Guatire October 3, 1996 the truck was driven to the edge of the pit in the garbage dump and its driver, an Italian with a face carved by alcohol, descended with all the speed that allowed him his sixty years; He crossed the cloud of flies undaunted and before removing the padlocks from the cellar he made sure no one was nearby.
He stared darkly at the trickle of blood escaping from the stirrup and climbed to get the load he had brought: 25 black poly bags.
The whole operation was followed at a distance by a group of rags that had expressly prohibited access to that area. The landfill administrators were alleging that the waste stored there was highly toxic; but as always, the ban did nothing but accentuate curiosity; so the "zamuros," as they were called, awaited an opportunity to approach and check those bags but every time they tried they were repelled.
The mysterious cargo, always brought by the Italian, began to arrive a month ago and once it was thrown into the pit a machinist covered it with dirt without loss of time. The maneuver was executed with military punctuality; but that October 3 the driver was delayed and the tractor driver, believing that he was not coming, went out to eat; what complicated things because the Italian, half indolent as he was, completed his task and left the landfill leaving the field open to the destitute.
Adults and children ran to the pit and although they had the steely character of everyday violence, they could not help but recoil from the macabre spectacle that was offered to them; hands, arms, legs and skulls swam in a bloody cream inside each lump. A cry of horror ignited the alarms and the sky over that point was covered with hungry birds of prey
Those dead do not pay for them ...
Two hours later the morbid influence of death gathered a hundred curious people, who were difficult to keep behind the security tape. Scientists of the Judicial Technical Police evaluated the finding while Alberto Ramírez, head of homicides, made quick statements. Until that moment it was known that the bags, with human remains and surgical material, were taken to that place by the driver of a cava truck identified with the number 171 and that the bodies had been dissected by expert hands, which led to a First hypothesis: Illegal practice of medicine for organ trade. A somewhat astonishing thesis, since it involved the participation of surgeons possibly employed in a hospital or private clinic. Was there in the city a diabolical network dedicated to murder with such an abject end?
Separately in a corner, Manuel Ramírez Ledezma, Operations Manager of Fospuca, denied that his company owned a truck registered with the number 171; he repeated stubbornly that the nomenclature of all his vehicles always started with the number five.
Near him was Carmen Cuevas, mayor of the Zamora Municipality, who was very skeptical of the situation as "very irregular".
When the review and quantification of the remains culminated, pathologist Deysi Cañizales, gave a first report. There were 9 skulls, 8 legs, a similar number of arms, 10 fetuses quartered, a box of surgical material, a lot of bloodied gloves and two bags full of viscera. A globulin package sported a label from the University Clinical Hospital.
After a while Florencio García, Deputy Director of the PTJ, declared to the press: "We are in the presence of a terrible crime, because the regulations establish that unclaimed corpses should be sent by hospitals and clinics to the Division. of Legal Medicine for the forensic examination and in no case dismembered, much less thrown in a dumpster. »He finally assured that the investigations would be carried out quickly. Two days later the excavations and the discovery of mutilated bodies followed; the case was taken by Dr. Olimpia Suárez, judge of the Seventh Criminal Court and assigned by the Public Ministry to Victor Gamero, fourth state prosecutor Miranda.
On October 5, things were clearer; the biological material was of people who in life donated their bodies to the Central University of Venezuela for scientific purposes and the surgical one came from the Clinic; both institutions signed a contract with Fospuca so that it would have everything under a strict protocol whose final phase was cremation.
When the company was asked to explain why the debris ended in a sanitary landfill, the company alleged that it had damaged ovens. The outraged society demanded punishment; it was an affront to human dignity and a threat to public health.
The Human Rights sub-commission of the National Congress promised to investigate, the Prosecutor's Office swore to pay those responsible and the police announced possible arrests. In the end it was only ruled that there was "administrative responsibility" on the part of Fospuca, something that the public did not know what was eaten.
On Tuesday, October 8, 419 kilograms of organic matter were moved from the Bello Monte morgue to the crematoriums on Calle Zea in Coche, where they would end their dark itinerary.
