Lilian Galleguillos, nicknamed “Lily”, was 43 years old when she disappeared on November 4, 2021, in Colbún, Maule Region, Chile.
That night, she had left her home and returned after midnight. Security cameras recorded her arrival and, later, another departure from the house.
According to information provided by her family, a heated argument may have taken place that night. Those close to her claim that Lily may have found her daughter, Paula, with her partner, Andrés Romero, in an “intimate and compromising situation”. Afterward, Lily sent several audio messages to acquaintances in which she expressed her anger and sadness over what had happened.
But it was not until the following day that the message that alarmed everyone arrived: “They are my witnesses, before God, before the courts, before everyone.”
After that voice message, no one ever heard from Lily again.
The search lasted 13 days. On November 17, 2021, police found her body in a canal near the Lircay power station, in San Clemente. Her gray Hyundai had also been found submerged, but kilometers away from where she was found.
For her family, the circumstances never fully added up to an accident.
Those close to her say Lily usually drove with her seat belt on and wondered how her body had managed to get out of a vehicle that, according to them, had its windows closed.
In light of these doubts, the family commissioned a private assessment from expert Carlos Gutiérrez. According to the results shared by her relatives, the analysis proposed two possible scenarios: that Lily was not driving at the time of impact and had been struck and placed in the passenger seat before the vehicle was pushed into the canal, or that she and the car had been thrown into the water separately.
The family also reports that there had been two prior complaints of domestic violence against her then-partner, Andrés Romero. One dates to 2019 and the other to 2020.
Although he has publicly denied responsibility for the death, something happened after Lily’s death that made the story even harder for part of her family to understand.
After stating that her mother was envious of her youth and learning about the abuse her mother suffered at the hands of her partner, Paula would later have entered into a romantic relationship with Andrés and, as if that were not incomprehensible enough for the family, decided to turn her mother’s wake into a spectacle.
Paula hired a stripper to perform in front of her mother’s coffin, a performance that ended with the dancer completely naked. In addition to playing party dance music and setting off fireworks, as if it were a show.
The moment was captured on video, which was subsequently provided by the family as part of the evidence they have used to bring attention to the case.
For Alejandra Galleguillos, Lily’s sister and one of the people who has led the search for answers, that was far from a fun or eccentric farewell. She described it as “a humiliation toward my sister’s memory” and an affront to the pain that part of the family was enduring.
More than four years after Lilian Galleguillos’s death, no one has been formally charged or detained over possible third-party involvement in her death. The case remains open, and her family maintains that fundamental questions still remain unanswered.
After years of forensic examinations, suspicions, and conflicting accounts, they continue seeking the same thing they began seeking when Lily disappeared that November night in 2021: to find out what really happened to her.