At 42, and with an abusive relationship behind her, Ester Estepa was searching for something fresh and exciting in life when she was charmed by Dinamita Montilla’s TikTok videos.

With his ragged, unshaven appearance, crooked teeth and genial nature, the 62-year-old was something of a social media star who had built a big following by documenting his travels around Spain. After making contact with him in 2023, Ester, from Seville, was excited to be joining him on his travels.

Ester Estepa contacted Dinamita Montilla after watching his TikTok videosCredit: Police Handout
 

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Montilla’s videos had a huge TikTok following in his native SpainCredit: Tiktok
But she was never to be seen by her family again – disappearing without trace after just three weeks.

Montilla called her worried mum, Pepa, saying he was doing all he can to find his good friend and encouraging her not to give up hope. He even documented his search on TikTok, showing Ester’s photograph to people he met as he retraced his journey with her.

But, unbeknown to Ester and his thousands of followers, Dinamita, whose real name was José Jurado Montilla, was one of Spain’s worst serial killers, responsible for the murders of four young men in the 80s, including a British tourist.

When Pepa found out his true identity, she bravely kept in regular communication with the man she was convinced had either kidnapped or killed her daughter.

The sinister tale is told in the two-part documentary Netflix documentary called The TikTok Killer.

Pepa and Ester, from Seville, had always had a close relationship and whenever Ester was away, Pepa would be in regular touch with her on the phone. So, when her daughter suddenly stopped returning her messages, on 23 August, 2023, alarm bells rang.

Around 5pm that day, Pepa received a message from Ester, saying she was living on the streets and going to Buenos Aires with a friend. She added, “I tried to call you but got no answer.”

Pepa messaged her back but her sister, Raquel, knew something was not right.

“I told my Mum, ‘This is not my sister,’” she says. “Something weird was going on. My sister doesn’t talk or write like that. There were spelling mistakes.”

“Three days later, we went to the police and filed a missing person’s report,” says Pepa. “The police said it could be a voluntary disappearance. I told them that it couldn’t be because I spoke to my daughter every single day. She was always very attached to me. She was a very affectionate and happy girl. Always laughing.”

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Ester went missing three weeks after leaving the family home in SevilleCredit: Police Handout
Initially, Pepa suspected Ester’s abusive ex-partner of being responsible for having kidnapped her.

In 2022 he had been arrested for domestic violence and Ester spent some time at a women’s shelter where she made some good friends.

Two weeks after her disappearance, Pepa got a phone call from Montilla saying that he had not seen Ester since they were in Gandia where she went into hospital because she was having leg pains.

A few days later he called again, saying he was planning to retrace their steps to try and find out where she is. Montilla also posted this to his TikTok followers who wished him well.

In one video, he appears to break down in tears as he asks Ester, “All I ask of you is to give me some sign of life because I sincerely, truly miss you.”

Serial killer past

After Pepa told Ester’s friend, Vanessa, about Montilla she began to investigate.

“I looked through all the videos this man made, to try to find a lead,” she says. “He just seemed like an older person, like your grandfather. Someone you could completely trust in.”

But she soon saw a different side to him. In one video he posted: “My friend Ester and I used to come to this park a lot. And this is where we had our first, let’s say… intimate encounter.”

“He’s a dirty old man. Disgusting,” she says,

Pepa too, was appalled. “It’s unthinkable. Not in a million years would my daughter have a relationship with him.”

It was when Pepa started Googling Montilla that she discovered the full truth. He was a serial killer who has killed four people and been sentenced to 120 years, although he was released after 28 because of a change in European law.

His first victim was Francisco Gonzalez on 4 April 1985. After Montilla’s release from prison, he told newspaper journalist Juan Cano, of the Spanish newspaper, Diario Sur, that this was the only one he confessed to but that it was in “self-defence.”

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Montilla traveled across the country posting videosCredit: Tiktok
 

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Ester’s mum Pepa reported her as a missing personCredit: Netflix
He said that he had been out hunting foxes that were eating his mother’s chickens when he got caught in a downpour and took shelter. In the morning, the owner of the nearby farmhouse pointed a shotgun at him and he shot him instead, to save his own life.

He claimed another three killings had been pinned on him.

On 15 March, 1987, Antonio Paniagua Peral was killed with a shotgun and set alight.

Two months later, two students – one British, the other German – who were touring the country, were shot dead in their sleeping bags at a picturesque spot in Malaga.

“Everything that happened in that part of the country was blamed on me,” Montilla complained. “Even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

‘Hasn’t even killed a fly’

To his astonishment, when Ester’s father, Antonio, went to the police, they had no idea about Montilla’s past.

“They showed me his official record, and it only listed one arrest for theft,” he said. “I told them, ‘This guy has murdered people,’ and they said, ‘No, no. This man hasn’t even killed a fly.’”

