Where is Juan Pedro?

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On the 25th of June 1986, a routine journey across Spain turned tragic.

In the early morning, a tanker truck carrying thousands of liters of sulfuric acid crashed whilst crossing the Somo Sierra mountain pass.

But the driver was not alone.

He had brought along his wife and 10-year-old son.

When authorities arrived to investigate, they found something truly unexpected.

The boy was missing.

Over the ensuing months, hundreds of theories were considered, followed, and abandoned.

Today, four decades later, the question still lingers: Where is Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez?

Spain in the 1980s was a nation on the move.

Following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the country underwent a rapid transformation into a modern democratic state.

But such a transition has its positives and negatives.

Where workers now found themselves with new opportunities, so too did more nefarious elements of society.

This is important to understand because many feel that Juan Pedro Martinez Gómez's disappearance and the truck crash that killed his parents were anything but accidental.

And perhaps they have a point.

Juan Pedro's father, Andrés, was a professional truck driver from Morcia, Morcia, a town near Spain's Mediterranean coast.

Earlier in the month, he'd been commissioned to deliver a tanker of highly toxic sulfuric acid to the northern city of Bilbao, a journey of around 500 miles.

As the route would be rather scenic and the journey would take several days, Andres decided to allow his wife Carmen and son to accompany him.

The 10-year-old had recently brought home some good grades, and Andres thought a family trip would be a nice way to reward him.

The three would make the journey in Andres Volvo F12 tanker lorry.

Between the hazardous cargo and the fact that his family would be accompanying him, the professional driver made sure to have the truck serviced before heading up north.

According to documents acquired after the accident, it had passed a safety inspection and received a light tune-up.

Some speculate that another reason for this had to do with the route itself.

The journey from Murcia to Bilbao is a long northbound hall that cuts almost the full length of Spain.

Though it passes through Madrid, the capital, the rest of the trip consisted of small towns, dry plateaus and scattered farmland.

Then there was the Somo Sierra Pass.

Notorious amongst lorry drivers for its steep gradients and sharp bends, the pass sits at an elevation of nearly 5,000 feet.

Even today its twisting roads and narrow lanes can prove to be a challenge for drivers.

Accidents were common and some people referred to it as a graveyard for heavy vehicles.

There are even stories amongst locals of a ghost lorry which some claim is the spectral remnant of some bygone crash.

The point is that the Somo Sierra Pass is a place where mechanical failure or human error can quickly turn fatal.

and the road was not the only hazard with which Andres would need to contend.

Sulfuric acid is one of the most corrosive substances in common use.

Though it is vital for a variety of industries, it is also potentially lethal when spilt.

Even in the 1980s, transporting it required specialized tankers and strict safety checks.

Over the years, the fact that the family was hauling sulfuric acid has led to a number of theories regarding what happened to Juan Pedro.

It's true that leaked acid can cause severe chemical burns and blindness.

It can also do severe damage to the lungs and throat simply from breathing in the vapours.

But is it strong enough to dissolve a body?

That's the question that has haunted this enduring mystery since the day it occurred.

On On the 24th of June 1986, Andres Martinez Navarro filled up his Volvo F-12, collected his family and drove to the small town of Los Carnovas, a municipality just outside of his hometown of Murcia.

There he picked up a tanker containing 20,000 litres of concentrated sulfuric acid.

According to the tachometer which records the vehicle's engine activity, Andres seemed to have changed his mind about taking a slow, leisurely family trip.

Instead, the evidence seems to indicate that he wanted to make the 12-plus hour journey in one go.

The device indicates that the truck made its first scheduled stop at Benta del Olivo, a well-known truck stop near Sietha.

From there, it carried on through Las Pedro Nieras, where it stopped just after midnight.

It wasn't until nearly 3am that it stopped again, this time at a petrol station just outside Madrid.

The family was alone during this time so it's impossible to determine what, if anything, occurred during the trip.

This could have been the case up until the accident, if not for the fact that they decided to stop for breakfast at the Aragon Inn at around 5.30 on the morning of the 25th of June.

The waiter remembered them clearly.

Andres and Carmen ordered coffee whilst Juan Pedro was treated to a slice of cake.

According to his later statement, the family seemed calm and ordinary, no different to any other group of people on a road trip.

After paying, they left quietly, and whilst the waiter did not personally see them climb into their truck, he did notice it pulling out of the car park and heading towards the winding slopes of the Somo Sierra Pass.

Within the hour, tragedy struck.

At about 6:30am,

drivers on the pass reported a terrifying sight, a seemingly out-of-control truck hurtling downhill at almost 90 miles per hour.

