On the evening of Sunday, October 17, 2010, at about eight o'clock, an orderly at the La Caritat nursing home in Olot, in the Garrotxa district of Catalonia, gave an 85-year-old resident named Paquita Gironés a syringe of descaling acid, a cleaning product, and emptied it into her mouth. A nurse found her in distress. She was taken to hospital, where she died. A doctor there would not certify the death as natural, and called the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police.
Within days the orderly, Joan Vila Dilmé, had confessed to her death and to two others. Six weeks later he asked to see the investigating judge and confessed to eight more, going back to August 2009. In 2013 a Girona jury convicted him of eleven murders, and he was sentenced to 127 years and six months in prison. The Supreme Court of Spain confirmed the sentence in October 2014. Every one of his victims was between 80 and 96 years old, and every one of them, in the words of the jury's findings, depended on the care workers "for their most basic vital functions."
Vila grew up in Castellfollit de la Roca, a village a few kilometers from Olot. El Temps, the Catalan weekly, described him in 2013 as the only child of elderly farmers. El Español reported in 2019 that his parents, Encarnación and Ramón, worked at a local sausage company, and that he was a poor student, shy and withdrawn. El Español gave his year of birth as 1968, but the ages reported in the press at the time (45 in late 2010, 47 in June 2013, 61 in April 2026) point to the mid-1960s.
He trained as a hairdresser in Olot and opened a salon in Figueres, Tons Cabell-Moda, with a partner. It closed soon afterward. He then went from job to job: kitchen assistant at the casino in Peralada, restaurant work, a ski resort, a textile factory. He took courses in massage and other subjects, nursing among them, and, according to both El Temps and El Español, developed an interest in thanatopraxy, the cosmetic preparation of the dead.
At about 25 he saw a psychiatrist for the first time. El Temps reported that he described feeling insecure and stuck, with obsessive thoughts, and that he ate and drank compulsively, especially caffeinated drinks and chocolate. El Español reported that he was later diagnosed with an anxiety-depressive disorder with obsessive traits.
In May 2005 he took his first job in elderly care, at the El Mirador residence in Banyoles. Colleagues there described him as a favorite of the residents, El Temps reported. After about eight months he went back to Castellfollit and was hired at La Caritat in Olot. El Temps wrote that his temperament changed there and that he became irritable.
La Caritat is a non-profit residence for the elderly in Olot, founded in 1914 and specializing in dependent residents, El Español reported. In the court papers it stands on Lorenzana street. Vila worked there as a gerocultor, a care assistant who feeds, washes and medicates residents; the Spanish and Catalan press called him the celador or zelador, the orderly, and some English-language reports mistranslated this as "security guard." His lawyer said in 2010 that he worked weekends. Later reporting said he usually acted late in the afternoon, after the nurse had gone off duty.
His colleagues liked him. At the first round of witness statements in Olot in May 2011, La Caritat staff described him as an "excellent" worker who was always "very affectionate" with the elderly, Nació Digital reported. At the trial in 2013 the same colleagues described a different habit. He joked about the residents, said he was "tip de vells," fed up with old people, and hoped that on his next shift no other resident would die on him. They put the deaths on his shifts down to chance. "I never suspected it," one said. "I wish I had noticed something."
El Español reported in 2019 that La Caritat recorded 57 deaths from 2007 onward, 27 of them during Vila's shifts. That figure appears in one source only, and no court finding about the other deaths was found.
The Spanish Supreme Court's ruling, which repeats the jury's findings, lists each death with the date, the victim's age and the method. In the published version of the ruling, the victims' names are replaced with substitute names for privacy, so the dates below cannot all be matched to the names that appeared in the press. Where a press report ties a name to a date, it is given.
Rosa Baburés was the first. El Temps reported that she died on August 29, 2009, in room 310, aged 87; the court gives the age as 88. On the afternoon of August 29, 2009, the jury found, Vila gave her a mixture of psychiatric drugs that he had prepared and crushed beforehand. Her nephews visited her regularly. Her autopsy found drugs that had not been prescribed to her.