The dismembered of Catia
Incinerated the remains was terminated this ominous chapter of the black chronicle; however the same morning of the day of the cremation, the neighbors of the street El Diamante in Catia notified the police of a new find. This time it was a head and a pair of hands, which wrapped in a savanna rested half-burned in a garbage container. The popular imagination could not avoid relating this to the corpses of Guatire, especially due to the fact that the container belonged to Fospuca.
Due to the coincidences, Alberto Ramírez took charge of this new scene; He soon ruled out possible links between the previous case and this one because it could easily be seen that the pieces found here had been dismembered with a blunt-cutting object, possibly a machete or butcher's ax. On the other hand, the death date was very recent, no more than 24 hours. - Nothing to do, - said Ramírez to his collaborators - here we are before something else -.
Near the savannahs that were used as a wrapper, a cheap lighter was found, which made it presume that the one who abandoned the remains tried to burn them on the spot, only that to their bad luck the fire quickly died down. Head and hands belonged to a man who was 30 years old, with white skin and blond hair; on a stairway that communicated with the central area of January 23 there were traces of blood, so this person must have been brought by one of the adjacent streets; the transfer, according to data collected among the neighbors, had to be done after midnight because the garbage was always collected before that time.
A special investigative team assigned to the Homicide Division revealed the identity of the victim in record time; His name was Antonio Dos Santos.
At the time of his murder Antonio Dos Santos was 35 years old, twelve of whom he spent in Venezuela; He was a native of the town of Cama de Lobo, on the island of Madeira, Portugal, from where he came with two of his brothers to try their luck. Antonio's commercial career began with a modest supply and ended up in a more lucrative branch: bars of prostitutes. The first of them had him with a partner on Baralt Avenue until with more money he could mount one exclusively his own. He installed it in front of Plaza Sucre in Catia and called it "El Batacazo"; There were about 80 women working there every night, an amount that could increase on weekends.
In that environment he found Nataly Martinez, a woman with voluptuous lips and a skeptical look; Those who knew them say that Dos Santos discovered her in Yaracuy; Nataly, who at that time was 15 years old, agreed to travel to Caracas with the man she did not know, believing in the promise of a bright future. On the first night that she spent in the city, her virginity was auctioned, leaving her as one of the nightclub's staff, until in 1988 the Portuguese succumbed to her charms and married her. The couple settled on the third floor of the Candela building located on Sol Street in Madrid, Los Flores de Catia, where they had three children. Nataly divided her time between housework and hairdressing, trade more in harmony with her new status.
According to Antonio's relatives later, the couple was never happy; on the contrary, the years in common were a succession of fights each one more violent than the other. In one of them the woman, attacked by jealousy, trashed the counter of the bar cleanly and it is that Antonio did not lose the love of flirting with the girls who worked for him. The most recent of his conquests was an attractive Barinese woman whom they called Erika and who made Nataly swallow thick.
On the morning of October 7, Antonio Dos Santos got up early, drank a cup of coffee quickly and went to do what he did every Monday, square off the weekend income. Near midday he announced with a growl that he went out to eat. Domingo Navas, maintenance worker of "El Batacazo", watched him go through the door. He was the last of his employees to see him alive.
At four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day Nataly Martínez arrived at the bar full of bags, she came from the market, when her husband was not there, he told her that he would take the fruits because it was the only thing he could not buy. That night the vehicle of Antonio was seen circulating by the real street of The Flowers; it was carried by two men, nobody paid special attention to that fact. The next morning he appeared parked in front of the Candela building. Fifty meters away, the owner's head and hands rested in a container.
Sea of hypothesis
Hours later when Nataly Martínez went through "El Batacazo" he was told that the PTJ had taken Domingo Navas. An alarm lightning, barely perceptible, appeared in his face when he asked why. Since no one knew the reasons for the arrest, the woman went to the police station in the West where she did not receive an answer either. He decided to return to the bar because Dos Santos did not show up and someone had to take care of the business. At ten o'clock at night a police commission went to notify her that her husband had been murdered. The information was scant, they did not go into detail.
