The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed and edited by our team for accuracy and clarity.
[Horacio Caride]: «OK, you have to be at this place, we’ll pick you up in a car,» as if it were some clandestine commando operation.
[Silvia Viñas]: It’s 8 a.m. on Wednesday, June 29, 1994. Sixty days have passed since the superclásico between River and Boca. Sixty days since the murder of two River fans. Horacio Caride, whom you just heard, is 27 years old and a journalist at Radio Mitre, one of the most listened-to radio stations in Argentina. He’s been waiting for a while at the spot he was given, a corner across from the courthouse building. After a few minutes, a dark car pulls up, a big one, with tinted windows.
[Horacio Caride]: When I got into the car, they told me, politely, they were going to blindfold me with a handkerchief.
[Silvia Viñas]: Caride is sitting between two big guys, who also make him keep his head down. He doesn’t say anything. He figures it’s so he won’t know where they’re going. He doesn’t see that he has many options anyway.
[Horacio Caride]: At that moment, I didn’t feel any fear or dread, because I asked myself: what would be the point of hurting me?
[Silvia Viñas]: Caride tries to guess the route. The car is going fast. The distance they cover without stopping and the sounds outside, make him think they’re on a highway. After several minutes, the car slows down and stops. Nobody says anything. One of the men sitting with him in the back seat gets him out of the car and removes the blindfold.
[Horacio Caride]: We arrived at a place that I took to be a very poor neighborhood, or a villa de emergencia, or something like that.
[Silvia Viñas]: A villa de emergencia, that is, an informal settlement, like a favela in Brazil. It’s a dirt street, and they’re in front of a ramshackle little house. The man with him takes him by the arm, walks him to the door, and tells him to go in. Caride does as he’s told, and inside…
[Horacio Caride]: Was the guy everyone was looking for.
[Silvia Viñas]: The leader of Boca’s barra: José Barritta, el Abuelo.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»
Episode 6: My Name Is José Barritta.
[Horacio Caride]: Well, the ’90s were the decade when my career in journalism began, and a decade when all the media exploded, you know?
[Silvia Viñas]: In June ’94, Horacio Caride is the kind of journalist who likes to go out on the street to find stories. He’s comfortable outside the office. He talks to everyone and almost always comes back with some piece of information nobody else has. And by then he’s already working for Radio Mitre.
[Horacio Caride]: It was very important for the station to generate scoops, impact. Some of us journalists followed certain stories to find that extra bit of news.
[Silvia Viñas]: One day it might be a crime, another an accident, an affair between celebrities, a soccer star’s health. Or, as in this case, a nearly impossible search.
[Horacio Caride]: The testimony everyone wanted to get was José Barritta’s, but nobody knew where he was. He had gone on the run. At the station, we had to find the thread that would lead us to José Barritta.
[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues the story.
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride’s boss asks him to devote all his time to the search for the leader of Boca’s barra. He walks the streets and the courthouses and leaves his card so people will let him know if any information turns up. And if a source gives him a name and a phone number, he calls, gets information, and checks it.
But the leads he gets don’t take him anywhere. The police and the courts don’t have better information either. They’ve been looking for him in Argentina for almost two months. And with no answers, other theories start to emerge.
[Horacio Caride]: People said he was out of the country. The World Cup in the United States was underway. There was already talk that the barras, the hardcore fan groups of the soccer clubs, mainly Boca, River, were going to go cheer on the national team led by Diego Armando Maradona.
[Mariano Pagella]: On June 17, ’94, the World Cup in the United States is set to begin. Remember that el Abuelo had been part of the barras at the two previous World Cups, Mexico ’86 and Italy ’90. That’s why Argentine authorities believe he could show up there, and they make arrangements with Interpol and the FBI. Even Argentina’s president, Carlos Menem, assures the press that Barritta is in Boston (where the Argentine team is going to play) and that he’ll be arrested there. With all these rumors going around, Caride keeps up his investigation.
[Horacio Caride]: Until one day, in a bar on the corner by the Tribunales courthouse, which has since closed, I ran into a guy who introduced himself as someone connected to Boca’s barra brava.
[Mariano Pagella]: His name is Emir, and they call him «El Tuerto.» Emir «El Tuerto» Ciani. A rather shady character.
[Horacio Caride]: He told me he worked with a number of the lawyers on the case. And he described himself as a kind of «jail fixer.» He said he knew a bit about law, but he wasn’t a lawyer. And that he was a friend of José Barritta.
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride checks with fellow journalists who cover Boca, and he confirms that el Tuerto does in fact have contacts in the barra. So he starts paying more attention to him.