Francisca Matilde Fiol, killed in the autumn of 2009 according to El Temps, is the only victim the court record places in that season: an 88-year-old woman given a large amount of insulin on October 18, 2009, which caused a severe, sustained drop in blood sugar. Her daughter visited her every afternoon except that one. She had a baptism to attend, and had mentioned it to Vila in the days before. El Temps reported that in 2009, before her mother died, the daughter had noticed a strange dark liquid coming from her mouth.
Then came a gap of four months. On the afternoon of February 14, 2010, Vila gave an 89-year-old woman a crushed mixture of psychiatric drugs. Her daughter had visited that afternoon and found her mother "very well." She died the same day. On June 27, 2010, he gave an 85-year-old woman an insulin overdose with an insulin pen; the autopsy found the death compatible with that. She had two sons. At about midday on July 11, 2010, he gave an 80-year-old woman, the youngest of the eleven, a drug mixture. She had a husband, a daughter and a granddaughter, all in frequent contact with her, and the autopsy described the death as homicide.
The two men died in August and September. At about three in the afternoon of August 21, 2010, Vila gave an 84-year-old man a drug mixture; his autopsy also found homicide, and drugs that had not been prescribed to him. He had no close family. His nearest relatives were the children of a first cousin, and the widow of a close friend visited him from time to time. On the afternoon of September 19, 2010, Vila gave a 94-year-old man a drug mixture. Colleagues testified that afterward Vila insisted on closing the man's mouth by tying a towel around his head, something never done with any other resident who died at La Caritat. The press named the two men as Joan Canal and Lluís Salleras; the published record does not say which man died on which date.
On the afternoon of September 25, 2010, he gave a 96-year-old woman a drug mixture. Staff testified that he objected when a nurse came to visit her outside working hours, that he opposed sending her to hospital when she went into shock, and that he stayed at work that day well beyond his scheduled hours. She had a son and a daughter.
The press named the remaining women as Montserrat Canalias, Carme Vilanova, Isidra García and Teresa Puig. They are the four women who died on February 14, June 27, July 11 and September 25, 2010 (the court's 89-, 85-, 80- and 96-year-olds); which of them died on which date is not in the sources found.
The last three deaths came in six days, and the method changed. At about five in the afternoon of October 12, 2010, Vila gave an 87-year-old woman a cleaning product containing bleach. Sabina Masllorens died five days before his arrest, El Temps reported; she had bruises on her face that showed even under the funeral makeup, and Vila went to her wake to offer his condolences. Her closest relatives were a great-niece, who visited regularly, and a great-nephew. At about half past seven in the evening of October 16, he gave bleach to an 88-year-old woman, identified in EFE's report of the sentence by the initials Montserrat G. and in the press as Montserrat Guillamet. She had four children, a grandson and a daughter-in-law who visited her. The next evening came Paquita Gironés.
Paquita Gironés was 85, had dementia and used a wheelchair. Her nieces and a great-nephew visited her regularly. For weeks before she died she had been telling staff that Vila was hurting her. El Temps reported that she said he hit her. At the trial a care worker said that the summer before, she had found Gironés alone and bloodied in a room she could not have reached by herself, and that Gironés told staff Vila had tried to inject her with a syringe. Nobody believed her, because of her dementia.
What Vila did to her on October 17 he later described to the judge. "I told her she would see how much better she would feel," he said, according to El Temps, "and meanwhile I was emptying the syringe into her mouth." The jury found that the descaling acid deliberately caused her "extraordinary suffering" that was not necessary to kill her.
The doctor's refusal to sign the death certificate started the case. The Catalan public broadcaster's crime series Crims, which devoted an episode to the case in 2020, opens with that refusal: "a doctor refuses to sign the death certificate of an elderly woman because there are details that do not fit." The burns to the mouth and throat were reported in the English-language press, citing the BBC.
