After ignoring him throughout the hearing, the then Maldonado prosecutor, Juan Gómez, asked Guillermo Coppola if he had confused him with a journalist. Diego Maradona’s right-hand man, with a half smile on his face, told him no. That he found him similar to Inspector Columbo, the character of an investigator in a series from the 1960s. He was underestimated by all the criminals because of how misaligned and distracted he was, but —when the respondent least imagined it— he ended the investigation with some withering question which was only preceded by a “last, one little thing”.
“That’s when I started asking him tough questions. I don’t remember which ones, but very hard”, recalls Gómez in dialogue with The Observer. “Why such a thing? Why about another? Why? Why? Why?” she asked. “Because I lied,” Coppola replied. Those two words cost him a prosecution for the Maradona case, at the beginning of the year 2000.
Gómez, in fact, has been a court prosecutor for just over a year —Jorge Díaz resigned on October 5, 2021—. In that period, many things changed. He was losing political support and was left in the center of the scene in an uncomfortable position. Most of the ruling party would prefer his departure, but they are unable to gather the support of the Broad Front to name a successor or to create a triumvirate.
He talks about it with laughter and repeats: “The day I have to go, I’m going.” “Could it be that Jorge Díaz had an ancient knight’s cape that everyone was afraid of him. The situation —which generates discrepancies in the Prosecutor’s Office— was not born with me, but it is seen that I attract more public, ”he says and laughs again. But when asked why he thinks they criticize him so much, he responds in a tone that mixes irony and seriousness: “You can see they want me to leave.”
The issue sneaks up on those who come to visit him at his childhood home in La Palma, Rivera. They ask him with admiration how he is doing and, in some cases, regret the criticism. “Everything I do is for the people and for the institutions,” he repeats.
***
“Did you talk a lot on the phone?” is the first thing one of her daughters asks when they arrive at her house. He had not been back since before the pandemic and they —his wife, prosecutor Laura Bentos, and his two daughters— had been for a long time. His 3-year-old and 8-month-old grandson had never been there and Gomez was anxious all morning waiting for him to arrive.
Gómez and four of his six brothers are waiting at the house – one of them died in a tragic context and the other works in Montevideo. The prosecutor proudly recalls his humble origins and his sacrificial history. A mother who raised seven children and a rice farmer father, who died very young, in a house that had no electricity or running water. At the age of four he began to go off the list to the School 22 of La Palma, which this June celebrated its 100th anniversary. He finished the tasks quickly and they gave him more.
At the insistence of his father, who asked family friends for help, he attended high school in Tranqueras and high school in Rivera. During his time in Tranqueras, when he was 14 years old, he attended a bar at night. During the day he studied. His path in the Prosecutor’s Office began more than four decades ago, when he did not have money to continue at university and the father of a friend suggested he start in the Public Ministry as an administrative officer.
Before, he had thought of studying medicine, in gratitude to those who saved his life as a child, but blood impressed him a lot and he had a better facility for letters. Gómez thought three times that he was going to die. The first time, when I was seven years old. He ran to play and was black. They discovered a heart murmur that brought him to Montevideo, where he pretended to be asleep and listened as the doctor told his mother that if he was not operated on he was going to die and that, even if he was operated on, the possibility of his surviving was not clear. . As an adult, he had peritonitis that almost killed him and a cardiovascular accident that compromised part of his memory.
With his brothers, he exchanges in a Spanish mixed with Portuguese about some clothes that he brought so that they can take them to whoever needs them. Some work in the fields, but one of them, Milton Gomez, was mayor of Tranqueras for the Colorado Party’s 2000 list for two terms (2010-2020). “A true public servant,” sums up the prosecutor, who proudly points to the square that was built during his term. In 2015, as mayor, Milton chained himself to a billboard on Route 30 to demand that it be repaired.
***
Graciela Bianchi called him “good grandfather” more than once. But it was not with that attitude that he was able to convict one of the most dangerous prisoners in Uruguay, the Peñarol prisoner Erwin “Coco” Parentini, nor to request the prosecution of the then Minister of Economy, Fernando Lorenzo, and the president of the Bank. Republic, Fernando Calloia.
“When I have to be firm, I am,” Gómez warns and insists that he makes no effort to hide that facet. Parentini was convinced that she was not going to testify before him, so he came in and told her that if she did not want to testify, he would just read her the questions and leave because he had a hearing to get to. In the midst of those questions, he raised his eyes and looked at him.
He was putting a foot on the other side of the door, Parentini shouted that he wanted to talk to him. But Gómez told him no, that he was in a hurry and that if he wanted to talk to him first he had to agree with his lawyer. “Parentini respected me”, he valued. Shortly thereafter he admitted being the mastermind behind the murder of Nacional fan Lucas Langhain, for which he was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Paula Ojeda
The court prosecutor, Juan Gómez, in his childhood home in La Palma (Rivera)
The lawyers who worked with him remember that, since most of the cases he had were with the code of the previous criminal procedure, where the judge had the leading role and the prosecutor was relegated, he used that in his favor. He stayed to one side, silent and seeming distracted, until in the end —with all the information he had gathered in long hours of work— he caught the defendant unawares and obtained crucial data.
