The judicial investigation into the alleged homicide of Isak Andic has not stopped for summer vacations. Media coverage of the case has plummeted, but some have continued working. The Mossos d’Esquadra are scientifically reconstructing the route in Montserrat that on December 1st was taken together by the Andic family therapist, Maria Julia Lüderwaldt, and a former collaborator of her practice, Johana, a British English teacher whose name is the only detail known. Investigators have strong suspicions that the two women walked the Camí de les Feixades that morning, the same path that thirteen days later Isak and his son Jonathan Andic walked, where the father died after falling down a ravine nearly one hundred meters deep.
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In July, an unexpected witness appeared in the judicial scene of the case: Johana. She collaborated with the therapist when there was an English-speaking patient, and both have admitted in their circle that they maintained a friendship and trust relationship that went beyond merely professional. Knowing her fondness for the mountains, the therapist had asked her to recommend a place for a hike with a patient, who was not Jonathan Andic, and whose route had to include some ravine. On December 1st, Johana personally showed the path to Maria Julia. This is confirmed in the messages they exchanged those days and also after Isak Andic’s death. These conversations are in the investigators’ possession because both women temporarily handed over their phones, both iPhones, so the police could extract their contents.
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The circles around the two women have denied that the path taken that morning was the one leading to the Salnitre caves. But the Mossos are reconstructing the hike to specify the itinerary and determine if, as they suspect, it was the same one that just six days later, on December 7th, Johana showed to Jonathan Andic.
Isak Andic died on December 14, 2024, at the age of 72. His sudden death made headlines due to the social and economic relevance of the figure. Later, suspicions and the arrest of his son Jonathan on May 19 increased interest in the case. News in the media that the two women commented on in their message exchanges and that caused the English teacher distress, leading her, more than a year ago, to start talking to a lawyer. Neither Maria Julia nor Johana were in Montserrat the day Isak Andic died, but they were there in the days before. While Maria Julia remained calm, as she demonstrated during the interrogation, first with the Mossos d’Esquadra and then in the Martorell courts, Johana followed the investigation’s progress anxiously through the press, aware that the police would reach her at any moment.
She finally decided to get ahead and showed up with her lawyer at the Mossos station in Martorell to give a statement before the investigation unit. She expanded on this testimony in a second statement at the Les Corts station, before the same investigators who had questioned her previously.
The new unexpected witness in the case will be summoned to testify soon in the Martorell courts
The woman said that she was the one who showed Jonathan the Collbató route on December 7. They shared that walk on the therapist’s instructions because the walk was part of the emotional work she was doing with the son to repair the complex relationship he had with his father.
In his two statements to the police and in the third, in court, answering only his lawyer’s questions, Cristóbal Martell, Jonathan Andic maintained that he had learned about the route where his father died from some friends. He did not mention the English teacher who accompanied him on the December 7 hike and whose existence his defense only learned about when it became public.
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Neither the police, nor Judge Raquel Nieto, nor Prosecutor Teresa Yoldi have been able to ask Jonathan Andic about that walk with Maria Julia’s collaborator, nor why he omitted her presence. The suspect has spoken with his circle, downplaying the fact that he went with that woman and assuring that at no time during the walk did Johana show him a ravine or put him in a risky situation. This statement contrasts with what the teacher told the Mossos: that the therapist asked her to make him experience an extreme situation, on the edge of a cliff.
Jonathan Andic’s defense, like the other judicial actors in the case, is still waiting for the response from the ninth chamber of the Barcelona Court of Appeal to the appeal Cristóbal Martell filed on May 28 against his client’s prison order. Three months have passed and there is no indication that the three judges’ ruling will be imminent.
Therefore, after the August holidays, the defense is considering whether to play the card of requesting a new statement from Jonathan Andic in court to resolve doubts that the prosecution interprets as new contradictions from the suspect.
Jonathan Andic knew and took the route where his father died with an English assistant of his therapist
In any case, what need did Jonathan Andic have to omit that the first time he took and learned that route was accompanied by a collaborator of his therapist? For the defense, the fact that the hike originated from third parties precisely reinforces the thesis that there was no premeditation or homicidal intent, as the judge and prosecutor have maintained in the documents that have been released.
Despite having rid herself of the burden of carrying a great secret, Johana remains worried. She knows that the judge and prosecutor will soon summon her to testify and that the defense will have many questions to ask her.
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