The Mossos questioned La Caritat's staff. According to El Temps, Gironés's family discovered that the footage from the camera covering her room had been erased from that Sunday until 2:30 on Monday morning, but a second camera, on the cleaning room, showed Vila going in and out of her room shortly before a nurse found her. El Español reported that the investigators used the footage. Vila confessed to giving her the acid while he was still being questioned as a witness, before he had been named as a suspect; the jury later found exactly that. Questioned as a suspect, he then confessed to giving bleach to the 88-year-old woman, and before the judge to the 87-year-old.
He was arrested in the second half of October 2010; the date is given as October 18 by Los Andes and El Español and as the night of October 19 by El Temps. He went into custody on October 21. His lawyer, Carles Monguilod, said that in his first statement he spoke between tears and sobs, and that he said he had acted to end their suffering.
The investigating judge in Olot, Leandro Blanco according to El Temps, ordered the exhumation of eight former residents buried in Garrotxa cemeteries. Ten days later, on Tuesday, November 30, 2010, Vila asked to make a further statement and confessed to eight more killings between August 2009 and mid-October 2010, Europa Press reported. Of the eight exhumed, he said he had killed six, was unsure about a seventh and was sure he had not killed the eighth. In all he admitted killing eight women and two men, besides the three women given bleach, and said he was unsure about one more man in 2010. His lawyer said the first two deaths were in August and October 2009 and the rest in 2010; that his client had acted "because he thought they were suffering and he wanted them to stop suffering"; that he would want the same done to himself; and that he now understood he should not have done it. The families' lawyers said his claims should be treated with caution, because he had lied in his first statement.
Vila spent the first months in a prison psychiatric unit. Nació Digital reported in May 2011 that he had left the psychiatric unit at Quatre Camins and been moved to Figueres prison; El Temps named the unit at Can Brians. That month the Olot court began hearing 64 witnesses: staff, relatives, nurses, the doctors who had signed some of the death certificates, and the psychiatrists who had treated him. Rafael Berga, a lawyer for seven of the families, said they wanted to know "why nobody noticed anything" until one death raised the alarm.
By July 2012 the positions were set. The prosecutor, Enrique Barata, sought 194 years. The forensic psychiatrist Álvaro Muro had concluded that Vila knew right from wrong and that he killed "per gust," for pleasure, Diari de Girona reported. The defense said Vila had a psychiatric disorder that distorted his view of reality and asked for 20 years of supervised release with treatment outside prison.
On September 18, 2012, as his two years of pretrial detention ran out, Vila appeared in court in Olot for a hearing on extending it. He said that what he had done was "a serious error," that he would not do it again and that "I would never escape." Monguilod said his client felt as though people were talking about someone else and was horrified at the idea of being a murderer. The families' lawyers asked for a ban on his coming within 100 kilometers of Olot or Castellfollit de la Roca. Judge Ana Torres ordered him to post 710,000 euros to cover compensation; his lawyer said he would declare himself insolvent. He stayed in custody.
The trial opened at the Audiencia Provincial de Girona on May 27, 2013, before a jury of five men and four women, with Magistrate Ildefons Carol presiding. About a hundred witnesses were expected. By then the prosecutor sought 194 years; Berga and Jaume Dalmau, for eight families, sought 202; Jordi Coma, for one family, sought 20. The defense accepted that Vila had given the products to all eleven residents and argued that he was not criminally responsible, asking for full exemption or, at most, 20 years of supervised release.
Vila testified that he had acted out of compassion, to end the residents' suffering, the Associated Press and AFP reported. El Español reported that he apologized to the families and said his work there had "never been a job" to him. El Debate, OKDiario and ESdiario reported in 2026 that at this trial he said he felt like a woman trapped in a man's body.
None of the colleagues who testified said any of the eleven had asked to die or had tried to end their own lives. Some had said they would rather die, one said, "but nothing more." The residents were frail, staff said, but stable, and not the worst-off people in the home.
