What Remains Unseen in Netflix's 'The Black Widow': The Father of Her Child and Her New Life in Fontcalent

The recent release of 'The Black Widow' on Netflix has brought back to the media spotlight one of the most unsettling and followed crimes in Spanish crime chronicles: the murder of Antonio Navarro in 2017, at the hands of Salvador Rodrigo, lover of his wife María Jesús Moreno, known as 'Maje, the Black Widow of Patraix'.

While the 'true crime' phenomenon fuels morbid curiosity and fiction takes certain narrative liberties, the real life of the woman from Novelda, after becoming a mother from an affair with a Picassent inmate, follows a silent course, away from the spotlight and detached from the series' script.

Currently, Maje is serving her sentence in the Irene Villa Mothers' Unit of the Alicante prison in Fontcalent, a special module for inmates with children under three years old, aiming to provide a more humane environment for motherhood despite the prison context. There, she lives with other inmates in a routine marked by maternal care and constant surveillance, very different from the media attention she once garnered.

The child's father is an inmate from Picassent prison with whom Maje had a relationship while both were incarcerated. A story that adds a new and puzzling chapter to her already controversial trajectory. Far from television drama, her life continues in thick silence, in a prison that now also houses her child's childhood.

An unusual love story that arose within the walls of Picassent prison. There, Maje began a romantic relationship with David M.R., an inmate convicted of a brutal homicide in 2008 in Valencia. According to prison sources, the couple maintained the relationship for at least three months before the woman from Novelda became pregnant.

On July 13, Maje gave birth to a boy at the General Hospital of Alicante. After the birth, mother and child were transferred to the Irene Villa Mothers' Unit of the Alicante prison in Fontcalent, where the inmate will stay until the child turns three.

The baby's father, David M.R., was released after serving a 15-year sentence. He was one of the perpetrators of the murder of Hugo Sáez, a 27-year-old resident of Cullera. The crime, which shocked the Valencian Community, occurred on May 20, 2008.

According to the trial, the victim went to David's home to sell him cocaine. Carlos S., another regular consumer, was also present. At one point, both attacked Hugo with extreme violence. First, they hit him with a blunt object, then stabbed him to death. The autopsy revealed 44 wounds distributed all over the body, including fatal injuries to the neck that severed the carotid artery.

After the crime, the attackers wrapped the body in a sheet, tied it with adhesive tape, and transported it in a borrowed van. On the left bank of the Júcar River, downstream from the Cullera weir, they threw the body into the water with a butane cylinder tied to the feet to prevent it from floating.

However, the plan failed. A friend of the victim walking in the area saw the cylinder and, pulling the rope, discovered the body. The Provincial Court of Valencia sentenced Maje's baby's father and his accomplice to 15 years in prison for homicide with the aggravating factor of abuse of superiority.

The facilities of the Irene Villa Mothers' Unit, inaugurated in 2020, currently house more than fifteen inmates and ten children, according to the latest data provided by Penitentiary Institutions. There, Maje will serve her sentence until the child turns three.

The innovative unit, the fourth in Spain, is organized in a single two-story building that houses a residential area composed of 32 rooms. Among them, one is adapted for people with reduced mobility and two are double, specifically designed for a pregnant woman and another mother living with her child.

Each room offers 22 square meters distributed in a small living-dining room, kitchen area, bedroom, and private bathroom. The space is equipped to promote coexistence between inmates and their children in an environment as non-institutional as possible. In addition to furniture adapted to different childhood stages, the unit has play areas, classrooms, workshops for children, as well as areas for health care, social assistance, and administration.

In the Alicante prison, 'the Black Widow of Patraix' lives much closer to her family, who still reside in Novelda. Her parents, Antonio and María Dolores, visit her weekly, as confirmed by locals a week ago. "She is doing well, facing life as she can," Maje's mother briefly assessed a week ago. The child she lives with in the Mothers' Unit will turn two next July.