In real life, Maria Jesus Moreno Cento, or Maje, infamously known as the Black Widow of Patraix, maintained her innocence till the very end and testified in court that she never asked her lover and co-worker, Salvador Rodrigo Lapiedra, to kill her husband, Antonio Navarro Cerdan, introduced as Arturo in A Widow’s Game. However, during the investigation, the homicide group had gathered evidence from two different sources that established Maje had been lying all along and was trying to set up her lovers to kill her husband.
Before Salva took the bait and carried out her wishes, Maje had pulled a similar stunt with a young guy named Tomas, introduced as Andres in Netflix’s A Widow’s Game. Both in the film and in real life, Maje had shared a casual relationship with Tomas since May 2016, that is, before her wedding, and she continued seeing him after the couple moved to Valencia. Somewhere around 4th June 2017, two months before Antonio’s murder, the husband had found out that Maje had been lying to him about her extramarital affairs for a long time, and the couple got into a brutal fight soon after, following which Maje texted Tomas that she had had enough and just wished to see Antonio dead. From their conversation, it became apparent that Maje had been trying to emotionally manipulate Tomas into killing Antonio. However, Tomas was the same guy she’d told that her husband had cancer. Well, logically why would anyone kill a person who is already going to die? I guess this was the reason why Tomas didn’t take the bait and asked Maje to report Antonio to the police instead. In short, Tomas wasn’t very helpful, and therefore she approached another guy, Salva, the married nursing assistant, who was head-over-heels for the 26-year-old femme fatale.
However, the question that many of you might still be mulling over is: why did Maje have her husband killed? Why didn’t she just divorce him if she felt so suffocated in the marriage? Well, many criminologists and psychologists who evaluated Maje’s psyche were of the opinion that this decision might have something to do with Maje’s strict upbringing in Novelda, Alicante. Her parents belonged to the family-centered Apostolic Movement, a religious group who weigh traditional family values more than anything. Maje had four other siblings who all went to a Christian missionary school, where the students were put in different classes based on their gender. According to media reports, Maje’s parents didn’t even allow her to go to friends’ birthday parties, and she and her siblings spent most of their vacations in religious summer camps. In short, Maje never had close interactions with boys, though many of her friends presumed that she had always been quite flirtatious. This could be seen as the reason why she collected lovers and sought some sort of devotion from them. I think this was Maje’s way to fulfil the desires that had been suppressed by her parents from a very young age. Additionally, leaving or divorcing Antonio would have made her the villain in the picture. Everyone in Novelda would start seeing her as the disloyal wife who cheated on her husband whenever she felt like it. Her parents wouldn’t have allowed her to step into their house again, which was why Maje always knew that leaving Antonio was never an option. The only way to break free from her cage was to get rid of her husband. But you may ask, why did Maje get married to Antonio, who was 9 years older than her?
Antonio was studying engineering when he met Maje. Her brother went to the same university as him, and Antonio would sometimes go to their house, where he saw Maje for the first time. The two started dating in 2011, when Maje was 21, and got married some 5 years later in September 2016. While Maje was in a relationship with Antonio, she used to fool around with other guys; however, all this while, she had been looking for a way to escape her hometown to live a more comfortable and liberating life in the city. Antonio, who had a job at the El Reboller Road Conservation Center, was moving to Valencia, and Maje couldn’t miss the opportunity. He didn’t just have a well-paying job, he was also someone whom she could easily manipulate and tame as per her desires, at least until he caught her lying through her teeth.
After watching A Widow’s Game, one could come to the conclusion that Maje had always wanted to live a lavish lifestyle, something her parents failed to give her in childhood. Antonio’s financial status was indeed one of the factors why she decided to settle down with him, until she found a more good-looking and wealthier man. Behind Antonio’s back, she had started a secret affair with a publicist named Jose, introduced as Daniel Garcia Iglesias in the Netflix film. Yes, he had sent Maje tickets for a trip to Rome, Italy, where the couple had planned to spend their New Year’s Eve. However, Salva found out about it, and in order to stop Maje from leaving, he sowed a seed of doubt that the police might be keeping an eye on Daniel, and it would be better if she didn’t go anywhere with him.
Through the character of Daniel, the film once again pointed out that Maje had a financial motive behind Antonio’s murder. Being his widow, she wouldn’t only be getting a pension of 1,100 euros for life but also receive the claims to numerous life and accidental policies in his name. After Antonio’s death, she even wanted to sell the apartment on Calle Calamocha Street, Patraix, so she could move in with Daniel and start over. However, before she could realize any of her dreams, the police, who had been tapping her and Salva’s phones for at least 4 months now, finally had gathered enough evidence to issue a warrant against them and brought them in for extensive interrogation. Salva tried to defend Maje for almost a year. But when he finally realized that she had just been playing him since the very beginning, he decided to cooperate with the police. Salva told the judge that it was Maje who came up with the plan to kill her husband, as he used to abuse her physically, mentally, and emotionally. Maje tried to defend herself, but she didn’t have enough grounds to prove her innocence. Her previous texts with Tomas and her recorded conversation with Salva were used to convict her for intentional murder.
In the end, Maje was given 22 years in prison, and she was sent to Picassent, which, per my research, was the same penitentiary where Salva and Maje were held during provisional detention. And yes, this was once again the same prison where Maje initiated intimate relationships with other inmates, one of whom, named David M. R., got her pregnant. In May 2023, Maje was admitted to the Mothers’ Unit in Fontcalent, a prison in Alicante, where 2 months later, on 13th July, she gave birth to her firstborn in a public hospital. According to the sources, Maje is no longer in contact with the father of her child. She will remain in Fontcalent prison until her newborn turns 3 so she can take better care of her baby. After that, Maje will likely return to Picassent, while her baby will be taken away from her and probably given to the child services so they can find a new home for the kid.
