The phone was in the living room.
There were others, but that was the main one.
Axel didn't appear.
“
Go home and wait for a call
,” a police officer told him.
And
Juan Carlos Blumberg
waited.
It was 2004 and that house was packed.
Neighbors, family friends, police officers and SIDE agents came and went frantically.
María Elena was desperate.
On March 17 of that year,
Axel Blumberg
, only son, industrial engineering student at the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA), 23 years old, went to look for his girlfriend to go to the movies.
Never arrived.
What would happen next was the prelude to a tragedy that left six modifications to the Penal Code, eight convictions, 5,545,000 signatures and a legacy.
“Axel is in heaven, keep fighting”
It was Wednesday and, after dinner, Axel left his house in Martínez, in the northern area of Greater Buenos Aires, to look for his girlfriend, Estefanía Garay.
He took the car of María Elena Usonis, his mother, now 74 years old.
The fourth of Axel, only son of Juan Carlos Blumberg and María Elena Usonis, 20 years later.
Photo Maxi Failla.
The green Renault Clio appeared parked on Dorrego Street, a few meters from Estefanía's house.
The doors were open and the steering wheel lock was on.
“Wednesdays were the cheapest day to go to the Unicenter cinema.
That night we had dinner with Axel and he left with his mother's car to go look for his girlfriend.
The movie started at 10 p.m. Axel left at 9:30 p.m. and was ten minutes away.
After a while the girlfriend called saying that Axel had not arrived,” recalls Juan Carlos Blumberg (79), her father, 20 years after the crime that would mark a before and after in the history of extortionist kidnappings in Argentina.
Worried, Estefania kept looking out the window until her parents saw the Clio parked.
“We made the report and the police officer told me: '
Go home and wait for a call
.
'
That call came early in the morning.
They wanted to talk to Axel's mother and I answered.
For five days I lived next to the phone
,” highlights Blumberg.
Juan Carlos Blumberg and his visit to Clarín for the interview.
Photo Ariel Grinberg.
The kidnappers
nicknamed the victim “El Gato”
.
They asked for around 18 thousand dollars to free him, about 50 thousand pesos at that time.
The investigators advised the textile businessman to refuse, to negotiate to pay less.
During those five days, Juan Carlos "lived next to the telephone."
He didn't eat, he didn't sleep, he barely drank water.
He was waiting for the next call.
The kidnappers, it was later learned, kept Axel captive in a room in the Santa Paula neighborhood of Villa Trujui, in Moreno, in the western area of the Conurbano.
A chair, a bed and a bucket.
This is how Axel Blumberg spent his days and nights between March 17 and 22, 2004.
He was blindfolded and his hands were tied
.
One of the shirts in Axel's room.
Photo Maxi Failla.
The women of the band were in charge of feeding him.
The men, from the extortion calls and from keeping the kidnapping machinery running.
While Blumberg was captive, the gang - which usually carried out between two and three kidnappings a week - captured Guillermo Ortiz de Rosas, a businessman.
They caught him in Boulogne and also demanded a ransom for his release.
Ortiz de Rosas' family paid 80 thousand pesos at a service station in Don Torcuato.
They let him go but kept the car.
The gang also agreed to pay a ransom with Juan Carlos Blumberg and summoned him to the same place as the Ortiz de Rosas family, on route 2002 and Panamericana.
"El Oso" Peralta and the Díaz brothers were sentenced to life during the trial.
Axel's father arrived with the green Clio, so they could recognize him.
He waited several hours with the money in a bag until -
without anyone telling him anything - a patrol car parked nearby
.
It was there that Blumberg realized something was up.
"How are they going to come if there is a patrol car, I thought. I will have been standing there for 40 minutes when I decide to return home. I go out to the Panamericana to get to Martínez and on the other side I see that there were two patrol cars with their lights on. And of course, When I arrived I realized what had happened. These jammed the car, and the others escaped," he speculates.
The delivery of money was frustrated.
The purse, the money, the car and the hope remained still and Juan Carlos Blumberg, once again, waited.
In April 2004, Blumberg gathered more than 150,000 people in a march for security in Buenos Aires.
It was replicated throughout the country.
Photo file Telam.
"
Axel's death could have been avoided
if the prosecutor (federal Jorge) Sica had done things right. Axel was kidnapped with Ortiz de Rosas. And he went and told everything to the prosecutor... where they had him, what they were doing. with his armored car, how many there were; everything," the businessman recalls about the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.
And he adds: "(Jaime) Stiuso -former chief of operations of the former SIDE-, who was in charge of all the investigations, told me that the prosecutor gave them the order to intercept that vehicle when they did not have the weapons or were prepared to fight them. They opened the window, shot at the Police and escaped."
Convinced that they were going to kill him, Axel managed to escape from the place where they kept him.
A few meters away the captors caught him again and, since he had seen them,
they decided to execute him
.
Blumberg, devastated, on a march.
Photo file Juan Manuel Foglia.
The young man was killed with a shot to the head.
His body was found on March 23, 2004 in a garbage dump in La Reja.
He had his eyes and mouth bandaged.
"They did everything the other way around. And I got home and then, of course... called, no, we didn't have one. No. It was terrible. Because I saw that everything was wrong, I realized that I should have done what I thought: go and pay immediately, not everything that the Police, the prosecutor's office made me do, due to lack of experience, lack of capacity. It was terrible.