[Horacio Caride]: And in those conversations, knowing I was from Radio Mitre, he started telling me a story that I didn’t believe at the time: that José Barritta was actually going to turn himself in at some point, and that it wasn’t true that he was a fugitive, even though the State Department and the FBI in the United States were looking for him.
[Mariano Pagella]: As we said before, there were lots of rumors that el Abuelo was in the United States for the World Cup. So during Argentina’s first two matches, in Boston, several FBI agents blended into the crowd in the stands at Foxboro Stadium to see if he’d show up. But nothing came of it. At first, Caride has doubts about what el Tuerto is telling him, but the more they talk, the more convincing his story starts to seem. At first, el Tuerto is the one who calls to talk. But soon it’s the other way around. Caride doesn’t want to lose the contact, or have el Tuerto take the information to another outlet.
[Horacio Caride]: I got in touch with my direct boss and told him, «We might have something, let me keep working on it.» That’s why keeping it up every day, staying on him and continuing to have coffee with him to learn his story, was an absolute priority.
[Mariano Pagella]: When Caride says he «might have something,» people at the station get excited and tell him to keep at it. Every time he meets el Tuerto at a bar, he goes back to the station and reports on his progress. They ask him for updates, and he asks for more time. Just when his bosses’ impatience is becoming very hard for him to manage, el Tuerto calls him urgently. He wants to see him face to face.
[Horacio Caride]: He told me, «Well, I’m going to give you the scoop of your life.»
[Mariano Pagella]: He doesn’t tell him anything else. They meet at the usual bar, and when Caride arrives, el Tuerto is already waiting for him.
[Horacio Caride]: I said, «What’s going to be the scoop of my life?» «Well, don’t fall over. But José Barritta isn’t where everyone says he’s going to be. He’s not at the World Cup. We have him hidden somewhere around here, in the province of Buenos Aires.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride doesn’t know whether to believe him. So he tells him he needs something more solid.
[Horacio Caride]: «We want to hear his account, his truth, and wherever he is, I want to be there.» «Well, be ready, because it could be tomorrow.»
[Mariano Pagella]: He lets his bosses know. The next day, everyone at the station’s office is waiting for el Tuerto’s call. But the hours go by and nothing. Until finally the phone rings.
[Horacio Caride]: He tells me, «OK, you have to be at this place, we’ll pick you up in a car.»
[Mariano Pagella]: The next day, as we told you at the beginning of the episode, Caride gets into a car, blindfolded. He’s riding with three men. El Tuerto is one of them. They arrive at a modest house in Lomas de Zamora, a district in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires. He gets out of the car and goes into the house.
[Horacio Caride]: When I walk in, I see a thinner man, drinking mate and eating pastries. He had his back to me and was watching, on a TV set, the most-watched news program on television at the time, which was Mauro Viale’s, our direct competition; we didn’t compete with the other radio stations. To my surprise, I was watching Mauro Viale say on television that he was going to have José Barritta, and the one who had him right in front of him was me.
[Mariano Pagella]: We’ll take a short break and be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride is in the living room of a ramshackle little house with el Abuelo, but nobody has spoken to him yet. He notices that the leader of Boca’s barra is smiling at what they just said on TV about the supposed scoop.
[Horacio Caride]: Well, they introduce him to me. The situation I found him in was astonishingly ordinary, in the sense that he didn’t seem like a man worried about everything that was being said about him or about the nature of the charges.
[Mariano Pagella]: He’s wanted for double homicide aggravated by treachery, causing injury with firearms, and also for criminal association and repeated extortion. Caride and el Abuelo sit down. Caride is carrying a huge rectangular cell phone. His plan is to call the station, introduce the segment, and hand it over to the program’s host, Néstor Ibarra, so that he can do the interview with el Abuelo. Ibarra has a longer career as a journalist and is more experienced. But as he’s getting ready to do it, something happens that wasn’t part of the plan.
[Horacio Caride]: At that moment, in his hoarse, very stern voice, a man of few words, he flatly refused and said, «No, kid, this interview is with you and nobody else.»
[Mariano Pagella]: He’s about to go on the air, and Caride has to explain over the phone to one of his bosses that the interview isn’t going to air live, that el Abuelo wants him to do it, not Ibarra, the host, who’s the program’s main star. For a few seconds, Caride breaks into a sweat. The interview is at risk. But finally his boss tells him:
[Horacio Caride]: «OK, record it, let’s not lose it. I’ll convince Néstor Ibarra that the interview goes ahead on these terms.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride opens his bag and takes out a recorder, and at that moment, el Tuerto comes over to him.
