08/16/2021 3:18 PM
Clarín.com
Zonal
Updated 08/16/2021 3:18 PM
It was one of the cases of gender violence that most circulated through the media and social networks during the 2020 quarantine in Argentina.
The case occurred in a well-
known private neighborhood in the northern
suburbs and was just one of many that showed how the statistics of femicides and sexist violence grew during social and preventive isolation due to the coronavirus.
The prosecutor who investigated the
femicide of Silvia Saravia
and the
suicide of Jorge Neuss
in the country
Martindale
de Pilar shelved the file after reaching the conclusion that the
sole person responsible was the businessman and that there were no more involved
, judicial sources reported today.
In a resolution of a technical legal nature dated July 20 - which was accessed by the
Télam
news agency
- and at the request of the prosecutor in the case, María José Basiglio, of the Functional Instruction Unit (UFI) for Gender Violence de Pilar, the Judge of Guarantees 6 of that district, Nicolás Ceballos, decided to
"dismiss" Neuss (72), not because he considered him innocent, but because "the criminal action was extinguished"
due to the
death of the accused
.
The femicide and suicide, in the country Martindale de Pilar, generated commotion in the middle of the pandemic.
Judicial sources indicated that in its final ruling, the prosecution indicated that Saravia (69) was a "violent / homicidal death" and identified Neuss as the sole perpetrator of the femicide.
In addition, always according to the same sources, it was highlighted that from the records collected in the Martindale country, the entry of a third party outside the home did not emerge, and that from the analysis of the genetic profiles found at the scene "
no DNA record was identified of any person
, beyond the victim and the perpetrator ".
For all these reasons, Basiglio concluded the criminal investigation and, being deceased, requested the dismissal of the femicide Neuss in this file that was labeled as "homicide doubly aggravated by the relationship and for mediating gender violence", a crime that provides for imprisonment life.
Although in the resolution there is no allusion to the motive and in this case the details were always protected with reserve to preserve the victim, one of the investigators acknowledged to Télam that it could be determined that the marriage relationship "was not good indoors. ".
Neuss received the DAIA 2017 Award for Social Responsibility.
According to what the prosecution was able to reconstruct, the incident occurred on Saturday, October 10, 2020, shortly after noon, but it all started with a discussion the night before.
The daughter of the couple, Lucila Neuss, was the one who provided the prosecutor with a key testimonial statement in which she said that that previous night, her parents had a fight, which motivated her mother to ask her to let her go to sleep at the house she also has in country Martindale.
The two domestic workers, who were the first witnesses to testify in the case, said that on Saturday morning, Neuss had had breakfast alone in his room and that Saravia was not seen until she returned at noon.
Following the chronology of events, the prosecutor corroborated that minutes before murdering his wife and shooting himself, Neuss sent SMS text messages to two friends for their birthdays, the first at 12:36 p.m. and the second at 12:37 p.m., according to the businessman's cell phone records.
Burial in the Recoleta Cemetery Jorge Neuss and Silvia Saravia.
Photo: Marcelo Carroll.
Minutes later,
Saravia returned home
and told one of the employees: "I'm going up to get some things," since the plan seemed to be to go without her husband to one of the family's fields.
According to the employee, that would have been "about ten minutes" when she was startled by the explosion of the first shot and a few moments later, the second came.
Both she and the other employee who worked that weekend went up to the first floor to see what had happened, they found the door of the matrimonial room locked and none of the bosses answered them.
At 12:51, this witness was the one who called Lucila Neuss to tell her what they had heard, the daughter told her three brothers and it was Patricio and Juan, in that order, who arrived at the house and found their mother murdered in the suite bathroom and her dying father in the dressing room.
The prosecution also established that the first call to 911 reporting what happened in Martindale came at 12:59 p.m.
While
Neuss's
body
was found a Smith
& Wesson
.357 Magnum caliber revolver, one of the 30 weapons that the businessman had registered in his name.
The autopsy later revealed that
Saravia was caught in the room's bathroom
and was executed with a
single shot
with the revolver resting on her head after being taken by the hair.
The experts established that when he shot his wife, the businessman injured himself with the same shot to the left thumb and then shot himself in the right temple while standing in the anteroom of the en suite bathroom, looking at his already murdered wife.
This was complemented by studies of the electronic scan that found traces of gunpowder in both hands of the businessman and on the left of the woman, the latter due to the fact that she tried to cover, defend herself or put the weapon away when they shot her.
For his part, Neuss managed to be
transferred in critical condition to the Austral Hospital in Pilar
, but due to the severity of the injury, he died there shortly afterwards.
The Saravia femicide had a wide repercussion not only because of Neuss' high profile (his business group is a conglomerate with 120 years of history in the country), but also because he had points of contact with other resonant cases, such as that of Claudia Schaefer , murdered on August 21, 2015 in that same country by another businessman, Fernando Farré, and also that of María Marta García Belsunce (50), a crime that occurred on October 27, 2002, also shot and in a bathroom, in the country Carmel de Pilar, and of whom the victim in this case had been a classmate in the sociology faculty.
Line 144 provides care, containment and advice in situations of gender violence. By WhatsApp: + 54-9-11-2771-6463)
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