Life sentence for the femicide of Elizabeth Toledo | The aggressor's DNA was the conclusive proof | Page 12

A man was sentenced today to life imprisonment, based on a DNA expert report, for the rape and murder of Elizabeth Alejandra Toledo in 2018 in the San Fernando district of Buenos Aires, in a femicide that had the particularity that a parrot was found in the crime scene repeating what is believed to be the victim's last prayer , reported judicial sources. The case had a second accused who had been incriminated based on an expert report that allegedly identified as his the mark of a bite on the arm of the victim , but for the trial court that evidence was not categorical and it decided to acquit him. and Sebastian Urquijo. The only person convicted was Jorge Raúl Álvarez (65), alias "Tío Jorge", while the acquittal went to Miguel Saturnino Rolón (53), alias "Mambo". As requested in her statement by prosecutor Bibiana Santella, the same as instructed the case when he was head of the Functional Unit of Instruction (UFI) of Gender Violence of San Fernando, the TOC 6 considered Álvarez the author of an "aggravated sexual abuse and homicide aggravated by the bond and by mediating gender violence" ( femicide). In the event that the ruling remains firm, with his life sentence, Álvarez --in prison since January 2019--, will only be able to request parole in 2054, after having spent 35 years in prison. Rolón regained his freedom after know the verdict, although judicial spokesmen indicated that after studying the grounds of the ruling, the prosecutor will analyze whether to appeal his acquittal before the Court of Cassation. Rolón and Álvarez followed remotely and from the penal unit where they were housed the reading of the redict of this trial that had begun on September 13 last. The one in Toledo was the last femicide of 2018 and the case revealed the vulnerability of the victim, a woman with maturational delay who, according to her own environment, lived with three men who subjected her to ill-treatment that was never reported. "Eli" --as they called her-- was found murdered at 6 o'clock on December 30 of that year, after a stormy morning, in a wooden attic-type room that she rented and It is located on the second level of house 27 on Boedo Street, on the corner of Gorriti, in the Presidente Perón neighborhood. The body was without clothes, lying face up on one of the mattresses on the floor, in the midst of great disorder with visible blows to the face. One of the curiosities of the case was the statement of a police officer who told, both at the beginning of the investigation and now in the trial, that while he was guarding the crime scene waiting for the arrival of experts, heard screams from inside and when checking he found a parrot in a cage that said "oh, please, let go of me, oh no!", a phrase that investigators believe may have been the victim's last plea before being murdered. At the beginning of the investigation, Santella had as suspects the three men who used to live with "Eli". One of them was quickly discarded because he had an alibi that was verified, but the other two, who were Álvarez and Rolón, remained under investigation. The autopsy, ratified at trial by forensic doctor Federico Corasaniti, head of the San Isidro Medical Corps , determined that Toledo had been abused, that she had been beaten, that the cause of death was a manual strangulation and that all the injuries that she presented - even those compatible with sexual assault - were of a vital nature. The key evidence that incriminated the condemned Álvarez was a DNA match that concluded that his genetic profile coincided with that of the semen found in the victim's body. This convicted person had declared in the trial that he was innocent, that when he arrived at the house, Toledo was already beaten and dead, and justified the presence of her DNA with the fact that she had had consensual sexual relations but the day before the crime . In addition, according to judicial sources, he was compromised by the statements of a witness who saw him enter and leave the crime scene at the time of the event. But in the autopsy, the coroner also found defensive injuries on the victim's right forearm, the marks of a series of bites that were believed to belong to someone who had participated in the attack. Based on these injuries to the forearm, the prosecutor entrusted the Legal Odontology Division of the La Plata Scientific Police Superintendence to compare the imprint of the bite that the murderer had supposedly left with the bite of each one of the suspects. The dental experts made an exact copy of the teeth of those investigated with molds and when comparing the bite of each one of them with the marks found in the victim, they concluded that they coincided in three points with "the canine, first premolar and second premolar" of the lower left arch of the accused Rolón. aje was enough to charge, arrest and prosecute Rolón, but the TOC 6 of San Isidro did not consider it indubitable evidence --such as a fingerprint or DNA---, which is enough for a conviction."Mambo" Rolón He was the person who notified 911 to report that he had found Toledo murdered when he returned that morning from working as a night watchman at the Virreyes Rugby Club, located a hundred meters from the house.