It was Monday and, despite the winter, it was warm in
Santiago del Estero
.
“A little summer,” they described in the local media about the atypical 28 degrees.
Eduardo Enrique Móttola (38)
was in his workshop on Pedro León Gallo Street, in the center of the city.
Nobody knows exactly what he was doing or how many cars he had fixed on that August 6th.
But that night, when it was dark outside, someone came in and
emptied a magazine into his body
.
They killed him with six shots.
They finished him off, without mercy, while he was fallen on the ground.
It took a year and two months to reconstruct a hypothesis of what happened.
Since that moment there have been three detainees.
One of them is
Juan Pablo Fernández (44)
, a former federal police officer who ended up arrested and accused of being the hitman who executed Móttola on request.
The others are
Yésica Paola Díaz (41)
, a hairdresser with whom Eduardo had had a relationship, and
Damián Silva (26)
, a young man with whom Díaz also had a relationship and who, according to the accusation, would have given him
118 thousand pesos to the woman to pay for Móttola's murder
.
Juan Pablo is in prison.
He spends his days in a unit for members of the security forces and public officials.
He has lied to his children four years ago, who do not know that he is in prison.
The mechanic Eduardo Móttola was murdered in his workshop.
He says he is innocent and denounces a network of corruption behind a "false" accusation.
The official version
From the moment of the crime, the investigation was in the hands of prosecutor Aída Farrán Serlé, who months later left the case and was referred to another prosecutor's office.
During that time, the case was practically paralyzed.
It would be known later that for Farrán Serlé there was
a hypothesis linked to drug trafficking
behind it , but he did not incorporate any evidence that would guide everything in that sense.
Gabriel Coronel Chalfón is the lawyer of Valentina Móttola, Eduardo's daughter.
For him, the hypothesis was always linked to the paternity of Díaz's daughter and the victim.
“Móttola's daughter contacted me, and the mothers of his other two children, women from whom he was already separated but who had a good relationship.
At that moment, at the beginning of the investigation, they denied my complaint.
When I managed to get them to accept me, the prosecutor Farrán Serlé denied me copies of the file,” she questioned.
That was why Coronel Chalfón had to stop representing the family until they referred her to another prosecutor's office: “Not only did they deny me the file.
It was a mechanical workshop, there were 16 vehicles inside the place, which Móttola had repaired and the prosecutor began to hand them over without the family's consent, without them paying - for example - for those jobs.
They never notified us.
That is why I ran away from the representation,” he warned.
The victim's ex-wife is also in prison.
At that time, the coordinating prosecutor of Santiago del Estero, Mariano Gómez, took charge of the investigation.
It was in October 2019 that Gómez raised a line of investigation and arrested three people who are one step away from trial, accused of
aggravated homicide
.
“Prosecutor Farrán Serlé had three alleged lines of investigation: one was against Móttola's relatives because a former partner
had him scheduled as '
little shit
'
and supposedly that was why she denied me access to the case.
Another was that he had been Mexicaned
for
debts with the workshop or the house, but he did not have any debt.
And the third was the narco theory, but there was no element in the file that accompanied these versions," said Coronel Chalfón.
The arrest of the former police officer was in Hurlingham.
The lawyer added: "They all died because there was no evidence. We, as a plaintiff,
always believed that the paternity challenge lawsuit was the motive for the crime
."
Thus, under this line of investigation, they arrested Juan Pablo Fernández, Yésica Paola Díaz and Damián Silva.
The hypothesis of the prosecution, and for which the three defendants have been detained for four years, is that the motive for the crime was established after Eduardo, who had had a relationship with Yésica, claimed paternity of the daughter who had been born as a result of that link.
The porters kidnapped the former federal police officer accused of killing Eduardo Móttola.
She was married to a gendarme who was traveling on duty and, while he was away, Díaz and Móttola had an extramarital relationship.
As a result of that love affair, a baby was born that the gendarme recognized as her own.
But Móttola was sure that he was the father of the girl and, therefore, he filed a lawsuit for the girl to bear his last name.
In the middle of this process - always according to the accusation - the plan that would end in homicide began to take shape.
For prosecutor Gómez, there are sufficient elements to prove that Díaz asked Damián Silva, another suitor with whom he had a fluid dialogue, for money to hire a hitman.
The
118 thousand pesos
that he transferred to him were recorded in his bank transactions and he would have obtained them by paying a lawsuit to the ART.
