Killer of Spanish child Gabriel Cruz to

court: “I have lost everything”

The self-confessed killer of an eight-year-old Spanish boy named Gabriel Cruz has told the court
how she buried the child and then pretended to search for him for 12 days, until she was caught
moving the body to a different location near Rodalquilar, in the southern province of Almería.

“All I did was take him by his two little arms and place him inside the hole,” said Ana Julia
Quezada, who was the girlfriend of the dead boy’s father, Ángel Cruz. Hundreds of police officers
and volunteers participated in the search for Gabriel inside the Cabo de Gata natural park, a
sparsely populated area covered with desert scrubland that the child reportedly knew well.
Gabriel went missing on February 27 as he was covering a short distance to his cousins’ house in
Las Hortichuelas.

“He [the father] was desperate and I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to tell him...” a
teary-eyed Quezada told the court. “I have lost everything. I have lost Gabriel. I have lost my
daughter. I have lost Ángel.”

In April, investigating judge Rafael Soriano noted in his decision to deny Quezada bail that “the
evidence reveals a lack of feeling and humanity that she herself recognized, and which, if
confirmed, would represent pure cruelty.”

The judge also noted that during the search, she “gave a false appearance of concern for the
disappearance and fate of the boy” and “kept up the show, going even further and pretending to
find a shirt belonging to the boy.”

Court papers said that Quezada tried to give herself an alibi by doing painting jobs at the property
where she had buried the child, and took steps to throw off police investigators until she could
“get rid of the body” by moving it to a greenhouse, according to tapped phone calls. Quezada was
stopped by police as she was transporting the body in the trunk of her car.

“I took him out of the hole, I grabbed Gabriel and I put him in the trunk,” she told the court this
week.

When Quezada confessed to the crime, she said she acted in self-defense, claiming that the
youngster got angry and attacked her with a hatchet. She told investigators that she hit the boy
with the blunt part of the tool, leaving him unconscious. In a state of panic, she then strangled
him, stripping him of his clothes and burying the body.

The Gabriel Cruz case also prompted a re-examination of an earlier case involving Quezada. In
March 1996, Quezada – then 21 years of age – was living in the northern Spanish city of Burgos
after moving there from her native Dominican Republic. On March 13, her four-year-old daughter
died after falling out of the window of the family home, but police concluded that it was an
accident. Quezada has another daughter who is now.
Trump must reckon with new realities in
wake of the election

Washington (CNN)After nearly four years of improbable political momentum, President Donald
Trump demonstrated Tuesday his brand of race-baiting and fear-mongering politics -- which
inflamed his base voters but scorched the rest -- can still win some big elections.

That, it appeared, was proof enough to the President his dark impulses haven't led him wrong.
Even losing the House of Representatives and providing Democrats their first real check on the
presidency seemed unlikely to force a reckoning at the White House over Trump's inflammatory
tone. '

Trump will continue a presidential tradition by holding a post-midterm election news conference
at 11:30 a.m., ET.

Aides say he will claim victory for Republican gains in the Senate and key races for governor. He is
expected to give remarks about his role in the midterms before taking questions.

"He feels vindicated," a Trump confidant said.

The President's mood is upbeat, aides say, largely because he is able to point to major victories in
races where he campaigned, particularly in Florida, Indiana, Missouri and others. He will likely
downplay -- or ignore -- disappointments, particularly losses in governor's races.

But the voters' split verdict will eventually force Trump to reckon with a changed political reality as
he quickly turns toward his own re-election.

The newly powerful Democrats will not only limit Trump's legislative ambitions. Subpoena powers
mean a raft of new probes could distract and occupy the White House as Trump fights for a second
term. While Democratic leaders have downplayed the chances they will seek to impeach him, the
possibility now looms in a way it did not when Republicans were in control.

Trump is mindful of Democratic investigations to come, but a presidential confidant said most
allies do not believe the President understands the full weight of what's ahead and how things will
change for him during the second half of his first term.

The anticipated Democratic probes come on top of the existing investigation led by special counsel
Robert Mueller, which is expected to scale up now that the elections have concluded. Trump and
his lawyers will have to determine in the next weeks whether to comply with Mueller's request for
an interview, or at least provide written answers to his questions.

White House officials are bracing for developments in Mueller's Russia investigation.

n the midterms' waning hours, Trump mused of a desire to dial back his rhetoric and unite the
country like a "beautiful puzzle."
"I would like to have a much softer tone. I feel, to a certain extent, I have no choice," he told the
administration-friendly Sinclair Broadcast Group in an interview. "But maybe I do."

There is scant evidence in the President's short political career of self-reflection or message
refinement. Instead, officials and confidants said Trump is more likely to muddle through the
changed political landscape with the mixture of bombast and deal-making that propelled him into
office in the first place.

"We'll just have to work a little bit differently," the President said Monday on an airport tarmac in
Indiana, his second of three stops on a final barnstorm through red states. "It'll all work out."

Trump spent Election Day behind closed doors, having mailed in his own absentee ballot weeks
ago. He phoned congressional leaders and Republican political advisers from his third-floor
residence and visited a "war room" in the White House East Wing for updates on critical races.

Family members and friends, including ex-campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie,
and informal advisers like Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman, joined him in the evening for a
viewing party, snacking on pizza and tiny hot dogs as they watched results come in on television.

He phoned both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic Leader Nancy
Pelosi to congratulate them on their victories, even though his spokeswoman suggested earlier
that a call to Pelosi wasn't necessary since she wouldn't automatically become the presumptive
speaker of the 116th Congress.

Trump is poised to shuffle his Cabinet, hoping to replace officials he's deemed disloyal or
ineffective, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with more pliant replacements. Other
administration aides, both in the West Wing and at agencies, are expected to exit, wary of being
implicated in the wash of investigations that could soon descend.

Officials said Trump is unlikely to take much of a break from the stump. He'll soon begin holding
rallies explicitly for his re-election, events that boost his mood and allow him to escape
Washington.

"This fall made him realize how much he loves rallies and how much he missed them," one Trump
confidant said.

But for the immediate future, Trump will turn to foreign policy, an area with wide executive
leeway that past presidents have used as a refuge during moments of political chastening. He joins
European leaders this weekend in Paris for a ceremony commemorating the World War I
armistice, and meets in Buenos Aires at the end of the month with Presidents Xi Jinping of China
and Vladimir Putin of Russia.