dead in Madrid.
February 5, 2003, morning: Juan Carlos Martín, an airport cleaning worker, is shot dead in Madrid; an ace of cups is found with him.
February 5, 2003, later: in a bar in Alcalá de Henares, Mikel Jiménez Sánchez and Juana Dolores Uclés are killed and the owner is wounded.
March 7, 2003: in Tres Cantos, a man is wounded and a young woman escapes; a two of cups is left.
March 18, 2003: a married couple of Romanian origin is shot in Arganda del Rey; the husband dies at once and his wife two days later; the three and four of cups are left.
July 3, 2003: surrenders and confesses to police in Puertollano.
July 2003: a cartridge case linked to the first killing is reported found; first night in prison at Herrera de la Mancha, later moved to Soto del Real.
September 4, 2003: identified in a lineup; the judge orders his prosecution.
September 10, 2003: retracts before the Madrid investigating judge and blames two other men.
October 31, 2003: the man wounded in Tres Cantos identifies him.
December 10, 2003: forensic psychiatric report.
February 7, 2005: trial opens before Section 16 of the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid; he declines to testify.
March 9, 2005: sentenced to 142 years and three months, with a 25-year effective maximum; appeals announced.
January 2023: reported refused all prison leave; release expected around 2028.
June 2023: a Netflix documentary series about the case is released.
March 2026: reported still in prison, with release expected around 2028.