Meanwhile, Pepa found the strength to keep in communication with Montilla.

“I never asked him anything directly but I wanted to see if I could catch him,” she says. “He said he was continuing to search for Ester. We gave all the information to the police who said, ‘Well, keep talking to him.’ But, I mean, I’m talking to a murderer!”

Incredibly, Montilla believed he was hugely attractive to women who were less than half his age.

“Women go crazy over me,” he said in a video post. In another he talks of how he met a 27-year-old woman in a pub. “I said to her, ‘I bet you taste better than this beer.’ And she said, ‘You’ll have to try me.’ And, well, we started to go at it.”

Vanessa saw many inconsistencies in his stories. In one he said that Ester went to the hospital alone and he never saw her again. Another said he went in with her.

“One of the big questions in this case is what was Dinamita Montilla was doing from 2013 to 2024?” says Juan Cano. “A wandering nomadic person who moves around the whole of Spain? Who knows what could have happened?”

A year before Ester’s disappearance, a 21-year-old man, named David, was found dead by his father – shot twice on the family’s land.

Before his death, he had provided police with clues as to who his killer was when he told friends that he had run into an old man who looked “shady.”

“David had told his friends that he had met an old man who said he’d come out to kill the foxes that were eating his chickens,” says Juan.

DNA found on the zip of the bag that David had with him matched with someone on the police database, named Jurado. There had been a complicated change of surname but a search of the family tree alerted police to José Jurado Montilla.

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Messages from Ester’s phone didn’t seem to be from herCredit: Netflix
 

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Ester’s sister Raquel instantly spotted something was wrongCredit: Netflix
They tracked him down easily, by finding his whereabouts on TikTok and took samples of his DNA from snacks and drinks he had, along with cigarette butts. It matched that found on the bag zip and he was arrested in a bar, while videoing himself in May 2024.

At a police press conference, a journalist says to the police officer, “It’s been published in Diario Sur that he may be linked to a woman whose disappearance in Seville is being investigated by the Homicide division.” She replies “I cannot comment on that at this time. That’s not something I’m aware of.”

“When they told us of his arrest, I was angry. How could I not be?” says Antonio. “I said, ‘But he never killed so much as a fly, right?’ And the police officer replied, ‘I didn’t know him. Now that I know him, I believe it.’”

Ester’s fate was finally answered in February, 2024, not by police but by a hiker who found a skull by the canal bed at the foot of the mountain by Bairén Castle in Gandia. But it wasn’t until June that it was confirmed to be that of Ester’s. A thorough search of the area then revealed the bones of the rest of her body.

“We had a lot of pain and anger. You can’t take it in. It’s very hard,” says Antonio.

Despite several indications pointing to Montilla, Juan Manuel Medina, the lawyer working for Ester’s family, was worried about not having enough evidence to convict him.

“There were some leads, but they weren’t particularly strong,” he says. “My feeling was that it wasn’t going to go anywhere. That it would be very difficult to build a case against this person, much less convict them.”

And then Montilla’s phone revealed a distressing image of Ester’s body. Not knowing how to break the news to Pepa, Juan Medina arranged to meet up with Raquel for lunch in Seville.

I always used to say, ‘There are no bad people. People make mistakes but there are no bad people,’” she says. “Now I know there are.”

Mum Pepa

“I guessed something was wrong,” she recalls. “When I went out to have a cigarette, he joined me and said he had something very difficult to tell me. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said that on Montilla’s cell phone they found a photo of Ester’s corpse. And he added, ‘He raped your sister before he murdered her.’

“I started crying and said, ‘For God’s sake, tell me it’s not true.’ I went 15 days without eating or sleeping, wondering how I was going to tell my parents. Eventually, I gathered up the courage and told them.”

“I’m strong, or I can act strong at times, but I don’t want to see those images,” says Pepa.

As sickening as the images are, Juan Medina believes that they have provided the proof of Montilla’s guilt. “Those photographs serve no purpose at all other than his personal enjoyment,” he says. “To have a graphic record of an act of sexual assault and murder is horrendous.

The deeply religious Pepa retains her faith but her view of mankind has been rocked.

“I always used to say, ‘There are no bad people. People make mistakes but there are no bad people,’” she says. “Now I know there are.”

“This pain has marked us forever,” adds Antonio.

Montilla currently remains in prison, awaiting trial for the deaths of Ester and David. The National Police of Spain declined to take part in the documentary while the case remains open.

José Jurado Montilla was contacted by the programme makers via his lawyer, but it was not possible to obtain a statement from him.

The TikTok Killer can be seen on Netflix from Friday, 6 March

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The Netflix documentary is streaming nowCredit: Netflix