The mystery surrounding Spain’s ‘House of Horrors’ is growing as it emerged local authorities are still trying to track down other relatives of the three children who were rescued.
German freelance tech recruiter Christian Steffen, 53, and his American-born wife Melissa Ann Steffen, 48, were held last Monday after being accused of keeping their two eight-year-old twin boys and 10-year-old son locked up inside their home in Oviedo in Asturias for almost four years.
Police who raided the property have told local press the youngsters were made to wear nappies and told when and how many times they could use the toilet.
Overnight it emerged officials were still trying to locate relatives of the three boys currently in social service care.
Regional government vice-president Gimena Llamedo said work will continue this week to try to track down other family members.
She said: ‘We will carry on working towards trying to locate relatives who could and would meet the criteria to take care of the children, whose welfare is our utmost priority.’
Today the youngsters’ saviour was identified as a university professor called Silvia, who handed in a ‘forensic detective’s’ diary with evidence minors were inside the large villa.
Hamburg University philosophy graduate Mr Steffen was the only registered occupant of the property he and his naturalised German wife had started renting in October 2021.
Silvia started chronicling the evidence after she thought she saw a little girl playing in the garden around 65 feet from one of her windows during the Covid lockdown.
They included details of the days and times of when curtains were opened or lowered and when she saw Christian collecting deliveries.
Her suspicions grew when she saw the amount of supermarket deliveries he received and she began to hear what she believed to be children’s voices.
Police discovered the purchases included nappies when they started working on Silvia’s dossier, sparking a decision to enter the property and see what was going on inside.
A city hall source told respected Spanish daily El Mundo: ‘The neighbour had collected evidence that during school hours no-one left the house and expressed with certainty there had to be children living there, and even claimed to have seen them.
‘She went to Oviedo City Council’s Childhood and Family Service on April 14 with what was practically a handmade police report.
‘The shopping list was the clue that set it all off.
‘It was the list of a family, not a single person, and there was something that didn’t fit at all which was the striking amount of nappies.’
The source added: ‘Without that neighbour, the children would almost certainly have gone undetected in that house for many more years. Some close neighbours didn’t even know the house was being lived in.’
The boys’ dad and his naturalised German wife are being held in Asturias Prison after being remanded in custody by a judge pending the investigation.
They face possible prison sentences of between five and seven years.
They are currently being investigated on suspicion of domestic violence, psychological mistreatment and child abandonment, although legal sources said the probe could be widened to cover alleged unlawful detention.
Vitaly Istomov, owner of Berlin-based tech company Green Beans Technologies, who Mr Steffen did some recent work for as a part-time HR recruiter, told La Nueva Espana yesterday: ‘I only had a couple of video calls with him to talk about recruitment.
‘In the conversations we had he seemed quite professional and I didn’t detect anything strange, let alone anything of this magnitude.’
Mr Steffen’s wife reportedly told police after their arrests they had left Germany after the Covid crisis when officials there warned them they would alert social services if they tried to take them out of school over their health fears.
Police have said that when they were freed, one of the children knelt on the grass and “touched it with amazement.”
Oviedo Police Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Lozano said: ‘We have given three children back their lives.’
Local reports have pointed to the youngsters suffering from severe constipation after being rescued because they weren’t allowed to go to the toilet when they wanted.
A paediatric report identifying their ‘severe constipation’ flagged up faeces in their intestines because of the long wait they endured between relieving themselves, Spanish news website El Español reported.
Although police described the house as filthy and dirty nappies were piled up in one of the bathrooms and used tampons found under the parents’ double bed, Mr Steffen and his wife were said to have been using half a dozen air purifier machines they kept in their bedroom.
Their large consumption of water has also led to speculation the parents were showering round-the-clock and getting their children to do the same to keep them free of germs.
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