This would be too fast for even a straight flat track, but to drive that way on the treacherous bends of this particular mountain road would be suicide.

Witnesses claim it appeared as if the truck's brakes had failed, causing the driver to lose control.

As it hurtled down the mountain, it clipped the mirror of one car before ramming into another from behind, forcing it off the road.

Finally, unable to take a sharp curve, the tanker tipped, smashing headlong into an oncoming vehicle.

The force of the high-speed impact tore the cistern open, releasing tons of sulfuric acid which spilled across the highway and down the slope.

Local residents and passing drivers rushed to help.

but the acid's fumes quickly drove them back.

Instead, they called emergency services, who, despite being quick to show up on the scene, soon found that they had to battle both the chemical contamination and the flames that were now engulfing the cab.

Although there has been criticism of rescue crews over the years, it is often levied by people who lack an understanding of just how perilous the situation was.

It was imperative that the first responders neutralise the spill before it reached the Duratan River.

If the acid had been allowed to reach the watercourse, it would have devastated the ecosystem and potentially poisoned downstream communities.

More importantly, they couldn't actually reach the cab due to the severity of the spill.

As such, they had no choice but to dump truckloads of lime and sand to try and stop the acid's advance.

It would be three whole hours before they could finally access the crushed cab containing the victims.

After prying open the crumpled wreckage, they found the bodies of Andres and Carmen.

Both were severely burned and scarred by acid, but were still recognisable enough to be identified.

What they didn't find, however, was any trace of Juan Pedro.

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At first, rescuers and police had no reason to assume that a child child had been travelling in the tanker at all.

It wasn't until later that day when they contacted the grandparents to notify them that investigators learned Juan Pedro had been allowed to join his parents on the trip.

By then, hours had already passed since the crash and the clean-up operation was well underway.

Because there was no body or remains, The investigators first assumed the grandparents had to be mistaken.

But before long, they started to notice signs corroborating their claim, including a small cassette player, children's clothes and school cassettes scattered inside the truck.

After a thorough search revealed no sign of the boy, the first responders found themselves having to consider a truly horrible possibility.

Could the boy's body have been entirely dissolved by the acid?

After all, sulfuric acid is one of the most corrosive substances known to man and is easily capable of destroying flesh and bone.

The parents' bodies had also been badly burned, which indicates that the acid had made its way into the cab of the truck.

We'll come back to this later, but in the meantime, experts were contacted and quickly determined that if Juan Pedro had somehow perished in the crash or the spill, at least some trace should have remained.

This led them to believe that he may have been thrown clear, or perhaps had somehow managed to survive the accident entirely.

Over the next few hours, crews dug through piles of lime and sand, sifted the rubble and scoured the surrounding hillsides, hoping to find any trace of the 10-year-old, but they turned up nothing.

After the first day ended, authorities picked up right where they left off.

Volunteers were called in to search the surrounding hillside.

helicopters circled overhead and divers examined the river below.

Before anyone knew it, a whole week had gone by, with nobody able to locate a single sign of the boy.

Meanwhile, other investigators turned their attention to why the accident happened in the first place.

Mechanics confirmed that the brakes had not failed as so many witnesses had suspected.

In fact, the vehicle was in tip-top shape.

Upon analysing the tachometer, they were able to trace the truck's journey from Morcia to Los Carnovas, then to Del Olivo and eventually the Aragonin.

After that, things got strange.

According to the device, the tanker had stopped 12 separate times in the final 8 miles before the crash.

Though some questioned whether this might have been the result of traffic, police were quick to point out that this was extremely early in the morning.

when there would be few cars on the highway at all, let alone enough to force the truck to make repeated stops.

Experienced truckers confirmed that such behaviour was not only unusual, but would have been quite dangerous, especially on a steep mountain pass.

Suddenly, investigators had two mysteries on their hands, and it would take nearly a year before they got their first clue.

After the crash in June 1986, the Volvo F-12 tanker was recovered and placed in storage.

Because it had been carrying acid, the wreck had to be properly neutralised before it could be dismantled.

And, since nothing had been found to be wrong with the vehicle, it quickly took a backseat to the efforts made in locating the missing child.

When workers did finally begin to take it apart, they made a shocking discovery.

Traces of heroin inside the cab.

As previously stated, the death of dictator Francisco Franco had led to a rapid transition in Spain, one that brought opportunities to workers like Andres,

but also to criminals.

In the post-regime chaos, Spain evolved into one of the primary entry points for heroin into Europe.