[Horacio Caride]: He tells me, «Look, this has to be just a few minutes, because afterward we’re turning ourselves in.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Caride nods, looks straight at el Abuelo, and presses the record button.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: Good morning. We’re… Better if you say it. What’s your name?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: José Barritta.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: José Barritta. Alias?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: El Abuelo.
[Mariano Pagella]: What we’re hearing is the audio from the broadcast. Caride had it recorded on a cassette he thought he’d lost. When we talked to him, he looked for it and found it. Even though the recording is old, you can hear the voice of a young Caride and el Abuelo’s worn-out tone.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: You know, to me it seems incredible to be here with you, because the reports from the government, from Interpol, and who knows how many others said that you were comfortably watching the World Cup in the United States as just another fan.
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: I never left the country. The thing is, seeing what’s coming out and all these outrageous things, it hurts me. It hurts me because there are families, because two young guys died, and honestly, in this interview I send my condolences to the boys’ families. And I’m going to prove my innocence and prove where I was when it all happened, that I had no part in any of it.
[Horacio Caride]: We went over the case, the charges he was facing for the double homicide, whether he had orchestrated double murder.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: Tell me about before and after the match.
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: Before the match it was all a big party. I never thought it would end in this savagery. Never, not for a moment. And then there’s the proof that we stayed in the stands until the end, half an hour afterward.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: The people who didn’t stay in the stands, some of whom are under arrest, did they act on their own? Were they questioning your leadership as head of the barra brava?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, no, the thing is, like with everything, right? Sometimes things get past even the president, so how could they not get past me, right?
[Mariano Pagella]: I don’t know if you caught that, but el Abuelo says that «things can get past him.» He also talks with Caride about the role of the fans cheering the team on, and about his relationship with Maradona, with whom he shared barbecues, but he says he isn’t watching him at the World Cup because he’s bitter about everything that’s going on. Throughout, el Abuelo insists on his innocence.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: You told me you’ve never used weapons.
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, I don’t even know how to use one. I don’t even know how to use one.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: But you must have taken part in some fight between rival fans?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, no, because, let me explain, for a long time now, like five, six years, we’ve been looking for a code of conduct so that every match Boca plays is a celebration.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: But can fanaticism go so far, José, that someone grabs a gun and kills, the way those River fans were killed?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, this is a criminal act that I’m never going to endorse or justify, because unfortunately, when a human being pays with their life, the sport is over.
[Mariano Pagella]: El Abuelo says he found out about the double homicide on the radio, when he was at the house of «Manzanita» Santoro, who, remember, was his right-hand man, and whose house was the barra’s «base of operations.» Manzanita, as we heard in the previous episode, was one of the first to be arrested.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: What do you think of Manzanita, who’s under arrest?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: That he’s a good guy.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: Did you think for a moment that you were already convicted from the get-go just for being José Barritta?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: Exactly. There’s a lot of injustice. Anything that happens in this country, it’s el Abuelo’s fault. These past months I thought about a lot of things: turning myself in, shouting from the rooftops that I have nothing to do with it and that it’s all lies, that everything people are saying is slander.
[Mariano Pagella]: And then Caride asks him about «the repentant,» that is, Darío Vesselizza Randi, the Boca barra member who provided one of the key testimonies for the investigation, and whom we heard in the previous episode.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: Next, will you talk to me about that informant who claims to know everything? Do you know him?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, I don’t know him. Honestly, it’s news to me.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: We’re wrapping up the interview now. The last questions. If you’re lucky enough that what you say about your innocence is proven, will you go back to a soccer stadium, will you go back to La Bombonera, will you go back to being the head of Boca’s barra brava?
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: Look, right now I can’t answer that, you know? Because a lot of things are going through my head. I don’t know, who knows. God will decide what happens. I don’t know, God will decide what happens.
[Archival audio, Horacio Caride]: Thank you.
[Archival audio, José Barritta]: No, you’re welcome.
[Horacio Caride]: And at the moment the interview ends, having his mate, eating the last of the croissants, his final words were, «Well, now I’m going to turn myself in.»
[Mariano Pagella]: We’ll take one last break and be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s Wednesday, June 29, 1994. Sixty days have passed since the superclásico, and the radio interview in which el Abuelo announced he’s going to turn himself in has just ended. While Caride, the journalist who interviewed him, packs up his things, el Abuelo puts on a jacket. The two of them walk out the door and get into a car. El Tuerto –who arranged for the meeting– goes with them too, along with one of the big guys from the ride there. They head to the courthouse in Lomas de Zamora, not far from where they are.