Juan Pablo Fernández is a former Federal Police officer.
Fernández is accused of traveling from the western area of Greater Buenos Aires to La Banda, Santiago del Estero, to kill Móttola and return, passing through Córdoba, so as not to be discovered.
Fernández says it is “
a parsley
.”
That they accuse him "unfairly" for a crime that, according to him, he did not commit.
"I'm innocent"
Juan Pablo Fernández had worked at the Palermo police station.
He was a Federal police officer and they describe him as “very hardworking” always making extras, looking for something to resell or trying to start a business.
In 2017 he suffered a motorcycle accident and in 2018 he “started to see what business to do.”
So, they say, he set up a hair salon called
Real Cut
with a partner.
He then opened the
Master Face academy and barbershop.
That path is the one that - always according to his version - took him from Hurlingham to Santiago del Estero.
“He has been a police officer in the Federal Police for 19 years, I met him 13 years ago.
He told me that he wanted to start a business apart from his job, that he liked the idea of having a barbershop and so he started with a small barbershop.
As he did well, he wanted to open an academy.
I also accompanied him in that,” said
Ángela María Marín Cruz (31)
, his wife and mother of two of his three children.
Juan Pablo denies the accusation against him.
He asked for his release several times.
The last time, on December 28, they denied it considering that the "delaying strategies" of her defense delayed the deadlines and that is why they have not yet reached trial.
He had three private lawyers.
He says they quit because of "pressure."
“It's very difficult,
he is far away and he didn't do anything
.
What they did is distort all the information to have him detained, but he had nothing to do with it,” Ángela lamented.
Fernández - he said - had gone to Santiago del Estero to give hairdressing courses after a woman contacted him on Facebook.
On one of those trips he had met Yésica Díaz and that's why they "began a friendship."
Always according to the former police officer's version, they had agreed to return to give courses and he had left him merchandise on consignment to sell but he had not paid them.
That's why they had conversations and he demanded money.
For Justice, the planning of the crime arose from these communications.
The letter that Yésica Paola Díaz wrote to Juan Pablo Fernández asking for forgiveness for being involved in the cause.
“When they took him away, it was impressive.
At that time my children were little, one was 4 years old and the other was 6. They took cell phones, black clothing, two weapons that he had, the regulation one and another that was registered.
They snatched the boy's cell phone from his hands, no tact.
“It was a nightmare,” Angela recalled of the raids.
“That day (August 6) he traveled to pay the deposit at a salon to teach the courses again because he had done very well.
She went and came on the same day because the next day was her eldest daughter's birthday,” Angela justified, according to her husband's version.
Investigators are targeting him because he took Route 9, different from the one he had used to arrive.
His excuse is that he "had to go through Córdoba to a hair salon" to leave them supplies "but there was no one, so he returned to Buenos Aires."
He also presented a letter in which Yésica Paola Díaz asks him for "
a thousand forgiveness
" and questions the judicial investigation.
"
Many times I start to think and it hurts me a lot to remember you and the other boy who is involved.
How much injustice and corruption
. How can it be that without evidence they can have people detained
," the woman wrote.
“Everything he says is documented, his colleagues offered to testify.
But they don't listen to us.
We believe that politics is involved and that is why they need to cover everything up by accusing my husband,” the woman denounced.
Judicial scandal
While they wait for the case to go to trial, an audio of prosecutor Aída Farrán Serlé went viral in which she says: "
How they get to your husband seems crazy to me
," you can hear.
"
What is the justification for the man having been detained for four years. Every detention has a reasonable period and has been fulfilled
," she objected.
Perhaps in one of the most controversial points, in the audio he points out: "
I know what the line of investigation is that this case should have followed, not this thing. If I am going to hire a hitman, am I going to deposit the money in his account?" of the hitman?
He is a poor man who has had to face this situation because they have needed to close a case
."
The viralization of the audio generated a stir in the Judicial Branch of Santiago del Estero.
And Juan Pablo Fernández maintains that it is proof that he is unjustly detained and that they "used" him to divert the investigation.
For the lawyer of the complaint, the audio also turns out to be a scandal: "If she had elements to support the other lines of investigation, why are they not in the file? If the Public Prosecutor's Office doesn't summon her, I'm going to do it." because she has committed the crime of omission of the duties of a public official. If she knew that there was corruption behind the case, as she says, why didn't she report it?" said Coronel Chalfón.
EMJ