Hugo Quintas, 39, was condemned to life imprisonment in UK in 2006 for slitting the throat of his pregnant ex-girlfriend in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
The jail term was only to be reviewed after 18 years – but somehow Quintas managed to get deported home to Portugal in 2014, and given a conditional release three years later on the basis that Portuguese justice has a different approach to sentences involving life imprisonment.
As a result, “Portuguese justice lost track of Hugo Quintas” in 2017, writes tabloid Correio da Manhã today – and the factory worker went on to kill another woman, this time in Holland.
Dutch police tracked him down – after he fled to Spain – and Quintas is once again behind bars.
In Holland, says CM, he is unlikely to be given parole, or be able to appeal his sentence.
But this is clearly a situation in which not enough was done to ‘protect the public’ from a man who was meant to be safely ‘removed from society’.
The brutality of the first murder in UK of Quintas’ former lover Hayley Richards, was such that it was featured in a television documentary entitled “Britain’s deadliest Lovers”.
Says CM, according to British justice, Quintas should not have been eligible for parole before 2024, but due to being deported to Portugal the timings all changed.
“Britain assumed life imprisonment would be interpreted as our maximum (25 years), but it was converted to 17 years and six months”, says CM, which then allowed parole after ⅔ of the sentence.
The latest killing involved very much the same ‘modus operandi’ as the one in UK: Quintas and his victim seem to have had some kind of relationship previously, which led to 26-year-old Laura Schreurs, receiving threatening text messages and being ‘stalked’.
Ms Schreurs was stabbed multiple times outside her home in Venlo, southern Holland, on the day last December on which she had an appointment booked with local police to discuss the situation.
Says CM, the knife used in the murder has still not been recovered – and despite Quintas’ confession, the knife “will be fundamental” for a conviction.
The family of Quintas’ first victim were disgusted when he was extradited to Portugal in 2014, saying ‘how are we going to feel if he gets released … and goes and kills someone else? (click here)
The Wiltshire Times reported last Friday: “It is understood that police have contacted members of Hayley’s family to inform them of the latest development”.