The solution to this crime was not an easy task, because around it a whole carousel of possible murderers revolved. The first place on the wheel was occupied by a man nicknamed the Gago, who threatened Dos Santos with death for money he owed him and refused to pay; a little further Antonio Barvayo Correia appeared, a countryman and former partner of the victim requested in Portugal for homicide and in Spain for drug trafficking, a few months before he escaped from a prison in Madrid and according to Interpol could be hidden in Venezuela; the third horse was mounted by the paleros because, as it turned out, Antonio Dos Santos was a fanatical believer in the Palo Mayombe, a branch of santería whose ceremonies use human remains, and the way his body was cut off attracted attention; Finally, it was not ruled out that the authorship was between one of his lovers or even his wife.
Four hypotheses were then handled: revenge for debts, vendetta among drug traffickers, ritual death and crime of passion.
Irma Álvarez, attorney for Dos Santos, also revealed that her client was facing a lawsuit in court filed by innkeepers who claimed to charge six million bolivares in social benefits; According to the lawyer, they were casual workers without a working relationship with the employer, therefore they were not entitled to this benefit. The figure by then was very respectable and the certain possibility of not charging it could configure in those ladies a picture of frustration that made them think about the revenge.
Domingo Navas was released after making a statement, he was considered important for being the last one to see his boss alive. On October 10 the identity of the dismembered was revealed and by then the hypotheses with more force were those of ritual death and crime of passion. Regarding the first, Emperatriz López, a cleaning lady at the bar, was surprised and even said that although Antonio Dos Santos was a Santería believer, he never practiced satanic rites. «As everyone had an altar with saints to whom I put candles and flowers, but nothing more».
In relation to the second thesis, all the women of "El Batacazo" were mentioned; 30 of them had already gone through PTJ, only one refused to go: Erika.
That attitude attracted attention to her because the relationship that bound her to the victim was well known; In fact, according to the testimony of Álvaro de Sousa, Antonio's friend, he had been meeting with the girl on Sunday, October 6 at the La Rinconada racecourse but when he arrived he had already retired. On Friday 11 Erika repeated that she would not testify, so Nataly, visibly displeased, warned her that she had her file and that she had already given her ID number and address in Barinas to the police. The warning took effect because the next day the lover of Dos Santos joined the group of ficheras who appeared before the authorities. Nataly, on the other hand, was always in the sights of the investigators who knew of the constant fights that the couple carried out, in addition to the extremely violent character of the widow.
To complete the picture appeared Carmen Mejías, another of the bar's waitresses, who claimed to have a daughter of the deceased, a 5-year-old girl named Genesis.
Nataly Martinez always said that the last time she saw her husband was on the morning of Monday 7, when he went out to count the income of the weekend and that he had been told never reached the bar; this version contradicted that given by Domingo Navas who saw him arrive and remain in the business until shortly before noon. Nor did she show any surprise at the fact that her husband did not return home that night, as he had the habit of spending the night in the bar.
The forensic expertise revealed that Antonio Dos Santos had died of a shot that entered through his right eye and then was cut by several people, the latter was determined by the way in which the cuts were made. Alberto Ramírez, Homicide chief said that only the head and hands were held and that a team was looking for the rest of the body; He took the opportunity to clarify that although they worked on all the hypotheses, they had not ruled out either Erika or the widow. On Sunday, October 13, a leg was found in the La Línea ravine, whose channel ran behind the Los Flores judicial checkpoint; immediately a tracking was activated that culminated in the area of El Encantado in Petare without positive results.
Now it was thought that the murder could have been committed in one of the ranches located on the bank of the ravine, and towards that the investigations in which the Civil Guard of Spain collaborated, since it had been determined that several people linked to Dos Santos were serving sentences in that country for drug trafficking. When the vendetta thesis gained strength, the search for Antonio Barvayo Correia intensified, a subject who worked with the victim until January 1993, when he was arrested at the Barajas airport with two kilos of cocaine. Five months ago, exactly on May 17, 1996, Barvayo managed to escape from the now disappeared Carabanchel prison and it was believed that he could be hiding in Venezuela, because his wife and children were still here.
