Gabriel Bermudez
08/16/2020 - 20:18
- Clarín.com
- Police
In her battered heart, Cristina Castro (42) feels that she was in front of the disintegrated corpse of her son Facundo Astudillo (22). The first shock she had had on Saturday when she saw a photo of the mutilated body and face down that a fisherman found in the estuary of Bahía Blanca, she hugged her lawyers in the middle of the night. The four hours that he spent Sunday in that inhospitable place, crossed by the wind, make him believe that the most painful question of his search for so many weeks and that it became the fighting cry, " Where is Facundo ?" ceased.
"Mommy's instinct" tells her, as she comments at the end of the collection of remains and traces in the Villarino Viejo area, which is accessed by dirt roads and footprints from kilometer 711 of National Route 3. Also the shoe that she herself found a few meters from the site where the skeleton appeared and that she recognized as Facundo's. "It's the one in the photo, " he says about the last image of his son alive, that April 30, with his back and hands forward, in front of a Buenos Aires Police patrol car, which was published for almost a month after.
The details that come from the hostile and swampy place of discovery to the road, where federal forces set up a checkpoint, are chilling. There are body segments in at least 15 sites and the arms are missing. The birds that inhabit the area, and the daily tides that enter and leave this bend in the estuary, have spread it to various parts. A shorts, a cloth, a brief and a cloth appear, but none of them belong to Facundo.
"There is no backpack, boys, let Minister (Sergio) Berni know," his mother ironically points out to the Minister of Security for giving credit to the version that indicated that one had been found in the procedure.
The shoe found 30 meters from the body that is presumed to be Facundo Astudillo Castro.
Although it still remains for the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) to complete the work that began this Sunday around noon, Cristina transmits, with words and gestures, what she feels inside. “ There are many, many possibilities that it is Facundo . It cannot be ruled out that it is her. I was present all the time, seeing how they touched her and turned around… ”, she describes until the anguish sprouts and prevents her from continuing.
Behind her, Virginia Góngora consoles her. At his home in Pedro Luro, Facundo spent the last night with his children, one of the boy's best friends, before starting the trip to Bahía Blanca. From the first moment, he accompanies Cristina in the search, in the marches and at every moment of these 109 days of uncertainty that seem to culminate. But they continue in the claim amplified by what the mother continues to hold . That her son did not get lost on the way to Bahía Blanca through that sector , which is accessed only by baqueanos and with special vehicles.
"I think they planted the body," he says and argues. He mentions that his son's shoe "has been put there for two or three days, because it is intact and does not even have dirt on it ." He also emphasizes that "there was a footprint of a vehicle that goes right to the place of the bones ”and assures that neither the Federal Police nor the fisherman who warned of the appearance of the body went down there.
Experts in the place where they found a body in a canal near Bahía Blanca. / Pablo Presti
The hypothesis of Facundo's disappearance and his cover-up by members of the Buenos Aires Police remains firm for the complaint, despite the discovery that shook them on Saturday night.
"For us, Facundo was assassinated on April 30 and it does not obey any logic that the bones are scattered to one side and the shoe is intact at 30 meters," reasons Leandro Aparicio.
"The footprint of the vehicle that reaches the site is not recent and we ask that an expert be made on the width of the vehicle and the make of the tires", contributes Luciano Peretto on the theory of the possible "planted" of the body. While the lawyers anticipate new test measures, the prosecutor Santiago Ulpiano Martínez leaves the place behind without stopping.
The members of the EAAF who carry the remains are also removed to determine their identity, in no more than 24 hours, with the DNA sample taken from Cristina at the scene. Within three to four weeks, they could determine, if available material allows, a possible cause of death. The procession for the closing of the day was completed by the mobiles of the Prefecture, Federal Police, Gendarmerie and Airport Security Police that participated in the operation, which took place under a persistent strong wind from the west that exceeded gusts of 50 kilometers per hour.
Once the blockade is lifted, Clarín travels the path that leads to the coast where the body was found. It is surrounded by bushes less than two meters high, interspersed with bumpers, scraps of seat covers and much spilled garbage. At a kilometer, the site is already a labyrinth.
“We all fit in or we lost, including the prosecutor. It is impossible that a person, by his own faculties, has deviated to take his way here ", had anticipated the lawyer Peretto. The official hypothesis states that the young man could have entered there, from the train track that runs parallel, but at a great distance, from Route 3, where a woman would have left him.
The ground appears firm, but becomes muddy and brittle about two miles later. At high tide, walking around can sink to the knees or be a death trap, for the unwary who walks through it. “ There is not the slightest possibility that Facundo has come to this place voluntarily . Either the tide brings it or they plant it in this place ”, one of Cristina's lawyers suggests as options.
Facundo's mother unleashes her anger, asking for the resignation of Sergio Berni and the mayor of Villarino, Carlos Bevilacqua. "They came to dump the remains of my son here, in Villarino Viejo, and he is still Villarino," Aparicio interrupted, when he questioned the Buenos Aires Minister of Security. Another example of the feeling with which Cristina Castro left the place.
EMJ