Aahana Swrup
‘A Widow’s Game‘ is a Spanish crime film that revolves around a murder case in which the victim’s recently widowed wife is the prime suspect. Arturo Ferrer’s dead body is found in his apartment’s garage, where he seems to have been brutally stabbed to death. Eva Torres, a seasoned officer, takes the lead on the case and quickly discovers that his widow, Maria Jesus “Maje” Moreno, has a long history of infidelity. From workplace affairs and new relationships to flings from her pre-marital life, the woman seems to have multiple lovers on her speed dial.
Consequently, when she becomes the prime suspect in the investigation, a careful game of patience ensues as Eva and her team tap into the nurse’s personal phone line and wait for her to fall into their trap. The film’s narrative and most of its on-screen characters are, to some degree, based on real-life people involved in the 2017 case of The Black Widow of Patraix. As a result, the real-life basis of secondary characters like Andres and Daniel, notable lovers in Maje’s life, remains worth exploring.
The Real-Life Maria Jesus Moreno Had Multiple Affairs During Her Marriage
On August 16, 2017, in Valencia, Patraix, Salvador Rodrigo Lapiedra murdered Antonio Navarro by getting the jump on him in his garage and repeatedly stabbing him. Later, the authorities would discover that the killer had a partner in crime, Maria Jesus Moreno, AKA Maje, Navarro’s wife. The latter, who was having an affair with Salvador, had planned her husband’s murder with her lover, who believed she was stuck in an abusive marriage. However, he wasn’t the only “other man” in Maje’s life.
Despite getting married in 2016, Maje, a then-nurse by profession, maintained various adulterous relationships with other men. Her affair with Salvador, her co-worker from the hospital who was also married, received the most attention due to the couple’s shared homicidal crime. However, there were also multiple others, namely Tomás, José, and Sergio, who were involved with the nurse during the course of her marriage. As per sources, these men had a variety of professions, ranging from publicist, physical therapist, and urban guard. While some of these men, like Salvador, were aware of her relation to Navarro, others were entirely in the dark about her marriage.
As per reports, on the night of Navarro’s murder, Maje stayed over at Tomás, the physiotherapist’s house. On the other hand, on the day of her arrest in 2018, the authorities picked the nurse up as she was leaving another lover’s house. Afterward, during her court trial, the prosecutor called all four of these men, including Salvador, as witnesses for the case. Reportedly, one of them defined Maje as a sexual predator in a statement shared with the police. In the end, as the trial came to an end in 2020, both the widowed nurse and Salvador, the warden, were found guilty of Navarro’s murder. They received prison sentences of 22 and 17 years, respectively.
Over the course of her imprisonment, Maje had other romantic relationships with her fellow inmates, including one murderer named David M. R, with whom she went on to have a child. Thus, it remains evident that the criminal, who serves as the direct inspiration for ‘A Widow’s Game,’ has had and continues to have a varied love life. Even though the on-screen story fictionalizes the characters of Andres and Daniel to reflect the same, their narrative roles remain reflective of Maje’s multiple real-life lovers. This seems to particularly apply to her lovers like Tomás, with whom she had an affair while still married to Navarro. Ultimately, even though Andres and Daniel aren’t direct biographical counterparts of any real-life individuals, they retain intrinsic roots in the real life of Maria Jesus Moreno.
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