The house of Baldomero Fernández Moreno 1906, in the Flores neighborhood, burned down on the morning of February 17, 1994. Inside were José Bagnato (42);
his wife, Alicia Plaza (40);
his three sons, Alejandro (9), Fernando (14) and Matías (16);
and Nicolás Borda (11), a friend of the youngest child.
Pictures of the house after the fire.
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The
only one who survived
the fire was the eldest of the brothers.
Norma Calzaretta, her grandmother, also lived with the family, but she was saved from her because
she had traveled
to Mar del Plata.
She found out by phone what had happened.
The horror inside.
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Four days after the event, known as the "Flores Massacre," Fructuoso Álvarez González, a Spanish citizen who was married to the daughter of Norma's first cousin, was arrested.
The front of the house, in Baldomero Fernández Moreno 1906.
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Key in the investigation was the story of a neighbor of the victims, who had seen Fructuoso
hanging around the Bagnato family house with a drum
.
A year later, the perpetrator of the massacre was sentenced to life.
The fight over a debt
It was through the distant family ties that Fructuoso met José, Norma's son-in-law.
That relationship deepened when the Bagnato shoe factory fell into crisis and needed a loan to keep going.
The mother of Nicolás Borda, the friend of the youngest son of the Bagnato family, arriving at the house of the massacre.
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Some time later, Fructuoso wanted to get his money back.
The differences on the final number of the debt were insurmountable: the lender
claimed 300,000 dollars
, while Bagnato said that the figure did not reach 90,000.
Police operation at the Bagnato family home.
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Arguments turned into threats.
"
They are going to burn to death
," Fructuoso warned by phone.
The calls were repeated until February 17.
After watching a match between Independiente and San Lorenzo, the family went to sleep.
Farewell to the remains of the victims.
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Matías woke up at dawn, around 3:00.
"I lacked oxygen. The sensation is as if your throat were being crushed with a board. I look out the window to breathe and a neighbor on the street yells at me, jump up, they've arrested you." The house burned down. I didn't understand anything, as I saw light under my door I went to open it thinking that my father or my mother had gotten up. As soon as I opened it, a flare came in that reached the ceiling of my room," Matías said in an
interview with
Clarin
.
"It burned my hair, my face and an arm. And then I ran to the balcony and jumped into a neighbor's house. And there I was caught. I felt the fire in my back and I was preparing to die, until a policeman guided me and I managed to go up to the terrace next door and from there they took me out... And I don't remember anymore... I have flashes... The firefighters coming in and a policeman who told me to stay calm because there was no one in the house . And
I knew it was a lie
. That they were all there. And I fainted...",
he added
.
The pain of friends and family.
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He was not wrong.
The body of his mother appeared in the bathroom, in a bathtub next to Fernando's.
She is believed to have suffocated to death while
trying to save her son
from her.
The arrest of Fructuoso Álvarez González.
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His dad tried
to rip out a window
for his family to escape.
He didn't make it.
The youngest brother in the family and his friend were found inside the room,
one next to the other
.
José Bagnato (2nd on the right) and his son Fernando (2nd on the left)
The experts determined that the fire was started from inside, with liquid phosphorus, a powerful incendiary agent with widespread military use.
There were
four sources of fire
: on the ground floor and in the victim's rooms.
Alice Square..
Alejandro Bagnato, on the left in the photo.
deliverance and nightmare
When he had been in prison for 13 years, Fructuoso asked to be deported to Spain.
Justice granted it to him and in his country he achieved a sentence commutation that
set him free in 2008
.
Bagnato found out that his family's murderer was free in the worst way.
"Get ready, because you're dead like the others"
, he heard as he picked up the phone.
Fructuoso Álvarez González, when he was arrested again, in 2011.
Later it would be known that Fructuoso had entered the country thanks to the fact that Judge Axel López had not answered a letter in which Migration asked him what to do.
"I morphed him because he had a lot of work,"
the magistrate replied to Matías.
It was the beginning of a long ordeal that seemed to end in December 2011, when the perpetrator of the massacre was arrested.
But peace of mind for the victims never came.
Matías with Norma, his grandmother, in a note with Clarín.
The woman died on June 1, 2020.
The new calculation of the sentence determined that he should be imprisoned until 2020, but Fructuoso did not loosen up: he presented various appeals to obtain
temporary releases and other benefits
.
Peace for Matías arrived this Saturday, with the death of the murderer in the Ezeiza prison.
The front of the house of tragedy.
Photo Juano Tesone.
Álvarez González had undergone surgery at the beginning of the month for a hip problem at the Dr. Alberto Eurnekian Acute Zonal General Hospital and was later transferred to the health center located inside the Ezeiza Complex, for his recovery.
There, according to sources, this morning he had a clinical complication that led to "septic shock" that caused his death.
EMJ
look too
Fructuoso Álvarez González, the murderer of the Bagnato family in the "Flores Massacre", died
"I can't stop crying": the relief of the only survivor of the Flores Massacre
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