The country's vast coastline, busy ports and close proximity to Africa made it an ideal transit hub.

Once on the ground, smugglers would often utilise fishing boats, tankers and cargo lorries as cover for transporting their product.

It was only a matter of time before organised crime networks partnered with these new foreign smugglers, resulting in a lucrative but dangerous trade.

The presence of the drugs, even in a small amount, suggested that the family's journey may not have been entirely routine.

Police searched their records carefully.

and could find no evidence that any of the occupants had a history of drug use or trafficking.

But when they brought the subject up with relatives, they reluctantly admitted that Andres had indeed been pressured by local smugglers to carry narcotics on his long-haul routes.

Whether he had agreed willingly or under threat remains unclear.

Still, the revelation transformed the case.

What if the accident and perhaps even Juan Pedro's disappearance were due to a drug trafficking operation gone wrong?

Suddenly, some of the more bizarre eyewitness details began to make more sense.

A truck driver who had been forced off the road by the runaway lorry stated that a white van had pulled up to the scene just moments afterwards.

He described the two occupants as a blonde man and woman with foreign accents, adding that the woman claimed to be a nurse and that she took a few moments to examine his wounds before walking towards the wreckage.

After that, they disappeared from sight.

Two shepherds in the area also claimed to have seen a similar van.

They described a Nordic-looking couple dressed as doctors and said that they actually witnessed them take a package from the tanker before driving away.

Police followed up on the lead investigating more than 3,000 white vans across Spain but found nothing conclusive.

To complicate matters further, Authorities later stated that they could not locate the shepherds who had given the testimony in the first place.

As for Juan Pedro, he was never found.

But he may have been seen.

Days after the crash, a boy resembling Juan Pedro was allegedly spotted in Bilbao, the very city the family had been heading towards.

Once again, authorities investigated but were unable to pick up the trail.

Nevertheless, those who study this case often cite it as ironic that the young boy may have actually reached their destination whilst his parents did not.

A year later, a driving instructor in Madrid reported meeting an elderly blind woman who claimed to be a refugee from Iran.

Accompanying her was what he described as a very confused and withdrawn boy of about 10 or 11.

To his surprise, the boy spoke Spanish.

In fact, he spoke it with an accent similar to the one Juan Pedro would have had, considering his his home region of Murcia.

After coming across a photo of the youth, the instructor became so convinced that he had encountered the missing child that he returned repeatedly to a local Red Cross post where the woman said she was receiving aid.

Unfortunately, she and the boy never appeared again.

In the end, despite thousands of leads, countless man-hours and the involvement of Interpol, the case remains unsolved.

Over the years, virtually everyone who has attempted to determine what happened to Juan Pedro Martinez-Gomez has come back with more questions than answers.

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so where do the facts lead us

to begin it's important to consider what might have caused the accident

in terms of more mundane explanations many point to driver error potentially caused by a health problem.

For example, if Andres had suffered a medical emergency, chest pains, a stroke or even disorientation from fatigue, his repeated stops recorded on the tachometer could be explained away as attempts to manage the problem.

If the condition later forced him to lose control of the vehicle, it would explain the dangerous speed and the lack of control leading up to the crash.

What it doesn't explain is the missing boy.

In the aftermath of the incident, investigators, journalists and the public became immediately obsessed with determining what happened to Juan Pedro.

The initial suggestion was that the sulfuric acid had consumed his small body.

At first glance, this seems plausible.

The tanker's load was enough to fill a small pool and could easily have burned through metal, stone and flesh.

It's already been noted that both of Juan Pedro's parents' bodies were badly burned by exposure to the liquid.

But just as they did back in 1986, experts today say the acid could never have dissolved the boy's entire body.

At least, not that quickly.

In laboratory tests, it can take 12 hours just for cartilage and muscle to break down, and several more days for bones.

And that's when the body parts are completely submerged.

Even then, teeth, nails, and fragments of clothing will remain.

Though the spill was extensive and problematic, emergency crews were able to contain it in just under three hours.

As tempting as it is to rely on the sulfuric acid to explain his disappearance, there's simply no scientific way Juan Pedro could have been erased so completely.

A second theory suggests that the boy was thrown clear during the crash and that his body was somehow missed during the search.

It's true that this particular mountain pass was quite rugged, and the wreck did occur on a steep slope where ravines, rocks and undergrowth could have helped conceal the remains.

Still, it's highly unlikely that his body could have evaded detection entirely.

Search teams spent days combing the area with dogs, helicopters and divers.

