The second day of the third oral trial for the crime of María Marta García Belsuncewhich occurred almost 20 years ago in the country Carmel de Pilar, began with the reading of the ruling that in 2016 acquitted the widower Carlos Carrascosa and will continue with the exposure by the prosecution of other procedural pieces, such as the conviction for robberies in the Federal Capital that the main defendant Nicolás Pachelo had in 2005 and the showing of the video of the autopsy.
The second day began after 11 o’clock before the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 4 of San Isidro and, despite his request not to be transferred from jail every day to go to the debate, with the presence again in the room de Pachelo (46), who, like last Wednesday, covered his face with a mask when he saw the photojournalists in the room.
At the start of the hearing, one of the fprosecutors who carry out the accusation, Andrés Quintanaannounced that it was going to be a day of reading and presentation of certain procedural pieces.
Then his colleague Patrick Ferrariintroduced a new approach by requesting the judges Federico Ecke, Osvaldo Rossi and Esteban Andrejin, the possibility that all the hearings can be transmitted through some digital platform, so that all the press, and not only the quotas that due to the capacity of the venue are limited, can have the possibility of covering the entire trial permanently.
One of the prosecution’s strategies will be to show that Pachelo has a criminal record and a repeated modus operandi.
The first thing that began to be read at the request of the prosecution was the ruling issued on December 20, 2016 by the Buenos Aires Court of Cassation that turned the case upside down when it reversed the conviction for aggravated homicide that weighed on Carrascosa, acquitted him and He allowed him to regain his freedom after spending seven years in prison.
After that, the prosecutors announced that the video of the autopsy performed on García Belsunce will be shown in the judicial morgue of the National Judicial Power, 36 days after his death, after his exhumation in the Recoleta cemetery and which revealed that it was not an accidental death in the bathtub, but a murder with six shots to the head.
The prosecutors also requested that the indictment of the case in which in 2005 he ended up sentenced in a shortened trial to three and a half years in prison for a series of seven robberies committed during 2003 in the houses of friends and acquaintances in Capital Federal, whose keys he stole to enter when they were not there.
One of the strategies of the prosecution will be to show that Pachelo has a criminal record and a repeated modus operandi that, according to what they intend to prove, also occurred on October 27, 2002 when, according to their hypothesis, he killed the 50-year-old sociologist when she discovered him stealing inside her house.
First day of the debate
The prosecution requested that instead of starting the trial for the crime of García Belsunce, that of the eight robberies and thefts for which Pachelo has been in preventive detention since 2018 -which will also be judged in this debate-, which was rejected. by the court.
The request to begin the trial of the robberies had already been rejected in preliminary hearings and is one of the conflicts that judges and prosecutors have been maintaining and that caused a series of recusal proposals and delays in the beginning of the debate.
As resolved, there will be a single trialbut first the witnesses linked to the case for the homicide of the sociologist in 2002 will be heard, then those related to the robberies that occurred between 2017 and 2018 and finally those of the defenses.
During the first day of the trial, the prosecution assured that Pachelo “is the murderer” and that he is going to prove it “in an incontrovertible and irrefutable way.”
For the prosecution, on October 27, 2002, María Marta arrived home unexpectedly and upon discovering that they were stealing, she confronted the thieves and ended up being killed with six bullets to the head.
In the presentation of the general guidelines and with a strong visual and scenographic impact, the Deputy Attorney General of San Isidro, Ferrari, placed six bullets one by one on a small table to enumerate the six “key” elements of the case. that, according to the hypothesis of the Public Ministry, will prove Pachelo’s guilt.
Apart from Pachelo -who is the only one who arrives imprisoned to the debate-, the Others accused in the crime of María Marta are former security guards Norberto Glennon (57) and José Ortiz (45).who today preferred not to enter the room, and are defended, the first by lawyers Sergio Loto and Agustín Palladino, and the second by official defenders María Ventresca and María Eugenia Nigro.