The psychiatric evidence was the center of the case. The experts who examined him, as reported by El Español, found no personality disorder and no cognitive impairment, but described "a dependent, avoidant, depressive and schizoid style." The verdict cited psychologists' conclusion that "Joan Vila Dilmé does not suffer, and has never suffered, from any disorder that would prevent him from understanding the unlawfulness of his act."
The jury began deliberating at about 12:30 on June 10, 2013, on a verdict form of 99 questions in twelve sections, one for each death and one on pardon and prison benefits. After seven hours it was taken to a hotel for the night. On June 11 it returned a unanimous verdict: guilty of eleven murders. It found that Vila had acted with treachery in all eleven, because the residents trusted him and could not defend themselves, and with cruelty in the last three. It rejected both full and partial mental impairment for every death, and found he had not acted out of revenge or punishment. It voted unanimously against any pardon and, by eight votes to one, against prison benefits.
On June 21, 2013, Carol sentenced Vila to 127 years and six months:
20 years and 10 months for the murder of Paquita Gironés, with treachery and cruelty and only a simple mitigation for confession, because he had confessed to the police before he was a suspect.
13 years and 4 months each for the two women killed with bleach, with treachery and cruelty and a "very qualified" mitigation for confession.
10 years each for the eight earlier murders, with treachery and the same very qualified mitigation, because without his confession, the court said, those deaths might never have been solved.
The judge wrote that his confession "was of capital relevance in clearing up the deaths of the other ten victims and the authorship." He noted Vila's training as a nursing assistant and geriatric carer, which meant he knew what the products would do, and that in the last three killings he "deliberately increased the victims' suffering." Under Spanish law the time actually served was capped at 40 years, with credit for time already in custody. The court ordered that prison leave, open-regime classification and parole be calculated on the full 127 and a half years, not on the 40. EFE calculated that if he served the full term he would be about 84 on release.
He was ordered to pay 369,000 euros to 24 relatives of the victims, in amounts from 5,000 to 39,000 euros, with the La Caritat foundation liable if he could not pay and its insurer, Zurich, liable with the foundation. He was barred from coming within 100 meters of, or contacting, any of those relatives for ten years longer than his prison term.
The defense appealed to the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, now contesting eight of the eleven murders. It accepted the three caustic killings but argued that for the eight earlier deaths there was no evidence apart from his confession, that the autopsies were inconclusive, and that anyone at La Caritat could have reached the medicine cabinet. The High Court heard the appeal on January 9, 2014, and rejected it on February 24, 2014.
The Supreme Court rejected the next appeal on October 7, 2014, in ruling 651/2014, written by Justice Alberto Jorge Barreiro. It called the suggestion that someone else had been killing other residents at the same time "remarkably unreal and implausible" ("notablemente irreal e inverosímil"), and pointed out that at trial his own lawyer had accepted all eleven. A confession alone, it said, cannot prove that a crime happened, but here it did not stand alone: drugs never prescribed to the victims were found in four of the autopsies; two autopsies found homicide; there were the witnesses' accounts of his conduct around the 96-year-old woman and the 94-year-old man; there was the daughter who had found her mother well that afternoon; and Vila had been on duty and with the residents on every afternoon a death occurred. The defense was ordered to pay the costs. The conviction was final.
Vila has served the sentence at Puig de les Basses prison, near Figueres. El Español reported in 2019 that he was a trusted prisoner, worked in the laundry, used the library, took part in activities and had taken up ceramics; that his parents and aunts visited him; and that, according to its sources, "the monstrousness of his crimes clashes with his good behavior." The same article reported that his family had kept to their home since the case became public and that Castellfollit de la Roca kept a pact of silence to protect them. In a COPE radio interview in 2019, Monguilod said Vila was "very integrated into prison life," was in charge of the prison library, was studying and took part in every activity.