Several days later they were summoned to declare two officers of the Metropolitan Police, assigned to zone 9, they were the Commissioner Franklin Molina Chirinos of the Division of Community Action and the Inspector Amador Aldana, both friends of Antonio Dos Santos whom he saw with frequency in "El Batacazo". By now things had become so stuffed that there was no way to untangle the ball; none of the hypotheses gave light or could be discarded; The only sure thing was that the perpetrators were within the intimate circle of the deceased, which explained the appearance of the metropolitans. Nataly accused Erika, but she was one of the most suspicious for the police; only that he could never be linked to the murder. The case of the dismembered of Catia happened to be another one of the crabs of the PTJ.
Nataly Martínez was under presentation for a year, a regime that fulfilled fully. After the death of her husband she worked as a hairdresser in different beauty salons; María Guerra, owner of one of these sites, remembered her as an efficient and punctual but excessively conflicted employee. "She was an excellent employee but very jealous with her clients. Shortly after being in my business, she began to make life impossible for her companions, who did not even allow them to attend to people who came to the store. That's why I had to fire her, after that she called me every day threatening to make me pay for having thrown her away, she boasted of being an expert in black magic. Some of her classmates feared him and he was one of those people who kill with their eyes ».
After four years he inherited the assets of Antonio Dos Santos, which allowed him to set up his own hairdressing salon. As part of the legacy he received the apartment that cohabited with the deceased; There he installed his new partner, a young man with a robust build, a plump face and a childlike look named José Gregorio Martínez Loreto.
"Candela" building crime scene
Nataly and Jose Gregorio
There are loves that kill
Two years after inheriting Nataly was once again alone; his relationship with Martinez Loreto turned out to be as stormy as the one he had with Dos Santos. Violent disputes were undermining the affections until the separation came; it was never known who left who; some neighbors said that Martinez, tired of so much fighting, left Nataly and this, making fun of that version, apostille that it was she who left José Gregorio immature and controlling.
However, the sexual tension was not extinguished. They continued to see each other occasionally in discreet little hotels until one bad day the man decided to end the affair. Nataly pretended not to take it the wrong way, she only asked for a final meeting - We deserve a good farewell - she observed fussy. He did not have the heart to refuse. They were left to meet at a hotel in Las Mayas for goodbye.
On Sunday, November 9, 2003, Caracas woke up cloudy, José Gregorio Martínez left the house early; He told a friend he found on the boulevard of Propatria that he was going to collect money. That day he spent as any other, doing what he always did; those who saw him remember him smiling and affable. At nightfall he prepared to go to the appointment, arrived at Las Mayas at the appointed time and went up to the room with his ex. I expected to have a good time because Nataly had never been a bad bed; his defect was in that hurricane character against which he could not even the most painted. There were times when he threatened to kill him; José Gregorio, although he took the threats as mere bravado, came to discuss them with relatives, who judiciously advised him to stay away from that woman.
Upstairs began a sexual game of experienced caresses, prudent kisses, choppy laughter, swollen nipples, tongue clicks against the aroused skin and pheromones that warmed the piece inviting intercourse. When the male was in ecstasy, Nataly asked him with an affectionate voice to remove the sheets - It's just that I'm sorry to make love about something that everyone uses - Burning as he was, the man hurried to obey by tearing off the sheets and throwing them away. floor, in that maneuver was for a moment with his back to the woman. The plate was served.
A corpse in Los Flores
On the morning of Monday, November 10, Carmen Perozo, a neighbor of Nataly Martínez, noticed an unusual movement in front of her house. Fifty curious people crowded around a Ford Cougar parked at the edge of the sidewalk. Police officers insisted on maintaining order and preserving the place because inside that vehicle you could see the inert body of a man, lying on the back seat. The woman joined the group just as someone exclaimed: "Damn, but it's José Gregorio, the husband of the hairdresser!"
