The wife of a 1st sergeant of the National Gendarmerie was found strangled in her home and what seemed like a suicide quickly led to a homicide investigation.
Almost a week after the incident, there are no arrests but the agents working on the case have the gendarme as the main suspect.
On Friday of last week, non-commissioned officer
Jorge César Páez (55)
finished his guard minutes after 6 and went in his car to his house, where he lived with his wife,
Graciela Beatriz Soto (49)
.
The property is just three blocks from
Squadron 11
, in the city of San Ignacio, Misiones.
In his statement to the Police, the man stated that upon entering the house he found the access door open but did not find his partner, with whom he had lived again some time ago.
After noticing that she was not in the bedroom, the sergeant went to the back of the house and found her hanging from a rope that was tied to the braces of a small shed.
The gendarme reported that he quickly realized that he no longer had vital signs, so
he decided to notify his co-workers that his wife had taken her life
.
After the arrival of his comrades, Páez called his second lieutenant son who serves in Córdoba to inform him of Soto's death.
And then he contacted a funeral home in the city to remove the body for the wake, a urgency that was not overlooked by investigators.
It was one of the gendarmes who called the San Ignacio police station to notify Soto's death.
By then, more than an hour had passed since the discovery of the woman's body.
The police who arrived at the scene were struck by the fact that
the body was with its knees almost touching the floor
.
The police doctor did not hesitate to point out that he was facing a homicide.
On the body,
post-mortem injuries were found on the knee and ankle
.
And that the death was recent, since the corpse was still warm and there were no signs of stiffness.
These data were provided to the judge in the case, Roberto Sena, who asked the Police to classify the case as a “
death due to doubtful causes
” and to involve the Forensic Medical Corps of the Judiciary for an autopsy.
The professionals who carried out the study provided new data:
the woman was strangled from behind by a larger person
.
And that her death occurred between 5 and 6 that day.
That is to say, the date of death, taking into account a small margin of error, coincides with the time of Páez's departure from his guard.
The man declared to the Police as a suspicious witness and gave details of his movements in the previous hours.
The investigators also took statements from three other gendarmes who shared a patrol that night with Páez and their statements were coincident.
The neighbors assured that that morning they did not hear anything strange and that Soto usually got up early every day because between 6 and 6:30 he went out to walk through the streets of the city, which is on the way to Cataratas, 60 kilometers from Posadas.
A no less important fact is that the woman was wearing the clothes she usually used for walks and the bed was made correctly.
That is to say,
the attack occurred after she had started her day
.
Another striking fact is that the murderer entered the house without using violence and no valuable objects were found missing at the scene.
As the hours passed, the detectives added evidence that placed Páez in a complicated situation.
Some witnesses said that the gendarme
was very jealous
, to the point that his partner
could not have social networks or friends
.
The couple had already been separated, but in recent months they resumed living together.
Soto apparently had already made the decision to abandon Páez again because
he had found out that the man had a child from an extramarital relationship
.
The Justice ordered the seizure of the gendarme's cell phone to be examined and also a search of the house he rented with his partner and the one they were building.
Nothing related to the crime was found.
Not in his car either.
Although he is one of the main suspects in Soto's death, the judge in the case authorized Páez to travel to Córdoba, where his son lives.
Now investigators are awaiting the results of the expert report on his cell phone, where they hope to find new incriminating evidence.
EMJ