The death of Lucio Dupuy occurred on the night of Friday, November 26, 2021 in Santa Rosa, La Pampa.
A few hours later, his mother, Magdalena Espósito Valenti (26), and his girlfriend, Abigail Páez (28), were detained.
The data that emerged from the life of the little boy of 5 years and four months revealed a history of mistreatment and abuse that turned the case into the most shocking infanticide in the country in recent decades.
His father, Christian Dupuy (27), the day after Lucio's death, detailed some of the edges of the case:
“Justice never listened to me, it always favored the mother because of more lawyers and mediations that I carried out.
Today my son paid
. "
This is how the story of the legal fight and a Justice that neglected Lucio appeared.
Lucio Dupuy (5), murdered in La Pampa.
In his short life, Lucio spent a year and a half with his biological parents, two years under the guardianship of his paternal uncles, and a year and a half in the home of his mother and his girlfriend.
The account of the chats between the mother and her girlfriend revealed the torture she suffered.
And how that relationship unleashed fury against Lucio, in a fatal outcome.
The last 19 minutes, Lucio's agony
Lucio's stepmother, Abigail Páez, left her house, at Allan Kardec 2385 in Santa Rosa, with the baby in her arms at 9:26 p.m., according to the security cameras.
A dizzying raid began.
He went to the health post in the Río Atuel neighborhood to have the baby revived: the room was closed.
There were some policemen in front, at the headquarters of the Regional Unit of the pampean capital: they did not want to interfere or attend to him or transfer him.
Some neighbors gave him resuscitation: he barely reacted, he gagged, when he was attended by a woman, a professional nurse.
At that moment, other neighbors, Eduardo Mourino and her mother, Lady Ester Soria, approached and put Páez and the baby in a car and took her to the Evita Hospital.
They arrived shortly after 9:30 p.m.
The doctor Hugo Argüello received the baby.
He had vomit and blood in his mouth, a large bruise on his right buttock, and bruises all over his body.
He tried resuscitation, but to no avail.
The professional certified his death: 9:45 p.m.
Only 19 minutes have passed since Páez left his house with Lucio in his arms.
Abigail Páez and Magdalena Espósito Valenti, mother of Lucio, during the third hearing of the oral trial.
At that moment, the doctor asked Páez what had happened: he said that he had left the baby alone "for 15 minutes" to take the mother to work.
And that when he returned the baby was beaten: he bathed him and went out to look for help.
When they told him that Lucio died, Páez went to look for Esposito at work: the cameras show that he went to the Casino Club hotel - where Lucio's mother worked - at 9:59 p.m.
He had entered work at 7:57 p.m., according to the cameras.
Together they go to the Evita hospital where Lucio's body was.
The mother and her partner were arrested.
At 2:28 a.m. on November 27, they raided the house where the women lived with Lucio.
When the police arrived at the scene, there was a television thrown on the bed and the clothes were in a mess: it was a staged scene, the investigation confirmed.
The accusation against the mother and the bride
The accusation of the prosecutors and the complaint maintain that Abigail Páez and Magdalena Esposito Valenti, on Friday, November 26, 2021, between 5:30 p.m. and 7:40 p.m. physically and sexually assaulted Lucio Dupuy.
They hit him on his arms, legs and body that caused multiple injuries:
he had bruises on his abdomen, chest, back, face and skull.
In addition, another bruise on the back: it was the mark of the sole of the shoe that Páez had on the night of the crime.
The blows caused the accumulation of blood and fluid in the brain, the rupture of the liver and an internal hemorrhage caused the accumulation of blood in the stomach area.
"These injuries caused his death, after an agony," the prosecutors said, based on the autopsy carried out by the doctor Juan Carlos Toulousse.
José Mario Aguerrido, lawyer for Lucio Dupuy's father.
But the autopsy also revealed that "both sexually abused the child with carnal access on repeated occasions (...), which produced old and recent injuries to the child."
He also had bite marks on his left arm.
This is what the prosecution says.
Prosecutors Verónica Ferrero, Walter Martos and Marcos Sacco affirmed in the oral trial that these injuries and death were caused by the mother and her partner.
That is why they accuse both of them of
aggravated homicide for having been committed with viciousness and treachery and outrageous sexual abuse (due to the duration and manner in which it was committed).
In the case of Magdalena Espósito Valenti, she has another aggravating circumstance for being her mother and Páez for being her keeper.
Christian Dupuy's complaint, represented by lawyer José Mario Aguerrido, added another accusation: hate crime.
He maintains that they killed him for "being a man."
The last few hours, all filmed
Magdalena Esposito Valenti (Lucio's mother), Abigail Páez and Lucio Dupuy.
