A geneticist affirmed this Wednesday in the third trial for the crime of María Marta García Belsunce that “it is not known if the stains and the traces can be linked to the fact”, when referring to the traces of blood from two men and a woman raised on the upper floor of the victim’s house at country Carmel in 2002.
The defense of Nicolás Pachelo (46) presented as a witness at the beginning of the 32nd hearing the geneticist María Mercedes Lojo, who was one of those in charge of analyzing the blood samples taken, as she herself clarified, “in the place of the fact and not at the scene of the crime”.
Before his statement, at the request of the defense attorneys Raquel Pérez Iglesias and Marcelo Rodríguez Jordán, a video made by Fernando Díaz Cantón, ex-lawyer of the widower Carlos Carrascosa, was shown, where se observes the victim’s home and the places where the traces of blood were removed with which the DNAs were made.
“It is not known if the stains and footprints may be linked to the event,” said Lojo, who described as “unprecedented” his experience linked to the analysis of 76 traces raised and that were presented between January and February 2003.
“Between February and March 2003 we were able to carry out the comparison and it was delayed. In December 2003 samples were taken from Pachelo and Glennon (Noberto, a former security guard accused of the crime). In 2006 it was completed with Carrascosa and in 2007 with the family Nothing like this had ever happened to me, such a tenacious supervision”
Lojo, current coordinator of the Provincial Bank of Genetic Traces and who declared through the virtual platform “Google Meet”, argued that “never waited so long to do the errands”, corresponding to the comparison of the traces raised with the DNA of the people related to crime investigation.
“Between February and March 2003 we were able to carry out the comparison and it was delayed. In December 2003 samples were taken from Pachelo and Glennon (Noberto, a former security guard accused of the crime). In 2006 it was completed with Carrascosa and in 2007 with the family . Nothing like this had ever happened to me, such a tenacious supervision“, he recalled.
The geneticist, former head of the DNA laboratory of the Expert Advice of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court, clarified that “the objective of the DNA expertise is to identify which individual it corresponds to and the only way is to compare it with another sample from another identified individual.”
Lojo confirmed that in some traces collected in the Carmel house, genetic profiles of at least two men and one woman who is not the victim were found. and that the traces were obtained by scraping and by swabs.
“I am not aware that the material was sterile. Of course there may be contamination. The biological trace is not necessarily linked to the crime, the important thing is to find that trace that leads us to the author of the act or to clarify the act, but there may be traces before or after it,” he said.
“The important thing is to find that trace that leads us to the author of the act or clarify the fact, but there may be traces before or after it”
Before giving the floor to the accusing party, Lojo added that “the scene and the body tell the story, that is why the reserve is important. Here people were cleaned and circulated.”
After the statement of the defense witness, the prosecutor Patricio Ferrari took the floor and said: “Today another myth ended for us,” and he referred to the video shown minutes before.
“The samples were categorical. To say that it was three years before, after the wake, at the scene of the crime, and Pachelo says that it could have been Carrascosa cutting herself or the dog in heat. Even Pachelo recognizes it. For me, he is totally exhausted,” he said. .
Ferrari argued about a listening to Pachelo reproduced last week in which the main accused and a man -whose identity was not disclosed-, spoke after the DNA results.
“That blood that is there, I don’t know whose the hell it’s going to be. It’s going to be from someone who put it on him, or me, or Belsunce or I don’t know who the hell. Or Carrascosa’s own blood, but not because his wife hurt him when he was killing her, but because the guy must have cut himself shaving, or the bitch in heat, or the shell of the parrot,” Pachelo said in that call when referring to that test and that was remembered by Ferrari.
The second and last witness of the day was Julian Fernandez Calvo, who introduced himself as a friend of Pachelo whom he met between 2007 and 2008 when Carmel’s ex-neighbor was released after serving his sentence for the robbery of relatives’ houses.
The man assured that he shared family outings and celebrations with the defendant’s ex-wife and their children and that before meeting him “he had precautions” based on what he heard in the media, but after meeting him personally, the witness and his family maintained “a relationship normal”.
Fernández Calvo pointed out that he never saw Pachelo violent or carrying a firearm and that “it struck him that he went out to do that (steal) because he had a good time” economically after having received an inheritance, and also that he traveled to China to treat one of his sons who suffers from a disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Finally, Judge Federico Ecke, president of the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 4 of San Isidro, asked the witness to tell him a virtue and a defect of his friend Pachelo: “A virtue that I can attest that in the years that he was very close with me and my family was very generous. He invited us to his house, we ate barbecues, I have nothing that caught my attention”, he affirmed and said that, for him, the defect “is visible, this of robberies.”
“That time he didn’t behave that way. I remember that he was sorry that there were those robberies from friends,” he concluded.
