Gloria Martínez Ruiz

**Gloria Martínez Ruiz** was a teenager who vanished after running out of a clinic during a mental health crisis.

## Background

Gloria was born in Alicante on January 29, 1975, to parents Álvaro and Isabel. She had a normal childhood but at around 14 years old, she began to struggle with generalized anxiety disorder, which led to insomnia and an eating disorder. She would also suffer from occasional psychotic episodes and her relationship with her father could be rocky at times. Despite these challenges, Gloria continued with her studies. At the time of her disappearance, she was studying at COU, where she got good grades and played piano at the Alicante Conservatory.

## Case

Gloria was admitted to the Torres de San Luis Clinic in the Alicante municipality of Alfaz del Pi, Spain on October 29, 1992. She was referred to the psychiatric hospital by her psychologist, Dr María Victoria Soler Lapuente because she was suffering from anxiety, anorexia, and insomnia. While she was at the clinic she received an additional diagnosis of borderline personality disorder with psychosis. However, her parents have stated that they think she was misdiagnosed and they believe that she was probably actually suffering from depression. The plan was for Gloria to spend a few days at the clinic and come home when her sleep improved.

That morning, Gloria’s parents dropped her off at the doors of the clinic with a small suitcase and said goodbye to her. Her mother, Isabel, had planned to stay there with her to support her, but when they arrived, the staff explained that they would have to leave her there alone. Isabel and Álvaro weren’t happy about this but decided to check her into the clinic anyway.

Gloria was assigned to stay in a room in Bungalow B1, the clinic being comprised of a series of bungalows, sports areas, gardens, and a swimming pool. It was originally intended to treat wealthy clients with mild mental health issues. However, when Gloria arrived, she was the only patient.

According to the staff, Gloria became very upset when her parents left and decided she didn’t want to stay at the hospital. As a result, a nurse had to physically prevent her from leaving her room. She then began to panic and several members of staff, including Dr Soler, had to restrain her, tie her to her bed and give her a shot of the sedative drugs haloperidol, largactil and sinogal. This appeared to work, but Gloria was left tied to her bed.

At around noon, Gloria was untied and taken to the canteen by a nurse, but she wasn’t hungry and only asked for juice. While she was there she wrote a note reading “It scares me to think that I am dying and the only light is close to me, My God.” The note also mentioned someone named “Vicen” who remains unidentified to this day. According to experts, her handwriting was shaky and seemed to suggest she was still heavily sedated at the time. Despite this, Gloria was given a second shot of sedatives.

While she was in the canteen, Gloria asked the cook to help make sure she wasn’t taken back to her room because she didn’t want to be restrained again. Her wishes were disregarded and she was tied to her bed against her will for a second time. Later that night, she was given a third sedative shot to ensure she remained calm.

At around 1:30 A.M., Gloria asked a nurse if she could untie her so she could use the bathroom. According to some sources, there were two nurses in the room at the time and they agreed to let her go, however, she began to panic again and one of them had to leave to get assistance. Gloria then pushed the remaining nurse, ran out of the hospital, jumped over a fence, and escaped. According to other sources Gloria asked to change her nightgown because she had urinated on it and an assistant lent her blue sweatpants and a white t-shirt. As the staff weren't paying proper attention to her, she was then able to jump out of a window and run away. According to one source, Gloria may have panicked because she believed she was going to receive another sedative shot and she didn’t want to take it.

Staff initially assumed Gloria couldn’t have gone very far because she was on foot and unfamiliar with the area. They initially searched the grounds themselves but they were unable to find any indication of where she’d gone. They didn’t contact Gloria’s family or notify the police of her disappearance until around 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 A.M.

The police searched the clinic grounds but found no footprints or other evidence of someone running away. There was also no trace of Gloria in the clinic boiler, or any wells or septic tanks in the area. When the police questioned the staff, a Romanian gardener working for the hospital claimed that on the night of Gloria’s disappearance, a nurse had approached him and asked him for assistance because Gloria had become violent. This surprised him because he had seen her hours earlier and she seemed fine at the time. At some point, he heard a scream coming from Gloria’s room and when he went to see what was going on, he found she was no longer there. He offered to help search for her but the staff refused to let him.

The hospital's claims that Gloria had run away were supported by several people who lived near the clinic. Several neighbors heard footsteps in the early morning hours of October 30 and dogs barking. An employee at a gas station in Altea, just over three kilometers away from the clinic, also saw a very young woman or girl with curly black hair, wearing blue tracksuit bottoms and a white t-shirt early that morning. The girl stood out to him because she was making a call from a public phone despite appearing not to have any money on her.

