It was one of the most disturbing discoveries ever made by the Costa del Sol authorities.
On June 6, 2023, almost a decade after she vanished into thin air, the body of Sibora Gagani was found hidden behind a wall in her Torremolinos apartment.
The corpse of the Italo-Albanian woman, who was just 22 when she disappeared, was covered in lime, placed in a wooden box and concealed behind a recently built double wall in the attic.
The addition that hid the secret compartment was so well-finished that it appeared to be part of the original structure.
Near to the makeshift coffin was a blood-stained knife, while a small bouquet of flowers had been placed over the victim’s torso.
Forensic examinations confirmed Sibora had died violently from ‘acute respiratory insufficiency’ and hypovolemic shock caused by stab wounds, most of them to her back, indicating she was likely facing away from her attacker when she was knifed.
Now, more than three years after the discovery, public prosecutors have confirmed that a jury will hear the case against Marco Romeo, the Italian man accused of killing Sibora at the flat they shared.
The decision follows an order issued by the Torremolinos Court of Instruction, which confirms he will be tried for ‘murder with gender-based violence’, and a further charge relating to the concealment of the body.
Romeo is already scheduled to face a separate jury trial on March 9, 2026 for the alleged murder of his former partner Paula, who was fatally stabbed in another Torremolinos property in 2023.
That hearing is expected to run through to March 13.
While the trial for Sibora has not yet been given a date, the Tribunal of Instance in Torremolinos has ruled that the case should proceed to a jury trial phase, authorising additional investigative steps.
The decision came after a hearing to clarify the charges. Prosecutors called for proceedings to continue, the family’s private prosecution supported this request, and the defence opposed it, arguing that the case lacked evidence and should be dismissed.
What investigators say happened
According to the court documents, the murder of Sibora took place during the week of July 7 to 14, 2014, when Sibora and the accused were in the home they shared in Torremolinos.
The investigation states that Romeo attacked the 22-year-old with a knife, delivering at least four stab wounds, three of them to her back, causing her death.
He then allegedly hid her body inside the property, specifically, in a space created within the attic area of the duplex, before covering up her disappearance.
Over the following months, he is accused of convincing friends and relatives that Sibora had left of her own accord, even filing a missing-person report with police on September 19, 2014.
The case remained unsolved until May 17, 2023, when Romeo was arrested for the killing of another girlfriend, named as 28-year-old Paula.
Paula, a mother of three (one of them Romeo’s), is alleged to have been stabbed 14 times.
Although he did not admit responsibility for Paula’s death, he is said to have made a spontaneous admission regarding Sibora’s disappearance after seeing her photograph on the wall at the station.
According to a previous statement from the central government’s representative, Romeo claimed that he had dissolved Sibora’s remains in acid before concealing them behind a wall.
The Policia Nacional later returend to the flat they had searched years earlier in the El Calvario neighbourhood.
They noted irregularities in the alignment of floor tiles on either side of a wall. Using X-ray equipment, they detected a wooden crate hidden in the cavity between two partitions.
Inside the box, the remains of Sibora were found distributed in two bin bags.
The murder of Sibora Gagani will now move toward a full jury trial once dates are assigned. Meanwhile, the trial concerning the killing of Paula is set to begin in March 2026.