“I never hid anything from them, that’s what I have and for what I think they respect me. I always worked a lot and I’m very linear. Is there proof? Yes or no. If it is yes, it is yes and if it is no, it is no. So there are no surprises there, ”she summarizes.
With that attitude, he led the most notorious investigations of the last 20 years. From the one that put the triple murderer Pablo Goncálvez behind bars, to that of Natalia Martínez —murdered in Piriápolis in 2007—, that of Ana Paula Graña —disappeared in Punta del Este in 2000— and the rape and murder of the girl Brissa Gonzalez. The latter, recalls his wife, “counts him among the lost.” Ana Paula’s body never appeared and neither did her aggressors.
Bentos, who has been married to him for more than 30 years, recalls two others that were very difficult. The first was that of the six-year-old girl Camila Chagas in Rivera. She had gone to buy an ice cream half a block away and disappeared. A few days later they found her body in a garbage bag in a ditch a few meters away. She had been raped and murdered by several men, only one of whom could be identified. She “she was the same age as Josefina —one of their daughters— and she looked alike physically. That killed him,” he says.
From that case that marked him with fire in 1998, prosecutor Gómez remembers how he had to deny a father to embrace his daughter’s body. He had requested that the Technical Police come from Montevideo to examine the body and it had to remain intact. “I asked him for a little patience and he pretended to hit me, but he looked me in the eye and we sat next to each other, without speaking for half an hour. Then I treated him to a cigarette and he passed by”, he recalls. The skills were important to be able to catch one of his murderers.
The other case that his wife remembers as a tough one was the prosecution by Pluna. “No one said anything to him, but sometimes he is worse, what he had in his hands was very strong,” she says. But she didn’t hesitate, and she prosecuted Calloia and Lorenzo. He, laughing, says: “People told the truth, that I’m not pretty.” That was in reference to the criticism she received. “They said that and that it was a donkey,” she adds. In July 2021, when he was already an assistant court prosecutor, the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed the conviction of both.
***
Paula Ojeda
The court prosecutor, Juan Gómez, in his childhood school in La Palma (Rivera)
When he rummages through his pocket, it’s usually to get out his cell phone. In the Prosecutor’s Office they laugh that he attends to everyone and that he gives an appointment to practically anyone. Try to accommodate them all. But this Thursday, he rummaged through his pocket for a handkerchief. He needed to wipe his face after breaking down in tears. At the same time, he received the hug of his grandson.
That happened in front of his town neighbors and former classmates, who greeted him practically like a celebrity at the school where he began his studies. While his wife —who looked at him with tears in her eyes— and his daughters applauded him in the front row, he insisted to the children on the importance of studying.
“Sometimes it is hard to leave the family nucleus where one is used to feeling the love of their parents and friends, but it is necessary for children to know that with effort they can get there and can achieve a lot. I say that the study equals. I proudly say that I am from a poor family, but when I arrived in Montevideo I had the opportunity that, with the knowledge and the effort, with the work, I felt equal to other people who had a different economic condition, another origin”, counted.
Behind him his brothers were looking at him and, ahead, he could see the patio full of people listening to him, with the riverside mountains in the background. “When you see these trees, this green… I gathered forces to continue fighting for a long time and continue helping if I can with my presence,” he synthesized.
***
In April 2021, he assumed the position of deputy court prosecutor and in October of that year he had to take the helm of the Attorney General’s Office after the resignation of Jorge Díaz, a man with a strong imprint who was feared, hated and loved behind closed doors. of the Public Ministry. The imprint of his successor is, in the words of the sources consulted, serving everyone. Even relatives of victims of cases he treated throughout his career.
In dialogue with The Observer, a prosecutor illustrated it with an example: Gómez had removed from his team a worker who was indispensable to the official. “If it was Díaz, he was going to tell me that he fix me as best he could and he would have cut off my phone. Since it was Gómez, I got excited and called, I explained that he was desperate, ”he recounted. A few days later, Gómez revoked the resolution he had taken.
n this year he says he has been concerned with insisting on training and keeping the scheme running. The Observer He consulted him about his last case in the Homicide Prosecutor’s Office —where he was until he became assistant prosecutor— and, despite his very good memory, he did not remember it. “I didn’t take it as anything special because I thought maybe he was going to come back… Maybe naively,” he said.
— What would happen to you if you were not a court prosecutor now and you had to go, after almost a year and a half, to a homicide crime scene?
— Ah… I would be happy with life! (pauses) Except for the fatality of the others’ deaths.
