"
Natalia Sandberg the truth is on our nightstand. She is one of the beings of light that is on the nightstand." Adriana Belmonte (56), along with her husband, Diego Chomnalez (65), has eternal gratitude to the geneticist who made it possible for the crime of her daughter,
Lola Luna Chomnalez,
not to go unpunished.
The file of the 15-year-old Argentine girl, who was murdered in December 2014 while spending the summer on the Uruguayan beach of Barra de Valizas, was navigating stagnation and leading to impunity.
However, in late 2021, Sandberg got it to have a radical twist based on
a genetic clue
.
It was when the Scientific Police contacted the authorities of the Investigation Directorate of the department of Rocha, to which the beach where the crime occurred belongs, to inform them that from DNA similar to that found in Lola's backpack they could reach to one of the alleged murderers.
For that instance, the genetic traces found at the crime scene
had already been compared hundreds of times
with the Ministry of the Interior database that has the DNA of those detained in the country without yielding any clues.
However, one woman suggested deepening the DNA analysis and working on the maternal and paternal lines separately. That woman was
Natalia Sandberg (40)
, in charge of the National Registry of Genetic Fingerprints of the National Directorate of Scientific Police of the Uruguayan Ministry of the Interior.
This is how they reached a man who had been detained since 2015, the half-brother of
Leonardo David Sena (42)
, the alleged perpetrator of the Lola crime.
After contacting the detainee, the police reached mother Sena, who said she had had 11 children, one of whom had been given up for adoption 18 days after birth.
Curiously, it was a robbery complaint filed by Sena that made it possible to locate him and reveal details of his record of rape and private violence, the investigators explained.
On May 18, 2022, Justice ordered the search of his house and although the suspect refused to perform the DNA test, the police took a toothbrush and compared it with the genetic samples.
The analyzes ended up confirming
Sena's relationship with the traces found in Lola's backpack
and that is why her arrest was subsequently ordered.
This Wednesday, the Uruguayan Justice sentenced him to 27 and a half years in prison for the femicide.
What geneticist Natalia Sandberg said
"My dream will always be to look parents in the face and tell them that we left everything behind," said the geneticist when her key intervention emerged.
Sandberg also maintained: "
My motivation was family
. Seeing the case moved me a lot. It was my driving force to find a way around that software. With regular work it was never going to arise, because it was not in the database." , he said.
In a press conference, he stated "We went through a lot of frustrations as a work team. But we never gave up."
And he pointed out that the work was "total secrecy; the idea was not to stir up anyone, a silent work" between the Scientific Police, the judge and the investigators.
The progress of the investigation into Lola's crime brought a little peace to the teenager's parents, who did not hesitate to affirm that with the capture of Sena and the previous arrest of the car attendant
Ángel "Cachila" Moreira
(sentenced to 8 years as an accessory ) were in front of the murderer and the accessory.
The continuous courses of updates that the woman received from the FBI and the new uses that the specialist found for software were considered key to finding the alleged murderer.
The crime of Lola Luna Chomnalez
On Saturday, December 27, 2014, Lola traveled to Barra de Valizas and stayed at the house of her godmother, Claudia Fernández, who was with her husband and son. The next day, the teenager went for a walk on the beach and disappeared. Only on the 30th she was found murdered about four kilometers from the property, in some dunes.
The body was half buried in the sand, about 200 meters from the shore, in an area of bushes on the beach. In that scenario, the Scientific Police also found the backpack under the sand. On a towel and on Lola's ID, the technicians found blood stains, which were later determined to be the DNA belonging to a man.
Sandberg compared the sample with the data bank of the National Registry of Genetic Fingerprints, where the DNA of all people who have a criminal record is found, and the result was negative.
Although this person had committed crimes in 2003 (personal injuries) and in 2009 (rape of a young woman in La Paloma), his fingerprints were not in the Scientific Police database because it was created in 2012.
However,
the geneticist did not give up
and began to review similar cases that occurred in other countries. This is how the idea "follow the DNA trail through the patrilineal line" arose.
But given the lack of a match with the DNA found on the towel and on Lola's ID, Sandberg continued with "the matriline" and it was discovered that the DNA of Lola's alleged attacker
matched that of a prisoner through a link by the maternal side
.
Then the Scientific Police managed to locate the mother of that prisoner and, later, Justice authorized the extraction of a saliva sample from the woman. Thus, it was determined that the detainee was the half-brother of the person who had manipulated Lola's objects.
In this way, Leonardo David Sena was reached, who had a history of rape. Then the Rocha judge, Juan Giménez, ordered his arrest and ordered his prosecution when the studies determined that a sample from Sena coincided with the one found on Lola's towel. Now, with his conviction, a painful stage for the teenager's family comes to an end.
EMJ