10/12/2020 2:20 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 10/12/2020 2:20 PM
When Silvia Saravia (69) got home, she went straight to the bedroom.
It took a while, but the surprise was so great in this chalet in the country Martindale, in Pilar, that nobody knows exactly how many minutes it was.
Those moments, prior to the femicide, are still not entirely clear.
As they were able to
reconstruct the researchers, this Saturday morning Silvia left the property and
returned around 11
.
Her husband ate breakfast alone, in his room, as he usually did.
Nothing seemed to get out of the routine.
When he returned, Silvia went up to her bedroom.
On the ground floor there was an employee who worked in the house.
Outside was the other one.
They do not know if 15 minutes or half an hour passed, but the date of death confirmed that the woman, the daughter of a Buenos Aires jeweler, was killed between 11:30 and 12.
With the results of the tests and the preliminary autopsy report, the investigators were able to confirm that
the fatal sequence occurred in the bathroom
.
The businessman surprised his wife, immobilized her and pointed his .357 caliber revolver at her.
He took her by the hair and killed her.
Neuss walked a few steps to the dressing room and shot himself in the head: he did it more than once, but a fatal shot came out.
The Magnum was thrown at his feet and the bullet that killed him ended up embedded in the gabled ceiling of his room.
The woman tried to defend herself, she had injuries and bruises on her arms caused by the struggle when she tried to escape.
"
It was a very violent attack, with a lot of aggression,
" the researchers described.
Jorge Neuss with his wife Silvia Saravia.
One of the employees heard two shots and ran to find her partner, who in another sector of the house only heard a loud noise: she mistook it for a garbage truck.
Timidly they approached the room and knocked on the door.
On the other side, no one answered.
They tried to open, cautiously, in case they rested, but the door seemed locked.
That is how they decided to call one of the daughters of the couple, who contacted her brother and asked him to go see what was happening with their parents.
They never thought something like this could happen.
They did not expect -as they declared- to find something serious or to see a scene of those characteristics.
When he arrived, Neuss's son noticed the employees nervous, worried.
He repeated the scene: he knocked on the door, called them, tried to open but could not.
One of the women warned him: "
We heard gunshots
."
That was how he began to push the door, to hit it with his shoulder to get inside.
And he achieve it.
When he entered, he stumbled upon the scene.
His dad's vital signs were weak.
They called the ambulance that took him away urgently, although there was nothing to do.
He died shortly after arriving at the Austral Hospital.
It was Juan Neuss, one of the four children of the couple, who declared that their parents "
had no problems of coexistence
" and slipped it could be a supposed "suicide pact".
It is that a few days ago he had been diagnosed with leukemia and, despite having been detected at an early stage, the news, he said, had destabilized his parents.
That version was never founded in the investigation, which was labeled "
aggravated homicide due to gender violence, followed by suicide
."
Like one of every four femicides in the country, this was committed with a firearm.
It is presumed that the weapon was registered in the name of the businessman, friend of power, but they are still waiting for the report from the National Agency for Controlled Materials (ANMaC) to certify it.
20 percent of the femicides decide to commit suicide and, as there is no accused perpetrator, this type of case used to be shelved and were not counted within the crimes related to gender issues.
It was after Ni Una Menos and the women's movements insisted on the importance of generating unified records on this type of crime that they began to be recorded.
For the investigators it is important to bring clarity to the family, to be able to rule out any other hypothesis and try to find a motive, even if it is not necessary at the judicial level to determine what happened.
Neither the employees nor the children of Neuss made reference to a bond crossed by violence.
On the surface it was a happy marriage, although some close associates made reference to a "distancing", to a "request for divorce", something that was not corroborated in the file or by the witnesses who testified.
In none of the testimonies does anything like a marital crisis appear, or conflicts in particular.
Yes, fighting situations, but none in which your children or other people have had to intervene.
The Martindale Country Club, where businessman Jorge Neuss killed his wife and committed suicide.
Photo Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi.
This is one of the most profound difficulties in preventing attacks against women: the majority of femicide victims are murdered at home, by their partners or ex-partners, and previous violence is often silenced, so it is not there are no complaints or records.
Therefore, another of the key pieces will be
the analysis of the cell phones and computers
that were hijacked at the scene.
They did not find any suicide letter from Neuss, but they want to rule out that he did not do so on some electronic device.
They will also look for text messages or conversations from Silvia to corroborate if the couple was indeed going through a crisis, if she had warned about acts of violence to a friend or person close to her or if Neuss left traces of having planned the femicide.
They do not rule out either that the mobile has been cheap
.
It is a family with a net worth of around 300 million dollars.
Sources consulted by
Clarín
clarified that determining "the mobile is not necessary," but it would be one more element to conclude the investigation.
With that and the skills of gunpowder deflagration they hope to close the circle and rule out any other hypothesis.
They will look for the remains that a gun leaves in his hands to confirm that he was the shooter.
This Sunday night the two children of the couple testified before the prosecutor María José Basiglio, from the Specialized Unit on Gender Violence of Pilar, and provided information about the bond between their parents, in addition to what each of them did that day the fact.
They were
in shock - they
described - and very shocked by what happened.
In funeral notices published in the newspaper
La Nación
, their children - like other people and friends of the family - decided to fire them in joint announcements, dedicated to both, something striking as it is a femicide followed by suicide.
"His son Germán J. Neuss and his wife Sofia Cardini, with their daughters Ernestina, Celina and Sofía, we remember with deep sadness our parents and grandparents and we will never forget how they have dedicated their lives to us and to the whole family. Thank you for all the love and shared moments ", they indicated.
Another was on behalf of the four children of the couple: "Germán, Patricio, Lucila and Juan said goodbye to our parents with immense sadness and we thank them for the life full of happiness and love they gave us. We ask for a prayer in their memory."
Femicides, unchecked
Between March 20, when social, preventive and compulsory isolation was decreed, and October 1, the “Adriana Marisel Zambrano” Femicide Observatory in Argentina, of the La Casa del Encuentro association, recorded 139 femicides, 3 transfemicides and 8 linked femicides of men.
The province of Buenos Aires continues to be the one with the most cases and these femicides left 164 daughters and sons without a mother.
"Shared housing is the most unsafe place for women and beatings are the main cause of death," they explain from La Casa del Encuentro.
It is that the pandemic revealed that gender violence was the only crime that did not go down despite the restrictions on circulation and prevention measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Women were trapped with their assailants, calls to 144 (the emergency line to contain situations of violence) were triggered and more and more victims dare to ask for help.
In 2015, another high-profile businessman, Fernando Farré, stabbed to death his ex, Claudia Schaefer, in the same country where the new case occurred this weekend.
Femicides and violence against women do not distinguish between social classes.
Silvia Saravia was a classmate in the faculty of another victim: María Marta García Belsunce, murdered in the country Carmel, in 2002.
In the last ten years in Argentina there is an average of one femicide every 30 hours.
According to statistics from the Office of Domestic Violence of the Supreme Court, in 2018 alone there were 278. Most murders occur in the homes of the victims and are committed by partners or exes.
Where to call
Line 144
Care for women in situations of violence.
Line 137
Attention to Victims of Family Violence.
911 Emergencies
EMJ
Look also
The wife of businessman Jorge Neuss was attacked by surprise and tried to defend herself
Femicide in Corrientes: he stabbed his partner to death and attacked his daughter
