"Let them look for the culprits under the earth": the claim of Nancy Videla's mother

One year after the femicide of Nancy Videla, the woman who was found beaten to death and buried in a house in the Buenos Aires town of Ingeniero Budge after spending a week missing, His mother demands that the environment be investigated, while she waits for a date to be set for the trial of the only one arrested for the crime.

“Let them look for the culprits even under the ground. For me there were more people involved. A single person cannot do all the massacre that they did to my daughter,” said Liliana Ayala.mother of Nancy (31), in dialogue with Télam.

The same was considered by the Buenos Aires investigating judge Diego Slupski, who, when prosecuting Damián Lezcano Mendoza (71) for the femicide, stated that the act was committed by two or more people through “a coordinated plan with division of tasks.”

Nancy disappeared on Friday, November 26, 2021 when she left her job as an employee and babysitter. in a family home, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo.

His body was found between the night of December 2 and the early morning of December 3 under a subfloor of one of the rooms in the home of Lezcano Mendoza, a Paraguayan national, in Ingeniero Budge, Lomas de Zamora district.

Judicial sources confirmed to Télam that the defendant will be tried by the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 9 Buenos Airesmade up of judges Fernando Ramírez, Ana Dieta and Luis Salas, who have yet to set the date for the debate to begin.

In the trial, the accusation, which during the investigation was in charge of the prosecutor Marcelo Munilla Lacasa, will be promoted by his colleague Ariel Yapur.

In the case, a nephew of Lezcano Mendoza, Claudio Andrés Lezcano (30), was also prosecuted, to whom the Crime Chamber later dictated the lack of merit.

The victim’s mother asked the judges to “have no mercy” on Lezcano Mendoza “How did he not have her to bury her and do what he did” to his daughter.

Nancy’s mother also asked that the investigation into her daughter’s environment be deepened, more precisely into her friends, to find out who she hung out with.

The woman, who lives in the department of Vera, in the north of the province of Santa Fe, demanded that Justice investigate her daughter’s environment, including her friends and her last partner, Alan Leguizamón, who, according to what she said, “He has complaints of gender violence.”

“After Nancy was killed, he never called me again. He told me that he did not know Lezcano Mendoza, but he (Leguizamón) has an aunt with the last name Lezcano who assured me that they were not related. I want it to be investigated if that is the case, “he said the woman.

Nancy’s mother also asked that the investigation into her daughter’s environment be deepened, more precisely into her friends to find out who she hung out with.

For his part, Jorge Alfonso, Lezcano Mendoza’s defense attorney, assured that “there is no element or proof that directly proves that he participated in the death of Nancy Videla.”

“They stopped him at the door of his house drinking mate. He told the policemen to come in while they waited for the search warrant. There are only absurd comments from neighbors, there is nothing direct about the accusation that falls on him. He is totally oblivious and other people have participated,” he told Télam Alfonso, who is also a defender of multiple murderer Carlos Robledo Puch.

However, Judge Slupski prosecuted the suspect as “co-perpetrator” of the crime of “aggravated homicide for having been committed to the detriment of a woman with cruelty mediating gender violence” (femicide), a crime whose only penalty is life imprisonment.

According to the 119-page indictment – to which Telám had access -, when justifying the aggravating circumstance of the cruelty, Slupski relied “on the excessive and unnecessary pain or suffering that is caused to the victim in order to cause his death.” .

The judge considered that it was “a coordinated plan in which there was a division of tasks aimed at taking the life of Nancy Beatriz Videla, violently, presumably in the context of a sexual assault and because of her status as a woman.”

When describing the incident, the judge considered that it was “a coordinated plan in which there was a division of tasks aimed at taking the life of Nancy Beatriz Videla, violently, presumably in the context of a sexual assault and because of her status as a woman.” “.

“The defendants beat and suffocated their victim inside the aforementioned farm until they killed him”added the judge when accusing Lezcano Mendoza and his nephew at that moment

The magistrate places the crime on November 26 after 7:00 p.m., in one of the rooms of the house at Ingeniero Budge Street, Bucharest 2531, where Videla’s body was discovered on the night of December 2.

The judge proved that the relationship between the victim and Lezcano Mendoza through messages and audios taken from his own cell phonefrom which the defendant deleted the chats he had with her.

The result of the autopsy determined that the woman died as a result of “encephalocranial trauma and skull fractures” after receiving 20 injuries: three head fractures and 17 other injuries to the rest of the body.

The key to clarifying the case was an anonymous call to the 911 emergency telephone number in which a woman alerted that Nancy was a friend of the owner of an Ingeniero Budge property, who used to lend her money so that she could pay the rent for her house and that in addition believed that they had a sentimental relationship, which aroused suspicions about the man on the part of the complainant herself.

“This year I had a very bad time. 15 days ago I went to the cemetery, I brought her some flowers and asked her for strength because I feel empty. My daughter did not deserve this, no woman deserves what happened to her,” Ayala said. , who tearfully recalled that three months ago she dreamed that Nancy hugged her and told her that she loved her very much.

“Thanks to that I got up. I felt his warmth, his visit,” he concluded.