Luis María Ríos Riveros, 36, was a communicator, artist, comedian and multifaceted man of the media, much loved by all, he met his death in the most absurd way on Wednesday, September 17, 2003, when he was summoned by Diego Alejandro Caballero González, with whom he had a passionate relationship.
That day, Ríos received text messages from Caballero, who was a security guard at the bankrupt Multibanco bank located on Avenida Artigas and Molas López, in Trinidad. The custodian asked her to come to the bank with him in the afternoon. Luis was leading a well-heard program on Radio 1000 that ended at 3:00 p.m., after that he took his truck and went to the bank, which at that time was already closed, in reality the bank no longer operated to the public, it went bankrupt, but in In the morning hours there was a group of auditors who were going to do work on the site, for that reason a private company gave it custody.
Diego Caballero, apparently had the intention of going to a romantic encounter with Ríos, that’s why he called his partner Elvio Riquelme, who had to take the watch at the bank at 6:00 p.m. and asked him if he could come by 3:00 p.m.: 00 since he had to leave earlier to go home because his wife felt sick.
Elvio agreed to the request and arrived at the bank, entered and met a nervous gentleman, who told him that he had accidentally injured a man who was in the bathroom. Both went to see and there was Luis Ríos wounded by a bullet, bleeding and handcuffed. In his statement, Riquelme said that Luis told Diego not to kill him, to call an ambulance, that he was not going to report the incident, but not to let him die there.
“Diego took the cell phone and pretended to call an ambulance, but it was just a trick so that Luis would not scream…” Elvio Riquelme confessed in his statement to the prosecutor’s office.
Diego Caballero told his partner that he shot Ríos and the alarm sounded that they called from the monitoring center, but he told them that it was nothing, but that now they had to kill the communicator and he handed him the gun so that it could be Elvio his accomplice, however the guard did not want to do it and was threatened with death by his comrade. So Riquelme gave him another way out, “I’m going to go buy a knife and with that I’m going to kill him in silence,” Elvio said, and Caballero thought the idea was good.
Elvio left the bank, it was already after 6:00 p.m., scared by the situation, he went to an uncle’s house and told him what was happening, so they called the police and the uniformed men arrived at around 8:00 p.m. bank and found the macabre scene, where Diego Caballero and Juana Barrios, his partner whom he called to help him get rid of the body, were detained.
WHAT HAPPENED
The prosecutor Victoria Acuña, who intervened in the case, had commented that Diego Caballero, after lying several times about the motive for the crime, finally told what happened that afternoon of September 17. According to the agent, there was a passionate relationship between Diego and Luis, since the celebrity was a wealthy person at a given moment, the guard asked him for a certain amount of money that he needed, it was not more than a million guaraníes, they estimate.
They had agreed that Luis was going to take the money to Diego that Wednesday, which is why the guard sent him several messages that day so he wouldn’t forget to go to the bank after his show.
Once Ríos arrived at the bank, the guard let him in and they went to the bathroom, a sector where the cameras did not reach, once inside, Diego asked for the money to which the artist told him that he did not get it, but that he brought him a gift, a wallet. That ignited a murderous fury in the custodian who felt cheated, there was an argument between the two.
Diego turned as if to leave the bathroom and Luis hugged him from behind, the guard drew his gun and turned around firing a shot, almost at point-blank range that hit Luis’s right arm, the bullet went through the limb and embedded itself in the victim’s chest and punctured the lungs. Luis fell to the ground and there he received a second shot in the cheekbone and the bullet exited through his ear, but it was that first shot that slowly killed him as he bled to death.
The shots sounded the alarm and the guard in a state of desperation and to prevent Luis from fleeing he handcuffed him to a chair and went to answer the call from the monitoring center to prevent them from coming to check the situation, he told them that he had dropped a bottle and that set off the alarm.
That’s when Elvio Riquelme arrived and Caballero tried to make him an accomplice in the act, but before his partner fled, the guard called his wife Juana Barrios. When the woman arrived, Diego gave her ten thousand guaraníes and asked her to go to the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket that was on the corner to buy garbage bags, packing tape, and other things.
When the woman returned with the order, Diego showed her that Ríos was dead in the bathroom and told her that Elvio Riquelme was the author, but that they had to make the body disappear. That’s when the police arrived alerted by Elvio and both were arrested.
JUDGMENT
The oral trial was faced by Diego Caballero and Elvio Riquelme, before that Juana Barrios was released from the process, since it was found that she had no participation in the event and that she arrived at the bank on the day of the crime under her husband’s tricks.
During the trial, the prosecution demonstrated the active participation of Diego Caballero in the crime, key evidence such as the nitrite test showed that both of the guard’s hands had traces of gunpowder, so there was no doubt that he was the one who shot, in Riquelme the evidence gave negative. The bank’s closed circuit also showed the arrival of Luis Ríos and the entire sequence that took place from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Diego Caballero (light blue shirt) the murderer.
The Public Ministry accused Diego Caballero of simple homicide and requested a sentence of 15 years, which at the time was the maximum for that crime. In relation to Elvio Riquelme, the prosecution found no evidence of his participation in the crime, but requested a one-year prison sentence for failure to provide assistance.
Finally, the Sentencing Court sentenced Diego Caballero to 14 years in prison and Elvio Riquelme to one year in prison. The sentences were confirmed by the Court of Appeal and the Court. Diego Caballero was released in September 2017, served his sentence and his whereabouts were no longer known.
