Carlos Guajardo placeholder image
08/19/2021 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 08/19/2021 6:00 AM
The news broke.
He went from Patagonia to the world: a young woman was going to marry the man accused of having murdered her twin sister.
It happened in Pico Truncado, a town in Santa Cruz where oil gushes nonstop from the bottom of the earth.
Later, the two wrote an incredible story that had its end a few months ago,
more than a decade after that shocking event
: Edith Casas (31), Johana's twin sister, separated from Víctor Cingolani (37).
The murder occurred on July 16, 2010, three days before the birthday of Johana (19), a rising model.
His body was found on the outskirts of Pico Truncado, in a place known as the forest cordon.
He had two bullets in the chest.
Cingolani, with Johana.
The victim had been dating Víctor Cingolani, a worker for an oil services company.
He was the first to be pointed out by the Justice as the author of a crime that shocked the inhabitants of the city.
The suspect was brought to trial and sentenced to 13 years in prison, although he always maintained his innocence.
"
I had nothing to do with it.
Justice needs a culprit and I fell.
But I am innocent,
" he always maintained.
During the trial hearings, Edith wore a T-shirt asking for justice for her sister.
Nothing suggested what would happen some time later.
Johana Casas was 19 years old.
The truth is that Cingolani began to serve his sentence in the local warden.
And it didn't take long for him to gain the trust of the other inmates and even the authorities.
He created a micro-enterprise with other prisoners inside the prison: a brick kiln.
They sold them at a good price and the money was distributed among the partners.
Suddenly, Edith also began to say to anyone who would listen: "
Victor did not kill my sister, he is innocent
."
His words had an explanation: he had fallen in love with who up to that moment and for Justice was the murderer.
The love between them was such that they did not take long to make it public.
It was in December 2012 when they announced that they were getting married.
The three faces of a story.
Johana, Cingolani and Edith.
More than a decade passed by a case that toured the world.
Archive
The wedding, scheduled for that month, had to be suspended due to an appeal filed by Edith's family.
But it only lasted a couple of months, as a judge agreed with a presentation by lawyer Lucas Chacón, Cingolani's defender.
Both
were married, in the middle of a scandal, on February 14
, 2013 (Valentine's Day) in the Civil Registry of Pico Truncado.
Today Edith does not want to talk too much about the subject, but she confessed that she is no longer with Cingolani.
"I have my partner and he has his," he said in an interview with
TN
.
A decade later, things are different.
Every man for himself.
"My life changed a lot, I am calm," she said and did not forget her sister.
"
It is always in me, I remember it every day
."
"El Tosco" Díaz is removed from the Courts after the ruling.
Patagonian newspaper photo.
As for Cingolani, he insisted: "We have not been together for a long time, we parted ways and each one rebuilt his life."
Clarín
was present that February 14 at the Civil Registry of Pico Truncado.
Edith arrived early with Víctor's family since the decision to marry had taken her away from hers.
Around noon.
and with a strong security operation, Cingolani arrived, who was still in prison.
There was everything: stones,
tomatoes, knocked over by people who insulted the man, who at that time was accused of murder but who in a few minutes was going to become the husband of the victim's sister.
The Civil Registry also suffered the breakage of doors and window glass.
It was a scandal.
Cingolani and Edith, during an interview with Clarín.
In December 2013, several months after the marriage, Chacón's perseverance paid off.
The Superior Court of Justice reversed Cingolani's sentence and attributed to Marcos "El Tosco" Díaz, the material responsibility for the murder of Johana
.
He was her boyfriend at the time of the young model's death.
There was evidence (such as cigarette butts found in a car with his DNA on it) that convicted him.
Cingolani regained his freedom and began living with Edith in her mother's house, a few blocks from the Truncado shopping center.
In 2015 they were interviewed by
Clarín
: "
We are happy and, in addition, people understood that everything was a mistake,
" they said.
On a tour of the town square, they received warm greetings, as if nothing had happened.
The good news
In recent days, Edith uploaded a photo to the networks with a T-shirt announcing her pregnancy.
She is in a relationship with a man to whom she dedicates tender dedications on her social network.
The woman appeared with a T-shirt that has a baby drawn on it and, on her belly, the legend: "
Here I am growing
."
That is how she broke the news that she will be a mother.
Cingolani, for his part, does not go unnoticed.
Last year he traveled to Spain and when he returned he found out that he was infected with COVID-19.
He was hospitalized for a month in the Chubut city of Comodoro Rivadavia.
And when he recovered, he returned to Pico Truncado, where some neighbors "accused" them of not fulfilling the isolation.
In more than a decade, everything is different.
For a moment, Pico Truncado looked more like Macondo, the town where people lost their memory or suddenly it rained non-stop for months as Gabriel García Márquez imagined in “
One Hundred Years of Solitude
”, than an oil town in the Argentine Patagonia.
The woman who fell in love with and later married the man who was the main accused of killing her twin sister is no longer with him.
Now she is expecting a baby with a new partner.
Cingolani makes his life on the other hand.
It seems to
be the end point for a story of love, scandal and death.
EMJ