[Horacio Caride]: When we arrived, I felt like I was a wanted man too, or like one more prisoner, because we got out of the car and there was a tangle of journalists hounding us with questions, all the ones they’d wanted to ask up to that point and hadn’t been able to.
[Mariano Pagella]: Someone inside the court probably tipped off the media that Barritta was on his way. So when they arrived, everyone had their cameras rolling.
At the door of the court, el Abuelo walked a couple of steps ahead, turned around, and raised his head in a nod to Caride. Caride raised his arm, and el Abuelo turned toward the door. Two police officers came up to him and took him inside the court.
[Horacio Caride]: From then on, I never had contact with José Barritta again.
[Daniel Llermanos]: I was never a judge who liked locking people up. I tried to pursue what the law really is to me: a project of social harmony.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Daniel Llermanos. He’s a lawyer now, but in the ’90s he was a judge at the courts in Lomas de Zamora, where el Abuelo turned himself in. Llermanos says that 48 hours before Caride’s interview, someone from the barra of another club contacted him…
[Daniel Llermanos]: A Banfield fan nicknamed «La Vieja,» the head of their barra, called me one day on the court’s phone and said, «Sir, we have him here, he’s here. We’re afraid they’re going to kill him.» And it’s true, there were rumors that people wanted to kill José Barritta.
[Mariano Pagella]: Llermanos is no stranger to violence in soccer. Lomas de Zamora is a city in the province of Buenos Aires with a lot of clubs.
[Daniel Llermanos]: There had already been countless conflicts at the stadiums, some even with people killed. It was a very violent time, very violent. A violence that maybe didn’t make it into all the newspapers.
[Mariano Pagella]: Working in that context, he knew the barras bravas very well. In fact, a year earlier, in 1993, he says the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Duhalde, had asked him to meet with el Abuelo to try to bring down those levels of violence. So Llermanos invited him to a meeting.
[Daniel Llermanos]: That first meeting was funny, because José Barritta showed up with twelve people, with twelve culatas.
[Mariano Pagella]: In Argentina, bodyguards are called culatas.
[Daniel Llermanos]: And since there were so many of us and my office was about six feet across, I invited them to eat at a restaurant on Avenida Pavón, in Lomas de Zamora. When we walked in (I came in with the 12 or 13 Boca barra members), people fled the restaurant. I didn’t notice, but apparently the way they looked struck fear into people.
[Mariano Pagella]: At the restaurant, Llermanos explained to Barritta that the governor wanted the violence to end. That the idea wasn’t to punish, but to seek «social harmony.»
[Daniel Llermanos]: Barritta said, «No, Sir. This is how we are. Our business is like this.» He said it plain as day. I don’t know in what sense he meant business, soccer, financial, I don’t know. It was an inevitably necessary conflict.
[Mariano Pagella]: Maybe because of that earlier meeting, or because Llermanos had «experience» with the barras, the head of Banfield’s barra, La Vieja, gets in touch with him to ask for help on behalf of José Barritta, el Abuelo.
[Daniel Llermanos]: He asks me if Barritta can turn himself in at my court. I tell him, «But I’m not the judge with jurisdiction. The judge with jurisdiction is the judge in the capital.»
[Mariano Pagella]: That is, Judge Quiroga, whom we met in the previous episode. He’s the judge leading the investigation.
[Daniel Llermanos]: «No, no, no, the idea is to go there, but with you accompanying us. We want protection.» He was truly afraid that during the transfer someone, out of revenge for something else, would make an attempt on his life. What he wanted was safety during the transfer.
[Mariano Pagella]: And so, on the morning of June 29, el Abuelo turns himself in at Llermanos’s court; Llermanos had been told an hour earlier. This is a very different Abuelo from the one he’d met at that meeting the year before. There were no more culatas with him. Now José Barritta walks toward him escorted by police officers.
[Daniel Llermanos]: There must have been some leak to the press, because practically the same moment he gets there, a legion of photographers arrives like I’d never seen before, at least not in Lomas de Zamora. It looked like an invasion. José Barritta quickly comes into my office. I order that he come in alone. When he looks at me, he hugs me.
[Mariano Pagella]: Barritta asks him to let him see his wife before turning himself in. Llermanos gives him a phone, he calls her, and a little while later his wife shows up at the door.
[Daniel Llermanos]: They sit down in my office. I send someone out to buy a pizza, because they all looked hungry.
[Mariano Pagella]: And while they’re eating, the phone rings: it’s Judge Quiroga, very angry, asking Llermanos what Barritta is doing in his court.
[Daniel Llermanos]: «Look, Sir, he’s in custody. He’s in custody because I know you issued an arrest warrant. I’m holding him, and he’s at your disposal whenever you say…» «Right now!» «No, we’re eating pizza,» I told him. «We’ll finish this and head over there.»