The news spread like a flash of lightning through Sol Street in Madrid. When several of the people came to look for Nataly, they did not find her at home. CICPC * experts took care of the scene; Although the subject seemed to have bled both his clothes and the car were clean, the answer to this would be the forensic doctor: the body had 27 stab wounds, but each had been carefully covered with gauze and adhesives; the murderer, showing the utmost coldness, took the time necessary to avoid leaving traces in the transfer of his victim.
The attack had been brutal; clearly moved by hatred or revenge, the weapon used could be a long-bladed scissors, of those used in hairdressing; the death date was ten hours.
Nataly Martinez returned home on Tuesday, to be notified of the death of his ex broke to mourn inconsolable; such was the affliction that his neighbors did not come to distrust. Who put it under the magnifying glass was the commissioner Ramón Torcat; and is that just dig in the case found that several times threatened to kill Martinez Loreto. He also knew that she was a violent woman, very capable of a volcanic reaction and checking the system found that 7 years ago she was involved in a similar event; in which although nothing could be proved, it was submitted to the court; she was also a hairdresser and the murder weapon had been a scissors of her trade.
However, it would be months before they could gather enough elements of conviction to stop it. On Tuesday, January 27, officers from the West Police Station went to Nataly's hairdressing salon, located in Lídice, with an arrest warrant issued by the 23rd Control Court. In the interrogation she again denied that she was a murderer - I am the one who most regrets the death of José Gregorio - exclaimed bathed in tears to the skeptical bloodhounds of the CICPC; It seemed difficult to break that shell of cynicism but the intelligent pressure exerted by his interrogators led her to confession; When he finally spoke the words flowed like a river.
The widow butcher
The media, prodigal in nicknames, immediately committed to Martinez the one of the Picamaridos, with him he would enter the pantheon of "próceres" of the Venezuelan police chronicle. In the statement he gave to the Court on the day of his arrest, he described how he carried out the two crimes.
In 1996, with 8 years of marriage, she decided to kill her husband. She was tired of his fantasies with how many women were new to the "El Batacazo" ficheras. By that time he had become a lover of Alexis González Escobar, a young man who lived in the adjoining apartment. Nataly who did not admit infidelities enjoyed being an adulteress; On one occasion he told Maria Guerra that she was capable of being unfaithful to her husband, but that she would not know that "he would build horns for her, because he would take revenge."
Calculator prepared the ground, began to say to the four winds that Dos Santos mistreated her, that she mocked her and disrespected her children; that he was a violent man capable of hitting her mercilessly when he got drunk. With that story he wrapped his lover and his brother, Wilmer González. On the night of October 7, Nataly confronted Dos Santos, angrily rebuking her relationship with Erika. "Yesterday you were going to see her at the racecourse," the man boredly dismissed the accusation. When his wife finished reproaching him he went to sleep unsuspecting, without imagining that it was marked.
Nataly waited until he was well asleep, in his hands he held a revolver that Dos Santos himself had bought when the Gago threatened him with death. He aimed the gun at the head and in cold blood pulled the trigger, drowning the rumble with a pillow. Immediately after, she went out to look for the Gonzalez brothers who, astonished, heard her confess the crime; He told them that he had been forced to do so, because they argued and Antonio was more aggressive than ever. "I thought he was going to kill me and I reacted in self-defense." She skillfully convinced them to make the worst decision of their lives: to help her get rid of the body.
They took the body to the kitchen and with a sharp knife began to cut it; in the ground carefully covered with plastics, no trace was left; at the end they put the remains in polyethylene bags that the Gonzalez would throw thrown into the Guaire River; They took the keys to the car and went down to the street. Put the load in the trunk, the brothers left to finish their macabre task. Nataly from the sidewalk raised her eyes furtively towards the neighboring windows and with firm step she returned home; a small drizzle was beginning to fall.