The next major lead the police investigated was a tip from a man who claimed to have seen Gloria camping with a group of French youths in Altea a few days after her disappearance. However, nothing came of this. Another possible sighting came from a friend of Gloria’s father who claimed he saw her on a bus in Alicante sometime after her disappearance.

In March 1993, Gloria’s cousin participated in a reconstruction of her escape from the clinic. Also in 1993, a landfill near La Nucía, a town located not far from the clinic, was searched but nothing was found.

Shortly after Gloria’s disappearance, the Torres de San Luis Clinic shut down due to financial issues and the buildings were converted into a nursing home. In 1994, after the closure of the clinic, a bag labeled “Gloria B1” was found in a “hidden” hole in one of the bungalows. The bag contained a soiled pair of girls' underpants and a belt. Gloria’s parents strongly believed that these belonged to her, but the nurse attending to Gloria the night of her disappearance didn’t think she was wearing them when she ran away because she had wet herself while left tied to the bed and had to change out of them. It is unclear why the bag was left where it was.

The discovery of the bag resulted in the clinic being searched again, with a special emphasis being placed on the boiler, however, nothing was found.

In 1999, the Ministry of the Interior announced they had received a letter from a possible witness in the case. In mid-July, lawyer Antonio Martínez received a handwritten letter postmarked Sant Vicent del Raspeig with no return address. The writer claimed they saw Gloria in Tibi a few hours after her disappearance. She said she saw Gloria at the door of a house belonging to a "young and skinny nurse" who lived there with another young woman. Gloria looked like she'd just fainted and the women told the witness they were taking her to the hospital. The witness claimed she felt guilty about not coming forward sooner and explained she'd asked her husband what to do and he said she should keep quiet because it wasn't her business. Antonio told the media he put the letter in a protective envelope so any forensic evidence on it would be preserved, but it is unclear what happened to it after that point. The Civil Guard refused to comment on the letter to protect the integrity of the investigation.

Gloria’s case was judicially closed in 2000. However, her family were able to file a civil case against the hospital. In court, the hospital admitted that they were only equipped to treat people with mild mental health problems and that they should have sent Gloria to a facility with the resources to care for her. Another factor that may have contributed to Gloria’s disappearance was that the nurse and assistant tending to her that night were inexperienced, and didn’t know how to manage the situation. It was also questionable that Dr Soler recommended Gloria’s parents send her to the private clinic because she owned a share of it herself. The court determined that while the clinic was not technically a psychiatric hospital, it was functioning as one and therefore had a responsibility to care for Gloria. In April 2009, Soler and Zopito SL, the company that owned the clinic, were ordered to pay Gloria’s family £60,000 in compensation for her disappearance by the Alicante Court of First Insistence number 5.

The decision was appealed by the lawyer for Gloria’s family, Antonio Martínez Camacho, and a judge at the Provincial Court of Alicante raised the fine to £104,251.63 after concluding that the suffering caused by Gloria’s disappearance was equivalent to the suffering which would be caused by the death of a child, but with additional pain caused by the uncertainty of the situation.

Gloria’s parents have provided DNA samples that have been used to rule Gloria out as a possible identity for any unidentified remains found in Spain.

In 2009, there was a possible development in Gloria’s case when a speaker named Amparo Huélamo told a journalist during a security conference that she had met Gloria in Valencia and they had a drink together. She insisted Gloria was okay and that she had a young son and a partner who she was living in an apartment with. Huélamo claimed she notified the Security Forces of the incident, however, it is unclear if this is the case.

Gloria’s parents do not believe the clinic’s claims that Gloria ran away for several reasons. The clinic was located on a farm that was surrounded by a fence that was around two meters high at its lowest points and around four meters high at its highest points. Gloria was relatively tall but there were still doubts as to how she would have been able to scale the fence. Furthermore, she had myopia in both eyes and without her glasses, which she left behind when she ran away from the hospital, she could only see a mixture of shadows and blurred colors. This would have been made even worse because the night she vanished was very dark with no full moon to light the grounds and the fact that she was still likely heavily sedated.

It has been theorized that Gloria may have died after the staff accidentally administered her a fatal overdose of sedatives.

## Characteristics

* She had wavy brown hair.
* She had myopia in both eyes.

## Clothing and accessories

* A blue T-shirt.
* Blue and/or striped pants.

## Sources

* Gloria Martínez Ruiz on Wikipedia (Spanish)
* Criminalia (Spanish)
* La Escena Del Crimen (Spanish)
* El Mundo (Spanish)
* Ondacero (Spanish)
* Diario De Ibiza (Spanish)