The Police have not fully resolved the theft of the 45 exclusive bottles at the famous Atrio de Cáceres restaurant. In fact, the most valued by its owners, chef José Polo and his partner Toño Pérez, a Château d’Yquem from 1806, valued at 310,000 euros, is missing, but at least it has its material authors arrested: Constantín Golubic, a Romanian citizen with a 47-year-old background, and Priscila Lara Guevara, a 29-year-old Mexican who was Miss Earth for the State of Mexico in 2016, as confirmed by research sources.
Both prepared the hit in detail because they were at the Atrio facilities up to three times before the robbery perpetrated at dawn on October 27. According to the Police report, to which EL MUNDO has had access, they visited the restaurant up to three times, from where it is accessed through a door to the cellar. Specifically, they had dinner twice and on the other occasion they had lunch. It was in June, twice, and in August another. They went completely unnoticed. In fact, if they stood out for something, it was for their exquisite education and manners, as José Polo recounted hours after the robbery.
On the day of the robbery, the woman made the room reservation and arrived first. Well dressed, she caught the attention of the hotel manager because she was wearing a wig and she only had a backpack with her. She nothing that made her suspect something strange. He showed a Swiss passport as identification and always spoke in perfect English, like his companion later, who has now been known to have two arrest warrants in Madrid courts and who has a history of luxury theft, “not only in Spain According to the police report.
After checking into the hotel, the woman received a visit from her companion, who was not registered. They dined together and paid immediately. They were extremely friendly and very polite and, as usually happens with most visitors who require it, they were offered a visit to the exclusive winery, which is another attraction offered by the Atrio management after tasting their careful and attractive dishes and its large collection of wines.
More than an emblematic winery, what Atrio has is an authentic museum. More than 4,000 references, including 42 vintages from Mouton-Rothschild, 27 from Latour, 23 from Petrus… and 80 from the legendary Château d’Yquem, the largest collection in the world outside the winery, which can be visit in a small chapel, with the mythical bottle from 1806, also stolen, and which is the one that has caused great moral damage to its owners.
So the couple visited the cellar and later went up to the room. It was not until midday the next day, when the restaurant’s food service began to be prepared, that one of the sommelier entered the cellar and found some bottles missing. It so happens that the lighting had been changed days before. But during the early morning, the man left the room to go to the basement where the cellar is located. It was about 1:30 a.m. After gaining access with a master key, previously stolen, he later left with three large backpacks – one in each hand and another on his back – where he introduced the bottles. To protect them, they used several towels from the room. Meanwhile, the woman distracted the employee with the excuse that he prepare something to eat even though the kitchen was already closed. The theft was discovered the next morning. The alleged perpetrators were no longer at the hotel, which they left around 5:30 am. The establishment’s own security guard didn’t notice anything either. In fact, he was the one who served the woman who requested some food and this worker then warned him that the kitchen was already closed. But he insisted so much and all the employees of the complex have such instilled service work, that finally the security guard himself prepared a salad for him, a moment that the robber took advantage of to take the bottles. The woman even insisted that they prepare a dessert for her to gain more time. Between ten and fifteen minutes passed, enough to ransack the cellar and bring the 45 stolen bottles up to the room.
Later, around 5:00 am, I was already at reception to check out. They paid by card and left on foot, getting lost in the pedestrian streets of the old town of Cáceres, in the dark of the night. Hence, the flight from Spain through several European countries during these months.
A clean hit, from specialists, until they have been arrested, for now without the bottles.
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