The movements of Magdalena and Abigail, the afternoon that Lucio's punishment took place and the beginning of his agony, were recorded by a neighbor's security camera: at 5:32 p.m., Lucio arrived from the garden on the motorcycle with his stepmother .
Around 6:30 p.m., the mother leaves twice and returns in a few minutes.
At 7:40 p.m., Páez leaves on the motorcycle carrying Esposito.
And he returns at 8:49 p.m.: in that period of almost an hour they left Lucio alone.
At 9:26 p.m., Páez leaves with Lucio in his arms.
What did Abigail Páez declare in the oral trial?
She said that the baby sent "a mucus".
“I took him by the arm and kicked him on the tail.
I hit him and I didn't measure where, really,"
she said.
He admitted that “I know that I hurt him, I realized it at the time and I tried to remedy it.
Then I picked him up and took him to the shower because I thought he was going to react.
He was trying to speak, he was still conscious.
He bathed standing up.
He tried to speak to me, as if to say something, but the words would not come out.
Then he left him to go get clothes and heard that he fell:
“He didn't even put his hands up.
I touched his foot, but he had no reaction
. "
There he said that he went out to look for help.
Christian Dupuy, father of the 5-year-old boy beaten to death.
Prosecutors did not believe this version: they consider that the physical and sexual assault occurred between 5:32 p.m., when he arrived from the garden, and 7:40 p.m., when Abigail Páez went out to take Magdalena Espósito Valenti to work.
Lucio's mother testified at the trial.
“When I left him at my house, he greeted me, he was alive.
To this day I still can't believe it," she said.
"Many will find it bad that I'm not crying, but I made up my mind to be as strong as possible to be able to speak clearly.
I cry for Lucio in private, it seems more human to me than doing it in front of people who don't know me, nor did they know anyone. Lucio”, said "Magui" Espósito Valenti before judges Alejandra Ongaro, Daniel Sáez Zamora and Andrés Olié.
Hospital admissions
An analysis of Lucio's medical history -according to the report of the forensic doctor Romina Meneguzzi- revealed that the child suffered injuries that forced him to be treated in a hospital.
He had five admissions to different medical centers between December 18, 2020 and March 23, 2021, due to a broken wrist and trauma to his fingers and a cut on the pear.
Her sixth admission is to the Evita Hospital on November 26, 2021 (the day of the crime), which reveals the skull fracture and two broken ribs.
The lawyer Aguerrido remarked that on November 4, 2020, the "agreement" between Lucio's uncles, Maximiliano Dupuy and Leticia Hidalgo, was approved, which determined that the baby would return to live with his mother in Santa Rosa: the admissions occurred repeatedly, after that date.
Abigail Páez and Magdalena Espósito Valenti, arrested for the crime of Lucio (5), the latter's son.
Aguerrido confirmed that they will criminally denounce the professionals who did not warn Lucio and the Pampean State of the mistreatment before international courts for the violation of the rights of the child.
Abuse: evidence in chats
The same night of Lucio's crime, the Justice seized the telephones of the mother and the girlfriend.
The opening of the cell phones revealed the mistreatment to which they subjected the little one.
In the WhatsApp chats, the prosecutors pointed out,
"they found chilling messages of inhumane punishments to which the child was subjected, lack of food, cold, endless penance
against a wall, punches in the belly that caused him to vomit continuously, blows in the face that caused visible injuries.”
The messages revealed “threats that he could not tell anyone what he was going through, otherwise it would be worse, not sending him to the kindergarten for two reasons: first so that the teachers would not see his injuries and second as a way of foisting punishment on him since the child enjoyed go to the garden, they feared that he would take off his shirt and other adults would see his marks of beatings”.
Lucio, the prosecutors affirmed based on the chats, "
when he left (his house) he ate too much because then he had periods of famine in his house and they feared that they would notice it."
The chat of the neighbor from La Pampa who asked to call the Police because she heard how they beat Lucio.
In addition, “they put ice on her to deflate the blows on her head, agreements between the women for excuses that they would make in the garden to justify her absence, or for her not to hang out with her friends, and for not going to the house of the grandmother -in reference to the mother of Abigail Paez”.
A nuisance in the relationship
In those messages you can read how Lucio was a nuisance to Abigail and Magdalena:
all the time they thought of removing him from their lives so that he wouldn't ruin their relationship,
and according to them their fights and arguments were motivated by Lucio.
"They both agree to leave him alone in the house at night, and that they were tired of his presence there," prosecutors said at trial.
In one of the messages,
Abigail tells Magdalena to give the child up for adoption because she was not prepared to take care of him
and she knew well that he would not be well raised with his father, that he felt rejection by Lucio because he was Christian's son.
Magdalena commented in those chats that
"if Lucio prevents our relationship from flowing, I'm not going to allow it, because I don't care as much as you do"
, referring to Abigail Paez.