As of the April 15, 2026 reports in El Debate, OKDiario and ESdiario, Vila, then 61, was still at Puig de les Basses and had begun a gender transition. More than a year earlier Vila had told the prison treatment team of the wish to transition, which started the Catalan prison system's protocol for such cases. Vila has since begun hormone treatment, is registered under a woman's name (Aura, according to those three reports; Aida, according to the headline of an El Confidencial report that could not be opened) and is on the public health system's waiting list for surgery. Vila was moved first to a small infirmary module, then spent several months in a unit for vulnerable inmates, and at the start of 2026 was moved to the women's module, which holds about thirty inmates, most of them young. Sources close to Vila told El Debate there had been no problems with the other inmates. The Catalan Justice Department declined to discuss the case, citing data protection, but said the rules require an inmate to be placed in a module of the sex the inmate identifies with, after assessment by technical and health teams. All three reports said the transition does not change the sentence.
As of those reports, Vila had never been granted prison leave, despite asking for it, and had applied for third-grade (open-regime) classification. The prosecutor's office and the lawyers for the victims' families opposed both. No source found reports a decision on that application, and no source later than April 2026 was found.
Counting from October 2010, the 40-year limit would run to about 2050. Because the court ordered that leave, open regime and parole be calculated on the full 127 and a half years, earlier release through those routes is restricted.
Motive. Vila said he killed out of compassion. The jury and the judge rejected any mental disorder and found that the last three deaths involved deliberate, unnecessary suffering. The forensic psychiatrist Álvaro Muro said he killed for pleasure. El Español attributed to Vila the remark, about his victims, "look how beautiful they are dead," without saying where or when he said it; it is not in any court document found.
The number. He confessed to eleven and was convicted of eleven. In November 2010 he said he was unsure about a twelfth death, a man in 2010, and the court did not try it. El Español's figure of 27 deaths on his shifts out of 57 at La Caritat from 2007 is not a court finding, and no other deaths were charged.
The eight earlier deaths. After conviction he contested eight of the eleven. Three courts held that his confession was corroborated. The defense's argument that the autopsies were inconclusive remains on the record, and the Supreme Court did not dispute that several were.
Responsibility at La Caritat. The families' lawyers asked why nobody noticed. The court made the foundation and its insurer liable for compensation if Vila could not pay. No criminal charge against anyone else was found.
May 2005: works at El Mirador residence, Banyoles, for about eight months; then hired at La Caritat, Olot.
August 29, 2009: first murder, a woman of 88 (Rosa Baburés, per El Temps).
October 18, 2009: second murder, by insulin.
February 14 to September 25, 2010: six more murders, by drug mixtures and insulin.
October 12, 16 and 17, 2010: three women killed with bleach and descaling acid; Paquita Gironés is the last.
October 18 or 19, 2010: arrested after a doctor refuses to sign Gironés's death certificate; confesses to three deaths.
October 21, 2010: enters pretrial custody.
About November 20, 2010: eight bodies exhumed on the judge's order.
November 30, 2010: confesses to eight more killings.
May 2011: 64 witnesses heard in Olot.
September 18, 2012: detention extension hearing; 710,000-euro bond ordered.
May 27, 2013: trial opens at the Audiencia Provincial de Girona.
June 11, 2013: unanimous jury verdict, guilty of eleven murders.
June 21, 2013: sentenced to 127 years and 6 months, 40 years effective.
February 24, 2014: High Court of Justice of Catalonia rejects the appeal.
October 7, 2014: Supreme Court rejects the final appeal (announced October 10).
2019: reported as a trusted prisoner at Puig de les Basses.
February 10, 2020: 3Cat's Crims broadcasts an episode on the case.
January 2021: Toni Soler's book Un bon cel: el zelador d'Olot i la banalitat de la mort is presented in Olot.
Early 2026: moved to the women's module at Puig de les Basses.
April 15, 2026: latest reports; no prison leave granted, third-grade request opposed.