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Spanish Care Assistant Joan Vila Dilmé Admits Killing Three Elderly Residents of an Olot Nursing Home

Vila was detained after a resident of La Caritat was found with suspicious injuries. Weeks later he confessed to eight more deaths and was eventually convicted of 11 murders.

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Illustration of a quiet cobbled street in a Catalan town in autumn, with a parked car and hills beyond. Not an actual scene from the case.

Police led a care assistant out of an Olot, Spain, nursing home in handcuffs in October 2010. Before a judge, Joan Vila Dilmé admitted causing the deaths of three elderly residents.

Vila worked as a care assistant at La Caritat, a nursing home in Olot in the province of Girona. The case came to light after suspicious injuries were found in the mouth of an elderly resident. The three women whose deaths he admitted were Sabina Masllorenç Sala, 87; Montserrat Guillamet Bartrolich, 88; and Francisca Gironés Quintana, 85. All three died in October 2010. In his first statement, his lawyer said, he spoke between tears and sobs.

On November 30, 2010, Vila told the judge he had killed eight more residents between August 2009 and mid-October 2010, saying he wanted them to stop suffering. A unanimous jury rejected his claim of mental disorder, and in June 2013 the Girona Provincial Court sentenced him to 127 years and six months in prison for 11 murders. Spain's Supreme Court upheld the sentence in October 2014, setting the maximum time he could serve at 40 years. The other residents were Montserrat Canalias Muntada, Joan Canal Julià, Lluís Salleras Claret, Carme Vilanova Viñolas, Isidra García Aceijas, Teresa Puig Boixadera, Francisca Matilde Fiol and Rosa Baburés Pujol.

Europa Press reported in November 2010 that Vila confessed to killing eight women and two men, plus a man he was unsure about, while the court convicted him of killing nine women and two men.

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