In another message Abigail admitted:
"Sometimes I think we're going to end badly when Lucio does those things and I hit him."
To which Lucio's mother replied:
"It's all good baby, you just have to control yourself when I'm not around don't do shit..."
A legal wrestling
Lucio Dupuy was born on July 5, 2016 in General Pico.
Parents Christian and "Magui" Esposito Valenti - natives of that Pampas city - already lived in Luján: he worked at the zoo in that Buenos Aires city.
At the beginning of 2018 the separation of the couple occurs.
"Magui" Espósito returns to Pico with Lucio.
That year, the young mother lives between Santa Rosa and Pico.
At this stage there is nothing legal: "Magui" exercises parental authority.
But he leaves Lucio with his grandparents for periods of between one and two weeks.
There is a fight.
And he agrees to leave Lucio with an uncle, Maximiliano Dupuy, and his wife, Leticia Hidalgo.
Ramón, Lucio's grandfather, in the act he led in Congress for the presentation of the Lucio Law.
Photo: Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi
The first legal trace on Lucio's care occurs on November 27, 2018. That day the mother agreed to the request of the baby's uncle, who
asked Magui "that Lucio not go from one place to another."
The mother makes a presentation at the Gender and Childhood Functional Unit of the pampean capital.
In February 2019, Espósito signed an authorization that extended that first permit.
"She was going on vacation and then she signed an authorization where we could do more things," explained Maximiliano Dupuy.
Christian Dupuy was already living in Pico again, but the baby's mother had signed that authorization with one condition: that both Lucio's father and paternal grandparents could not see him. Although they managed to enroll Lucio in the nursery in March 2019 , the teachers told them:
"If the mother comes, she takes the baby."
For this reason, they ask Family Judge Ana Clara Pérez Ballester (Family Court, Children and Adolescents from Piquense) to guard Lucio.
But the uncles never got it.
In August 2019, Maximiliano Dupuy and his wife obtained guardianship of Lucio.
In March 2020, almost simultaneously with the birth of the twins, Lucio's cousins, Maximiliano and Leticia receive a claim from "Magui" Esposito to take their son to Santa Rosa.
The Lucio case will be resolved on February 2 in the Pampas justice.
The defendants spent this time in detention in San Luis.
Photo: Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi
"We told him no. That there were no problems for him to see it. But that he could not take it because guardianship was ours," Maximiliano explained to
Clarín
.
It was already times of the coronavirus pandemic.
There begins a stage of harassment and threats against the uncles of the child from Espósito: every time he went to Pico, he went to Maximiliano's house with the Police.
On May 31, 2020, the mother filed a complaint at the Fourth (Minor) police station in Pico where she insinuated that the baby suffered "psychological" abuse and that she wanted to take him to the Pico hospital because "his tail was red":
that is, threatens them with a complaint for abuse.
The policemen convinced the Dupuys to hand over the clothes and the DNI.
Although "Magui" did not take the baby to the Hospital, the exhibition was settled.
On July 31, while the pandemic was in force, Magdalena Espósito took Lucio to Santa Rosa, to the house she shared with Abigail Páez.
The Dupuy family lawyer, Adriana Mascaró, tells them that Lucio should stay with the mother.
On November 4, 2020, in the General Pico Family Court in charge of Ana Clara Pérez Ballester, an agreement was signed where Maximiliano Dupuy and Leticia Hidalgo relinquished guardianship and Magdalena Espósito recovered Lucio's parental authority.
The lawyer José Mario Aguerrido remarked that after this approval Lucio's admissions to hospitals began.
Lucio case.
The message from his father a few hours after the crime of the 5-year-old boy.
a legacy
Ramón "Teto Dupuy, Lucio's grandfather, declared that when the baby went to Santa Rosa,
the mother asked them for money so that they could see him through video calls.
Silvia Gómez, the paternal grandmother, declared the same.
The two were the main promoters of the Lucio Law, It is a norm that obliges State agencies to carry out training for compliance with the rights of the child, identity reservation for complainants of child abuse and the nationalization of the 102 line for complaints .
Ramón and Silvia together with Christian formed the Lucio Dupuy Association, dedicated to preventing child abuse.
a father's pain
Christian Dupuy bears the pain of Lucio's death,
"I live and will live with the guilt of not having done anything, of not having realized
it," he claims.
"That they did not allow me to give him all the love was not my fault, it was the fault of two bitches who prevented me from contacting me, who threatened me, denigrated me and made me feel like shit because I was a man," he adds.
And review what happened: "When I went to see him and they prevented me, it was because he was surely beaten. If I had known the slightest detail, I would have done everything to rescue him, any father would have done it. I love and always love my son."
The Pampa. Correspondent.
GL