Netflix prepares its new 'true crime': The 'Black Widow' of Patraix

The 'true crime' genre is booming and increasingly common on streaming platforms. Netflix announced at the San Sebastián Film Festival its upcoming Spanish film projects, one of which tells the story of a prisoner serving time in the Mother's Unit of the Fontcalent prison in Alicante: Maje, known as 'the Black Widow' of Patraix.

The film 'The Black Widow', directed by Carlos Sedes and produced by Bambú, responsible for docuseries like 'The Asunta Case' or 'The Alcàsser Case' among others, is based on the Patraix crime, the murder of an engineer planned by his wife (Maje) and executed by one of her young lovers: a nurse from a private hospital.

The movie begins with the discovery of a man's body in a garage in the Patraix neighborhood of Valencia. The lifeless body had seven stab wounds. The Homicide Group of the National Police of the capital of Turia takes charge of the investigations into what appears to be a crime of passion and focuses its suspicions on the widow of the murdered man, a nurse who had married the deceased barely a year before the brutal murder.

The trial took place at the Provincial Court of Valencia in October 2020, more than three years after the stabbing murder of the engineer. The parties brought a total of 51 witnesses and 14 experts before the popular jury, including 28 police officers, two civil guards, two forensic doctors, two psychiatrists, and one psychologist, as well as more than fifty documentary pieces of evidence, most being recordings from wiretaps. The trial dominated hundreds of hours of television and was one of the most talked-about cases in Spain this century.

Maje was sentenced to 22 years in prison for her husband's murder, and her then-lover, Salvador Rodrigo Lapiedra, who physically committed the crime, was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Salvador appealed the sentence, which was upheld by the second chamber of the Supreme Court on January 27, 2022.

María Jesús, originally from Novelda, was serving her sentence at Picassent prison until June 2023 when she was transferred to Fontcalent prison in Alicante to give birth to her first child, resulting from a relationship with another inmate at the Valencian penitentiary.

The 'Black Widow' joins 'The Sancho Case', 'The Last Hours of Mario Biondo', or 'The Asunta Case', among others, demonstrating that Netflix has perfectly understood that human nature has a morbid curiosity to explore crimes.