During this period they found all sorts of minuscule evidence related to the crash.

including bits of clothing, bolts and debris.

So whilst it's not impossible that Juan Pedro's body could have been overlooked, there should have been some signs, especially after decomposition and animal predation.

It's not uncommon for searchers to come across skeletal evidence decades after a person disappears, yet there has never been so much as a fingernail in this case.

These facts have led to a secondary category of theories in which Juan Pedro actually survived the crash but was seriously injured.

This deviates into two primary branches.

In the first, he somehow walked away on his own, dazed and injured, likely with no memory of who he was or what had happened.

It's important to remember that rescue workers initially had no idea that a child had been in the truck, as his grandparents only informed authorities later.

Could he have wandered away unnoticed in those first hours?

The Somo Sierra terrain is unforgiving, full of steep ravines, rocky outcrops, and streams that could have swept a young boy away.

An injured 10-year-old wouldn't have survived out there for long, and again, it would be odd that searchers turned up nothing, not even bones or clothing.

How fast could a boy who survived a wreck like that have travelled on foot, and how could he have left no trail for investigators to follow?

That's where the second branch of this theory comes in.

It states that Juan Pedro may have been taken from the scene by well-meaning strangers.

Perhaps they had attempted to rush the young man to the hospital, only to have him die en route.

Panicked and fearing legal consequences, these strangers might have disposed of the body far from the initial crash site.

Or perhaps he did walk away from the crash, only to make it to a nearby homestead.

If his memory was impaired, he wouldn't have been able to tell the residents who he he was or what happened to him.

This too seems unlikely.

Spanish media reported the crash and Juan Pedro's disappearance with near-religious intensity, making it almost impossible for anyone in the region to be unaware of the case.

If he had stumbled to a nearby homestead, it is difficult to imagine the occupants never coming forward.

Likewise, if a driver had picked him up from the roadside, why would they believe themselves in any way responsible for his death?

Without clear evidence or a compelling reason for those involved to remain silent, the Good Samaritan theory remains intriguing, but ultimately unsubstantiated.

This brings us to the final set of theories, all of which revolve around the heroin traces inside the truck and the unsettling idea that Juan Pedro didn't perish in the crash because by that time, he was no longer in the vehicle.

Remember that relatives admitted that Andres had been pressured by a local smuggling ring to carry narcotics on his trips.

If true, the crash may have occurred for completely different reasons.

Some investigators have speculated that the 12 unexplained stops recorded by the truck's tachometer represented meetings with accomplices.

or even attempts by Andres to resist smugglers shadowing him.

In this version of events, Juan Pedro may have have been abducted by criminals as a form of collateral.

Such tactics are not uncommon amongst ruthless drug smugglers.

Moreover, it could have been enough to throw Andres into a panic, eventually leading to the crash.

This theory also fits well with the story of the white van and its mysterious occupants.

Were these Nordic-looking people part of an organised crime ring?

Were they following the truck to ensure Andres made the delivery as promised?

Was posing as medical experts their way of getting close to the wreckage so they could retrieve the valuable package?

Was Andres speeding down the hills because he was attempting to chase the people who'd kidnapped his son?

This may also explain why one of the most convincing Juan Pedro sightings just so happened to occur in Bilbao, the family's final destination.

If the boy had been kidnapped during the time Andres and his truck left the restaurant, the abductors would likely have followed the game plan and taken him directly to the offloading site.

In the absence of mobile phones, they would have had no idea about the accident, and upon hearing about it, they would have likely panicked and abandoned the evidence, which in this case happened to be a 10-year-old boy.

It's easy to get caught up in this sort of conspiracy, as it allows people to fill gaps in the facts with the most convenient responses.

Some even say that the reason nobody ever located the shepherds who witnessed the package being salvaged from the truck or found the white van is because the authorities were paid off to look the other way.

Once mysterious criminals become the subject of the story, anything goes.

In allowing the imagination to take over, the potentially simple truth may be lost.

Nearly 40 years years on, the disappearance of Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez remains one of Europe's most confounding mysteries.

His parents' deaths in the crash were tragic enough, but the boy's complete absence turned the event into something far stranger.

What emerges from the various theories is a chilling paradox.

Each has merits, each has flaws.

Unfortunately, it would be nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction without a break in the case.

Who knows?

Perhaps Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez did survive that day, but has spent his life unable to return, unable to be known.

If so, it would be a tragedy of a different kind.

A child lost not to death, but to silence.

He would be around 50 years old now.

A whole lifetime lived since that fateful day on the Somo Sierra Pass.

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