Naman Shrestha
Netflix’s ‘The TikTok Killer’ is a Spanish two-part true crime documentary series that chronicles the tragic case of a 42-year-old independent woman named Esther Estepa, who went missing during a hiking trip in Spain in August 2023. Months later, her family’s worst nightmare came true when her remains were found and identified by the authorities. The docuseries also features insightful interviews with Esther’s family and friends, as well as the officials linked to the case, providing a detailed account of the murder case and the investigation, which led to a serial killer.
Esther Estepa Went Missing During a Hiking Trip With a TikToker
Born in the early 1980s to Josefa “Pepa” Pérez and Antonio, Maria Esther Estepa Perez, simply known as “Esther,” was raised in a loving household with her sister, Raquel. The free-spirited and sociable individual moved away from Seville, Spain, in her early 30s to spread her wings and begin afresh. A few years later, she began dating Marcelo, who was arrested for domestic violence against Esther in 2022. She soon broke up with him, and in the summer of 2023, she relocated to Alicante, where she began staying at a shelter. That’s where she crossed paths with an elderly man named José Jurado Montilla, who was a TikTok content creator at the time.
Esther kept in touch with her mother, Pepa, daily, so when she received some concerning texts from her cell phone on August 23, 2023, she got worried. When Esther’s sister looked at the texts, she was convinced that her sister hadn’t sent those texts. Three days later, Pepa reported her daughter missing and believed that her ex-boyfriend, Marcelo, had something to do with her disappearance. However, due to her age, the police told her that it could be a voluntary disappearance. After her disappearance, her new friend Montilla allegedly contacted her family and inquired about the police investigation, as he was on a hiking trip with her. He also pleaded for her safe return on his social media account. According to Montilla, on August 23, 2023, Esther was allegedly facing discomfort in her leg, after which the two went to the Corea Medical Center in Gandia.
The TikToker claimed that she insisted on going inside the hospital alone, and that was the last time he allegedly saw her. A few months later, on February 2, 2024, a group of hikers came across a human skull at the foot of the mountain, near the Castillo de Bairen in Gandia, along the N-332 highway. Upon testing, the skull was determined to belong to Esther Estepa. The authorities found other remains of the 42-year-old woman in the area. The medical experts further determined that she had been raped before she was killed. The cause of her death was reportedly blunt force trauma to the head.
José Jurado Montilla is Currently Awaiting Trial For Two Murders
José Jurado Montilla, who was the last person to see Esther Estepa alive, was a suspect in another case, the murder of a college student named David, who was killed in Málaga in the year prior to Esther’s disappearance. During the investigation, it was learned that he had a dark past and a lengthy criminal history. Also known as Dinamita Montilla, he was convicted of killing four people in the 1980s — Francisco Gonzalez, Antonio Paniagua Peral, Peter Glenn, and Klaus Schmucker. He had served 28 years in prison, out of the 123 years he was sentenced to, for the crimes. While investigating David’s case, the detectives found the killer’s DNA on his backpack and tested it against his DNA, which they collected after tracking and following him.
After his DNA matched the one found on the backpack, in May 2024, he was arrested at Bar Benito in Valdebótoa, near the Portugal border. After his arrest, he was also eventually linked to the murder of Esther Estepa. While cross-checking his accounts of the day she disappeared, the police interviewed a doctor at the Corea Medical Center in Gandia. The doctor claimed that she was accompanied by a man who matched Montilla’s description and that she allegedly wanted to stay overnight at the medical center. After she was allegedly forced to leave the facility with the man, messages were sent from her phone to her mother a few hours later.
According to reports, the messages were sent using Montilla’s hotspot, which further raised suspicions about him. His cell phone also contained photos and videos of a woman lying on a sleeping bag in a field. However, Montilla denied any involvement in the deaths of David and Esther. Moreover, he maintained his innocence in the previous murder convictions linked to the murders of four men between 1985 and 1987. As of today, he is currently held up in a jail in Spain, while awaiting trial for the two murders. According to reports, he is facing a 30-year sentence, the maximum sentence for murder in Spain.
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