Rute Cardoso had sent her husband a video from the wedding photographer. The message pinged across to his phone and sat there.

“It was delivered, but it was never read,” she recalls in the biography.

Eleven days earlier, on 22 June 2025, she had married Diogo Jota in Porto. On the night of 2-3 July 2025 she was waiting at her sister’s house for him to call from the road, while he and his brother André Silva drove a hired Lamborghini north through Spain towards the ferry at Santander. Jota, who had recently had lung surgery, had been advised not to fly back for Liverpool’s pre-season.

Her account appears in Diogo Jota: Forever In Our Hearts, a biography published by Reach Sport at £22. The excerpts, carried this week by British newspapers, are the first time she has spoken publicly about the hours when she learned her husband was gone.

Read also: A £27 ticket to see the peloton: Edinburgh ends a 13-year run of free Tour de France presentations

The messages that went unread

Earlier in the evening she had sent two short texts. “Safe journey,” she wrote as the brothers set off. When she thought they should have reached their hotel in Benavente, she sent another: “Well?”

Both messages stayed on one tick. So did the video.

She called the hotel. The receptionist told her the booking had not been checked in. She then telephoned her uncle Vítor, a long-haul truck driver who, through his work, had a line into the Spanish traffic police.

The call from the Guardia Civil

Vítor stayed on the phone to her as he reached the officers on the scene. She listened as the conversation changed.

Read also: “Nobody cares” – Donald Trump makes feelings clear about major sporting event

“Suddenly, my uncle asked me to put Nuno, my brother-in-law, on the line,” she said. “I heard my uncle tell him: ‘The bodies are being taken away’.”

A Spanish officer then came on the line and read out the formal declaration, confirming he was speaking to Rute Cardoso and that he had her husband’s identification in front of him.

“I hereby declare the death of Diogo José Teixeira da Silva, born on 4 December 1996.”

Her friend Catarina was with her when she tried to say the words out loud.

Read also: It feels surreal”: Djokovic on a 2026 season of record wins and a Turin spot still to be earned

“This is a joke, it can’t be true. There’s no way in the world this can be true!”

She has described pacing the yard that night and walking what she estimated at 11 kilometres without stopping, refusing to accept it. At the mortuary in Spain she was shown Diogo on a stretcher, André in a box, and handed her husband’s watch, wallet and wedding ring. She rode back to Portugal in the van carrying his body.

What the Spanish investigation concluded

The crash happened on the A-52 motorway near Cernadilla, in the province of Zamora. The Lamborghini left the road while overtaking, struck a guardrail and caught fire. Jota was 28; his brother, a professional footballer with Portuguese club Penafiel, was 25.

Spanish judicial authorities later closed the case. The High Court of Justice of Castilla y León found a tyre burst at a critical moment caused the loss of control, and concluded there were no grounds for criminal proceedings.

Read also: Cristiano Ronaldo speaks out after PSG star suffers devastating injury: “Your best is still to come”

Diogo Jota: Forever In Our Hearts is on sale now from Reach Sport.

Read also: The Vuelta champion picked home over money. Movistar paid €85,000 to seal it