Burning Body: Did a True Story Inspire the Netflix Miniseries? Here Find Out with Us!
The Netflix miniseries Burning Body (El cuerpo en llamas) is inspired by the true story of the Guardia Urbana Crime which occurred in 2017. Rosa Peral and her lover Albert López (both agents of the Guardia Urbana of Barcelona) were accused of the murder of Pablo Rodríguez, Rosa’s then-husband, which occurred in the early hours of May 1, 2017. The two were also accused of hiding the man’s body in the trunk of their vehicle and then taking it to the artificial lake of Foix, where it was burned. In Flames tells a horror story, but also the reconstruction of a murder case, starring Úrsula Corberó, Quim Gutiérrez, and José Manuel Poga, who play a couple of murderers and the victim respectively.
The first season of Burning Body is composed of eight episodes, which trace the lines of the murder case starring Rosa Peral (Úrsula Corberó), set in May 2017. “The remains of the policeman Pedro (José Manuel Poga) are found in the interior of a burned car in the Foix basin in Barcelona. The discovery does not take long to arouse the interest of public opinion, especially when the investigations begin to reveal a network of toxic relationships, deception, violence, and sexual scandals involving the deceased and two other policemen: his partner Rosa and his ex-boyfriend Albert (Quim Gutiérrez),” reads the synopsis.
Burning Body: What is Known About the Case?
Rosa Peral did not have a peaceful life in those days. She was already separated from her ex-husband and was constantly arguing with him over custody of her daughter Sofía Di Lei. She was in a relationship with Pedro Rodríguez, but investigations showed that this was a toxic relationship. Rosa had previously also had a relationship with another colleague, Albert López, with whom she had a rather “intermittent” type of relationship. As the TV series Burning Body shows, Rosa Peral wanted a way out of her situation and, in the true story, ended up planning the murder of her partner. According to the results of the investigation, Rosa manipulated her lover Albert López into helping her commit the murder.
The investigations begin with the discovery of the remains of Pedro‘s charred car and body. The car had been left near the Foix reservoir, an hour’s drive from the center of Barcelona, but following investigations by investigators it was discovered that Rodríguez had been killed in the house he shared with his partner Rosa Peral in the seaside resort of Vilanova I la Geltrú, in the early hours of May 2, 2017. It was not possible to establish the precise details of the murder because the body was found completely charred and Pedro was identified only thanks to the chassis number of his vehicle and the fragment of a prosthesis which was not destroyed when the car was set Burning Body.
The evidence against the two was impossible to ignore: Rosa Peral and Albert López both had phones with them the night Pedro was murdered, and interceptions of their devices show many phone calls between Rosa and Albert in the hours before the murder. Additionally, Pedro’s blood was found in the basement of the house the man shared with Rosa. After Pedro‘s death, Rosa Peral and Albert López supported a version of the event geared towards accusing Rosa‘s ex-husband of the murder.
Who Killed Pedro Rodríguez?
Rosa Peral and Albert López were both convicted of the murder of Pedro Rodríguez. The two police officers from the Guardia Urbana of Barcelona received sentences of 25 and 20 years respectively for the crime of which they were found guilty. During the trial, which took place between February and March, the court heard various testimonies and learned how the two spent the day following the murder using Rodríguez ‘s cell phone and driving his car to various places that the victim was usually frequent, as well as stopping at Rosa’s ex-husband’s house to try to drag him into the investigation and make him a possible scapegoat.
The two also stated that Pedro had allegedly had a jealous clash with Rosa‘s ex-husband, a statement made in an attempt to create an alternative explanation for his initial disappearance and subsequent murder. At the trial, Rosa Peral and Albert López ended up accusing each other to save themselves. Albert declared that Rosa did everything alone and asked for her help only to get rid of Pedro‘s body, while Rosa testified that Albert, driven by jealousy, had entered the house and killed Pedro while she hid with her daughter. Ultimately, the condition of the body and contradictory testimonies prevented the world from discovering the details of the murder. We only know that both Rosa Peral and Albert López were at Rosa‘s house the night of Pedro‘s murder, but we will never know if it was Rosa, Albert, or both who committed the crime. Rosa Peral was sentenced to 25 years in prison and Albert to 20 years.
Rosa Peral, 42 years old, before joining the police worked as a waitress in a nightclub and, according to Metropoli, her former colleagues reported that ” men fell at her feet ” and that many came to the club just to see her because “she was very beautiful and danced very well”. Forensic experts described her as selfish, with a low frustration tolerance, emotional toughness, and low empathy. They also pointed out that she was incapable of maintaining a serious and stable relationship.
Rosa Peral was in a relationship with Pedro Rodriguez, the victim, and with Albert López, the other killer, around the same time, but it was not the first time that the agent cheated on a partner. At 23, she is known to have cheated on Rubén, a policeman whom she had married and with whom she had two daughters, with Óscar, a police sub-inspector. Peral had also been a victim of revenge porn: at the time, everything suggested that Óscar had spread Rosa’s intimate photos of her. When the case was brought to court, the prosecutor’s office asked for a sentence of two to three years in prison but found no evidence against him, and the sub-inspector was acquitted. In March 2020, Rosa Peral was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of Pedro Rodríguez, while her lover received a 20-year sentence. Although both accused each other at the time, the jury found both guilty.
Furthermore, both convicts were ordered to compensate the victim’s family with 885,000 euros. Due to her misconduct, the former Urban Guard agent was transferred to other penitentiary institutions a total of five times. During the trial, as we said, both defendants accused each other. Rosa Peral accused Albert López of killing her boyfriend out of jealousy, while López accused Peral of committing her murder because she had previously been attacked by the victim and then she had asked him for help in disposing of the body. The prosecution argued that the two were murdered as part of a premeditated plan, as they had had a relationship in the past, which they were trying to mend. As a result, the prosecution requested 24 years in prison for López and 25 years for Peral, accusing them of voluntary manslaughter aggravated by kinship.
The sentence finally established that the lovers maintained a relationship for several years, starting in 2012. After a period of separation, in 2017 they resumed their love story, while Rosa Peral also had a relationship with the victim, who had been living together for less than six months at the time of the events. When the victim discovered the betrayal, “doubts” and jealousy arose, which led the perpetrators to develop a “revenge plan” to get rid of him. As stated in the text, “on the night between May 1 and 2” three years ago, the defendants communicated via telephone calls, predicting that Rodriguez would be unconscious or “asleep”.
“At an unspecified time, in the early hours of the morning, one of the two, or in common, attacked him and killed him”, then they transferred the body in the trunk of their car to a forest track in the Foix basin. There, “using some type of fuel, they set fire to the vehicle with the victim’s body inside, with the result that the body was almost completely charred by the action of the flames, without remains or signs of the violent cause of death”, concludes the document. The convicts appealed against the sentence but to no avail. Both the High Court of Justice of Catalonia and the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction.