[Mariano Pagella]: When he’s done eating, José Barritta leaves Lomas de Zamora for Judge Quiroga’s court.
[Daniel Llermanos]: What I remember most strongly from that day is how emotional he looked. And his eyes seemed, not distraught exactly, but they did reflect enormous sadness, you know? It wasn’t the ending he’d imagined for himself, surely because he felt it was the beginning of losing his freedom for good.
[Paula Asaro]: I remember that Barritta’s appearance was like the cherry on top for the case.
[Mariano Pagella]: Prosecutor Asaro has been investigating the crime for almost two months. Several members of Boca’s barra are already under arrest, there are witnesses placing them at the crime scene, and they even found the weapons. But the leader is missing, el Abuelo. Until that Wednesday morning, June 29…
[Paula Asaro]: We found out from TV programs that he had turned himself in at Judge Llermanos’s court. And when we found out, well, that’s when the whole protocol kicked in to have him come give a statement.
[Mariano Pagella]: And just as the cameras capture him leaving the court in Lomas de Zamora, later that same day they film him entering the Palace of Justice in downtown Buenos Aires. He’s wearing a gray plaid sweater and a brown leather jacket.
[Paula Asaro]: And I think he turned himself in thinking he’d walk out. He turned himself in convinced that he wasn’t going to be charged with absolutely anything.
[Mariano Pagella]: The next day, Thursday, June 30, ’94, the front pages of most newspapers in Argentina carry two historic stories about Argentine soccer. One, the main one, is Diego Maradona’s positive doping test at the World Cup in the United States. It’s a key moment that marks the end of his time with the Argentine national team, and when he says one of his iconic phrases: «They cut off my legs.» Alongside that story, less prominent but important enough to make the front page, is el Abuelo turning himself in. Yes, both things happened on the same day.
[Paula Asaro]: I had the chance to be with him for five, six minutes, and he was sort of like a snake charmer. He’d say to you, «What team do you support? Oh no, you can’t support that team, you have to be a Boca fan.» Always wearing the team colors, so to speak, and, well, with these piercing light blue eyes. I mean, he created an atmosphere of fear, kind of.
[Mariano Pagella]: That Thursday the 30th, at 10:45, at the prosecutor’s office, they take el Abuelo’s formal statement as a suspect.
[Paula Asaro]: So, well, he was asked questions, he was questioned. He categorically denies having let these people do what they did.
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, little by little, el Abuelo starts distancing himself from what happened, and to drive the point home, he says something pretty metaphorical.
[Paula Asaro]: He said he was at the stadium and everyone started leaving, that these kids were out of control and got away from him. That was an iconic line, like the little pigeons in Plaza de Mayo.
[Mariano Pagella]: El Abuelo testifies for more than three hours. What he says in that statement will be kept secret for a long time. Only during the trial will those details come to light, and they’ll mark the end of his reign as head of La 12.
After el Abuelo’s fall, three other barra members were still on the run. It took almost two years to catch one of them, and only then did the prosecutor’s office decide it was time to request that the case go to trial. During that time, el Abuelo and the rest of the barra members were in prison.
That’s why the date the trial is set to begin, one of the most important trials of the decade, is March 14, 1997, almost three years after the superclásico.
[Marcelo Parrilli]: The courtroom was packed. There were lots of media outlets doing their reports outside, but then they’d come into the courtroom.
[Mariano Pagella]: The entire leadership of La 12 is going to be on the defendants’ bench.
[Fernando Scalone]: It was shocking to suddenly see those guys so close.
[Mariano Pagella]: And they’re all going to hear el Abuelo’s testimony about what happened on April 30, ’94.
[Gustavo Grabia]: That’s when the pact of silence that had existed until then among the rest of the barra breaks, and they start accusing each other at the trial.
[Mariano Pagella]: All this in the next episode of Superclásico 94.
[Silvia Viñas]: Superclásico 94 is a podcast from Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of the My Cultura podcast network from iHeart Radio.
This series was produced by Mariano Pagella, Alejandro Marinelli, and Sergio Renna.
Thanks to Horacio Caride for sharing the recording of his interview with el Abuelo.
The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.
Fact-checking is by Ana Prieto.
Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolas Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme music. Martín Cruz was in charge of sound mixing and mastering.
The series’ graphics and art direction are by Diego Corzo. Digital production was done by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman provided legal support.
Carolina Guerrero is the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.
At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
Radio Ambulante Studios produces and mixes its podcasts with Hindenburg PRO.
You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I’m Silvia Viñas. Thanks for listening.