When he reached the top, he cursed, and with haste forgot to pocket his head and hands. Without losing the aplomb he wrapped everything in a sheet, took another bag and went down; It was after midnight when he threw the package into the container and set it on fire. Confident in having covered any trace, she walked away.
The Gonzalez returned a while later, who saw them aboard that car did not imagine what they were doing; They parked in front of the building and went up. At that moment the drizzle turned into a torrential downpour that ended up extinguishing the flames, the noose had remained around the neck of those involved, it was only a matter of time before it closed.
In the following months the nerves of the widow butcher had a difficult test, she knew that she was the main suspect, she saw him in the skeptical look of her interrogators, she smelled him in the trick questions that they asked her. It represented the role of the inconsolable widow unable to fit the blow that had given her life. He showed up at the police station, tearful and with the baby in his arms, to ask about the investigations; as an expert in drama, she pretended to be stupid; sometimes he would protest impatiently because the murderers of his beloved husband went unpunished. She swallowed thick saliva when the experts entered her house with the intention of subjecting her to a sweep with luminol; He prayed that not a drop of blood had leaked to the floor. He did everything he could to incriminate Erika and maintained the best relations with her husband's relatives. At the end with a stoic gesture and feigning indignation, she accepted the decision of the court to submit her for one year to the filing regime.
After the trance, she regained her self-confidence; the arrogance that always nourishes the soul of the criminals puffed her up to the point of believing herself invincible. He wandered through life like the lone wolf who, far from his fellows, throws threatening grunts at anyone who dares to trespass his domain. Iván Fontulbo, one of her clients, would remember her as a very flirtatious woman who liked to be surrounded by men and who avoided friendship with women. With them he felt like a fish in water, with these he fought and established limits.
One year after becoming a widow, he met José Gregorio and took it for himself. The first months were idyll until the natural friction of coexistence ended up bored. On one occasion he called it childish, obsessive and controlling. Fights and reconciliations happened until one day, the young man had the bad idea of introducing him to his brother. Michelangelo, that was his name, had no qualms about letting go of him as he kissed the hand of his sister-in-law: "This is a lot of women for you." A glint of vanity showed in Nataly's eyes that she soon slept with her new admirer.
In her confession she revealed that she killed her ex because she decided to abandon her and that had hurt her. On the night of the meeting he was careful not to show his cards, he was followed by sexual romp until he achieved total docility; with a captivating look he asked her to remove the sheets and when the victim prepared to fulfill his wishes, he rammed wildly with the scissors that he had already prepared. The man was lying on the bed with 27 holes in his humanity; When she saw that she was no longer breathing, she took out gauze and adhesive to cover the wounds, lowered the body and turned the mattress, when she finished rearranging the sheets, she scanned the room with a sharp and penetrating look, looking for some detail that could betray her. He dialed Michelangelo's cell phone number informing him that he could come. Yes, he had managed to convince him of the need to take his own brother out of circulation and the poor devil, imbued with the sex of that woman, agreed to play a role in the crime; I would help her get the corpse out of the hotel.
With awkwardness characteristic of a bufonesco number, they decided to leave the dead man in the street where his murderer lived. This time it would not be difficult for the investigators to tie the loose ends until a court ordered their arrest.
Nataly was charged with the crime of intentional homicide to the detriment of her former partner; On January 29, 2004, she entered the Los Teques women's prison. On February 4, the same court issued arrest warrants for Alexis Marvin González Escobar, Wilmer González Escobar and Miguel Ángel Loreto Martínez, the latter was arrested in Catia; while Alexis, the former lover of the black widow, turned himself in to the prosecution when he learned that he was being sought, his brother put his feet to powder.
On January 5, 2005 Judge Carmen Arocha, decided to sentence her for homicide qualified as a determiner, which carried the maximum penalty, only that the defendant seeing the mountain of evidence, testimonies and expert opinions decided to admit the facts to get a substantial reduction of the penalty.
Story taken from newspapers LAST NEWS, THE UNIVERSAL, CHRONICLES
Photographs taken of the latest news and the universal