The ‘Crossbow Killer’: life and psychological portrait

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

The mystery of Andrés Rabadán is solved

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

For months, several neighboring towns were in suspense before the constant accidents that were happening and that clearly seemed intentional. The police, alerted by the continuous damage to the train lines, received anonymous letters that threatened more attacks, so it was even speculated that it was a network of saboteurs who operated in a coordinated. But the solution to the case was much simpler.

The modus operandi in railway sabotage acts

The modus operandi Andres was the following: the young man was approaching the chosen point of the tracks (a place normally located between two localities neighbors and away from the sight of onlookers who might scare him away), he gave two threads of one of the screws and then I was going. The next day, he returned to the same place, continued unscrewing the same screw; and he would run away again. The reason he was proceeding this way was because he knew that if he stayed a long time removing the screws he was exposed to someone discovering it. His twisted plan also involved sawing the rails, then masking it by attaching them with a piece of electrical tape to make it look like they hadn't been damaged.

The investigator specialized in criminology Francisco Pérez Abellán he maintains that “Andrés Rabadán enjoyed showing off his intelligence” and that derailments were the way to get his attention. In a statement before the judge, in March 1995, Rabadán stated that he did not know exactly why he did it, but that he had in his head the idea that everyone was against him, plus he was fully convinced that nothing was going to happen to train passengers, since he had everything checked. Once arrested, the sabotage stopped.

Months later, patricide occurs

The reason that caused the discussion 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, who went to his room for his crossbow and unleashed a shot in the temple. Seeing that he was still alive, he ended his suffering by shooting two more arrows at his forehead and neck.

After committing the crime, Andrés Rabadán went out on his motorcycle and ran into a policeman who was patrolling the area, to whom he confessed what had happened. The agent went to the home with the boy to check if the victim was unconscious or not. He found the body lying in the kitchen, with three arrows stuck in the nape, temple and forehead. After passing away, Andrés placed a cushion under his head.

The case immediately jumped to the media, due, among other things, to the nature and coldness with which the patricide was perpetrated, causing a stir nationwide. In his statements before 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, the young man's response was that for her father to stop suffering, since he really loved him.

Family background

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 who always highlighted her bad temper. When Rabadán's mother became pregnant for the first time, her father did not want to marry her and left her and later went to live in Barcelona. Her brothers had to appear at Matías Rabadán's new home to demand that he face her imminent paternity and to ask him to marry her.

Andrés' older sister recalls that her mother had told him on several occasions that she wanted to separate from her father, but that she did not have the money to do so. Shortly after she passed away, her sister left home, leaving her two younger brothers (Andrés and José) with her father, who had several sporadic partners over the years. It was then that they moved to an isolated urbanization and Andrés lost all the friends he had. Since then he has dedicated himself to prowling alone in different places, he liked to sit on the rocks and stare at the sea; he felt comforted being alone.

In the words of Andrés himself “(…) my mind was shattered, I didn't think clearly nor did I know what I wanted”.

Diagnosis (s) by Andrés Rabadán

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

Later, one of the coroners who visited him suggested the hypothesis that Andrés had suffered a Psychotic attack. This type of crisis is recognized by its sudden appearance (although there are indications that allow us to detect when it will occur) in situations of great stress over time. The people most vulnerable to suffering a psychotic break are the most mentally and emotionally fragile.

The appearance of suspicious or "strange" ideas and the Social isolation are two very remarkable features of the psychotic break. The subject's central nervous system collapses, causing a temporary break with reality. In the event of a psychotic outbreak, the psychiatric regulations to be followed require that the person must be medicated for at least two years. If in this period of time he stops showing delusions or hallucinations, said medication is withdrawn.

The symptoms of the crossbow killer

As explained by the defendant, said he heard noises that burst in suddenly and at a very high volume in his head; he also believed that he was being persecuted by a series of individuals who conspired against him. Precisely because of this, he revealed that he kept different weapons in his house, to be able to defend himself if someone attacked him. When he decided to sabotage the train tracks it was after an incident that he had with his bicycle, when he was almost run over by a convoy that was passing at that time. As a result, he vowed revenge.

After the murder, he said that he felt as if he woke up from a dream and came to himself, which explains why he carefully placed a pillow under the head of the corpse of his father, proof of his remorse for what happened. When the police picked up the crossbow, they saw that an attached arrow remained intact that was never fired. It was for Andrés.

Various speculations about his clinical profile

To diagnose schizophrenia, the requirement is that the person suffers from delusions and hallucinations for more than six months; otherwise it will be considered that it is simply a psychotic break. If ten years pass without relapse, it is estimated that the outbreak has subsided, and that the chances of recurrence are low. Despite everything, several psychiatrists argued that Andrés Rabadán did not have any mental illness.

There was also speculation that it was a case of psychopathy, since the forensic reports were very contradictory in this regard. Psychopaths are people who know very well what one wants to hear and improvise a message that really seems spontaneous with the ultimate aim of satisfying their own interests.

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

Final comments

When an event has been so mediated and has caused so much social alarm because of its monstrous nature, both the media communication as society itself tries hastily to attribute a mental illness to the subject who has perpetrated the crime. This occurs because it is not conceived that a mentally healthy person can do something like that, with which there is a tendency to look for a psychopathological reason that explains the reason for such a despicable fact.

Truth be told, people with serious psychiatric disorders they commit very few murders, it is 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 perform unimaginable acts.

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

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

Bibliographic references:

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