José Jurado Montilla: The Brilliant Breakthrough That Caught the TikTok Killer’s Double Life Exposed

José Jurado Montilla, a convicted murderer, walked out of a Spanish prison in 2013 after serving 28 years. He was 52 years old, largely unknown outside of Málaga, and had no permanent address. Within a decade, he would become the subject of a Netflix docuseries now streaming on NBCU’s competitor platform — and the reason why would shock investigators, true crime followers, and casual scrollers alike. José Jurado Montilla didn’t hide. He posted.

The TikTok Killer: How José Jurado Montilla’s Own Videos Led Police Straight to Him

José Jurado Montilla was born in 1961 and resided in the Málaga region of southern Spain. Long before the age of social media, he made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In the mid-1980s, he fatally shot his neighbor, 57-year-old Francisco González, at his farmhouse. Montilla later confessed but claimed self-defense, saying González had approached him first with a shotgun inside his own home. Authorities weren’t convinced. And before he was formally charged, more people died.

In March 1987, chauffeur Antonio Paniagua was killed. Two months later, a German tourist and a British tourist were also shot dead. Montilla denied all three killings. He told investigators, which was obtained by People — and later, his TikTok followers — that he was used as a scapegoat. “Everything that happened in that part of the country was blamed on me,” he said in one video featured in the Netflix documentary The TikTok Killer. “Even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.” A Spanish court didn’t buy it. Montilla was convicted of all four murders and sentenced to 123 years in prison.

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Why Was He Released After Only 28 Years?

This is where the story takes a legal turn that would have consequences no one anticipated. In 2006, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled in favor of the so-called Parot Doctrine, a legal mechanism that allowed courts to extend effective sentences beyond the 30-year maximum outlined in the European Convention of Human Rights.

The doctrine was designed to keep the most dangerous offenders behind bars longer. But in 2013, the European Court of Human Rights overturned it. That ruling set Montilla free. He had served 28 years. Under the new interpretation of European law, that was enough. He walked out of prison and into a world that now had smartphones, social media, and TikTok. He adapted quickly.

How TikTok Became His Identity — and His Undoing

Montilla created an account under the name “El Titi” or “Dinamita Montilla” and began documenting his life as a nomadic hiker traveling across Spain. His content was oddly compelling: an older man traversing rugged mountain paths, speaking candidly about his past, insisting on his innocence, and presenting himself as a man wrongly persecuted by a broken justice system.

He had approximately 3,000 followers at the time of his second arrest. To many viewers, he was a curiosity. To investigators, he would become something else entirely. In August 2022, a 21-year-old college student named David was shot and killed on his family farm in Málaga. Before he died, David told his father he had connected with “an older man who looked very shady” — someone who wanted to hunt foxes. The case went cold.

Then, in late August 2023, 42-year-old Esther Estepa disappeared. Estepa had been hiking along the Spanish coast when she stopped in the town of Gandía to treat an injured leg. She had been traveling with Montilla for a few days before she vanished. Her mother, who spoke with her daughter daily, received a few WhatsApp messages on Aug. 23 — but told investigators the writing didn’t sound like her daughter.

She believed someone else had sent them. When Estepa’s family realized she had been hiking with Montilla, they contacted authorities. He had, meanwhile, returned to the same trails and roads the pair had walked together and documented the entire thing on TikTok. He told his followers he hoped someone had seen Estepa. He expressed concern. He performed grief for the camera.

The Discovery of Esther Estepa’s Remains

In February 2024, Estepa’s skull and bones were found near a highway in Gandía. Montilla was already behind bars. When investigators searched his phone, they say they found evidence that he sexually assaulted and killed her. He has denied both murders — David’s and Esther’s.

He is awaiting trial. Esther Estepa’s family had simply wanted to know where she was. Her mother had waited for a daily phone call that never came. That wait turned into a missing persons report, which turned into a criminal investigation, which ultimately led back to the same man who had served 28 years in a Spanish prison and then rebuilt his public identity one TikTok video at a time.

Héctor Muniente, the director of “The TikTok Killer” documentary, later told TIME that Montilla’s content gave investigators a “rich archive” of evidence. Muniente said, What I will never forget is his ability to switch emotions in a single click,” Muniente said. “From one second to the next, blending sadness with joy, anger with charm, all in the same video, with no transition or mediation. It feels like watching a performance of what many would call psychopathy unfold in real time.”

The full story — including testimony, footage, and the investigators who pieced it together — is now documented in “The TikTok Killer,” currently streaming on Netflix. The case has drawn widespread attention across streaming platforms and true crime communities, prompting renewed discussions about digital forensics, social media as evidence, and the way killers sometimes incriminate themselves in plain sight.