When they found Axel's body, I had to go to the morgue to identify him and for me "It was terrible
...imagine seeing your son shot in the head."
The place where they found the lifeless body.
Photo file Clarín.
Juan Carlos Blumberg made a promise to that body, in that morgue.
He told Axel that he was going to fight: "I told him that I was going to commit myself, that I was going to fight to help people. And well, what I'm doing, right?"
On one of his trips to the Vatican that commitment was reaffirmed: Pope John Paul II received him in Saint Peter's and told him: "
Axel is in heaven, keep fighting
. "
And for that father of pain, the advice became a mandate.
What happened to those responsible for the crime?
The Federal Oral Court No. 2 of San Martín was in charge of the trial for the kidnapping and homicide of Axel.
In 2006, eight people were convicted of being part of the gang that kidnapped and murdered him
.
Diego Peralta
, better known as
"El Oso" or "El Gordo"
, is now 42 years old and is detained in the Rawson prison, in Chubut.
He was identified as the leader of the gang and was one of those who made the decision to execute Axel.
"El Oso" Peralta, arriving at the San Isidro courts.
Photo file Telam.
José Gerónimo "El Negro" Díaz (43)
is imprisoned in Resistencia, Chaco, in the Northern Regional Unit.
For the court, he was the "executing arm" of the shot that killed the young engineering student.
He was also sentenced to the maximum penalty, at least that established by the Code at the time of the incident.
His brother,
Carlos Díaz (37)
, is imprisoned in Ezeiza and in 2025 he will serve the 21-year sentence imposed by Justice.
He was, despite Blumberg's attempts to prevent it, benefited from temporary departures.
Díaz was 17 years old when he participated in the kidnapping: he spent more than half of his life in prison.
José "El Negro" Díaz (in red and blue), accused of being the executor of Axel Blumberg's crime, laughs with his defense lawyer.
Photo file Telam.
Mauro Maidana and Sergio Miño
were also teenagers at the time of the crime.
They were sentenced to 14 and 10 years in prison.
Andrea Mercado
, 6 years and 8 months;
Vanesa Maldonado
, 8 years old and
Analía Flores
, 5 years and 8 months old.
As they had exhausted their sentence, they were released.
In addition, four other defendants had gone to trial, but were acquitted.
The crime that threw people into the streets
Axel's crime aroused the indignation of society, uniting the country against insecurity.
Mass marches to Congress and the Palace of Justice were some of the most emblematic, although they were replicated in the rest of Argentina.
In the foundation that bears the name of Axel Blumberg they still have 5,454,000 signatures with name, surname and ID that supported Juan Carlos' request:
harsher penalties for criminals
.
Axel Blumberg studied industrial engineering at the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA).
"From the Axel Blumberg Foundation we have accompanied more than a thousand victims, attending trials, accompanying them psychologically, helping them and really the work for me is terrible. Because when a person comes to talk to me and asks me and tells me what they It happened, I relive everything.
At the time Axel was kidnapped there were 200, 250 kidnappings per month, it was crazy
," Juan Carlos remembers.
But the mobilization of society, the massive marches, the millions of signatures and the fatigue with another violent crime, led to a package of laws approved by Congress and called "Blumberg laws."
Juan Carlos Blumberg, 20 years after the horror.
Photo Ariel Grinberg.
"The laws that we have achieved were thanks to the people, with that first march that took place in Congress, where
there were 350,000 people with a candle symbolizing life
. All those signatures of all those people who signed and that served as support because with That's why we could pressure Congress to deal with those laws," he explains.
That mobilization ended with Congress approving the modification of the Penal Code that allows, to this day, the addition of sentences of up to 50 years in prison.
In addition, the maximums and minimums for those who carry or steal using weapons increased.
The claim for Axel, in Plaza de Mayo.
Photo file AFP.
They also increased the penalty amounts for extortionate kidnappings and sexual crimes and limited the benefits of parole for crimes considered serious.
The package of laws received two questions: that it was approved "in a hurry" to respond to the social demand and that, behind the preparation of the project, was Roberto Durrieu, Blumberg's lawyer and former official of the military dictatorship.
a ritual
Juan Carlos Blumberg does not want to retire.
He says that he can "support" himself with his work and prefers "not to take money from retirees."
He wakes up at 5:45 and is divided between the factory and the Axel Blumberg Foundation.
He answers phone calls and arranges interviews.
But at night, when the house is silent and there is a while before dinner, Juan Carlos goes to his son's room.
She is detained: the faculty schedules, the made bed and the computer that is now a relic.
Axel's father turns her on, looks at her photo, and
talks to her, as if she were there, to tell her how her day was
.
Axel's room remains as it did 20 years ago.
Photo Maxi Failla.
"On his birthday I went to the cemetery, but in reality I go every week to visit him. Every night I go to his room, which is impeccable, just like when he was there. It
has been extraordinary being his dad
," he says.
And he closes: "The truth is that Axel was a very dear person, a great companion. The one who is very bad is the mother.
The mother never really got over this
. With the Foundation, helping people in some way, I get through it. But the mother... really terrible... she never, never could. One never can."
EMJ