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.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: After all this is over, I go straight to my grandmother’s house. That whole stretch I was like a zombie from The Walking Dead, just walking and, well, with 80 things in my head.
[Silvia Viñas]: This is Darío Vesselizza Randi, the Boca barra member we met in the previous episode. When he says «all this,» he means April 30, 1994, the day of the superclásico, and the armed ambush that a group from La 12, Boca’s barra, carried out against some River fans.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The shooting was cruel, absurd, and cartoonish.
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío was there. He saw everything. And that night, he went home with those images in his head. In the days that follow, Darío doesn’t know what to do. The massacre he witnessed is national news. Even his grandmother brings it up:
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: She says to me, «Kiddo, look what happened at the stadium.» Hearing that from your own grandmother… She says, «Look what happened,» she tells me, «you weren’t mixed up in any trouble, were you? Look at those two boys,» she kept saying. «Fucking hell,» I’d say to myself, my head was already spinning. I didn’t sleep all night.
[Silvia Viñas]: And a few days later, in early May…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Someone knocks on my grandmother’s door. It was a fairly well-dressed man…
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío thinks he’s seen this man somewhere before, but he doesn’t know him personally. He always figured he was some kind of lawyer who worked with the barra.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: He says to me, «Darío, José says everybody needs to disappear.»
[Silvia Viñas]: José is José Barritta, El Abuelo, the leader of La 12.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I say to him, «Who are you?» «José sent me to tell you all to disappear.»
[Silvia Viñas]: It’s the first time anyone from the barra has come to see him. Until then, his life with La 12 and his personal life, his family, had been two completely separate things. Darío answers…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «Whatever José has to tell me, José would tell me himself. I don’t really know who you are.» «No, no, no, but you all have to disappear.» I shut the door on him and went back inside.
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío doesn’t know what to do. In his head, he goes back and forth between staying home or packing a bag and leaving. He doesn’t remember exactly how many days went by, but he does remember that at one point…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I said, «No, enough, that’s it. I have to tell this to the people who are investigating, so they can figure out what happened.»
[Silvia Viñas]: So on Thursday, May 5, five days after the superclásico, Darío leaves his house and heads to the Palacio de Tribunales, about a 50-minute trip. The building is imposing; it could be a museum. Just inside the entrance there’s an information desk. Darío isn’t really sure where to go, so he walks up to ask.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I told her why I was there, and she says, «What, you want to come forward and testify?» I say, «Yes, how about that?» «Are you sure about what you’re going to do?» «Me? yes.» She tells me which way to go, and I end up at the door of the judge’s clerk’s office.
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío walks into the office and stands in front of a counter, where he’s greeted by the clerk of the judge overseeing the case. The clerk asks who he is. Darío gives his name and shows his ID. And then the clerk asks him why he’s there.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I summed up for him what I had seen and what had happened, and that I felt I had to try to help somehow so that justice would be done.
[Silvia Viñas]: After listening to him, the clerk brings him into the back of the office. He offers him a chair. Darío seems very nervous, so the clerk tells him to calm down and offers him a glass of water. Meanwhile, he picks up the phone, makes a call, and a few minutes later…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: A blonde woman shows up, fairly put-together, well dressed, who I later understood was the prosecutor.
[Paula Asaro]: When this witness showed up, the account he brought with him was very detailed.
[Silvia Viñas]: Prosecutor Paula Asaro, one of the investigators on the case, whom we met in the second episode.
[Paula Asaro]: He gives a detailed account of how events unfolded, who had taken part, their nicknames…
[Silvia Viñas]: From this moment on, the case is going to take a complete turn. Darío’s testimony will become a key piece not only changing the course of the investigation, but also his life.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»
Episode 5: Everybody disappear
The prosecutor’s office has two rooms. The first is where all the administrative work gets done. It has a few desks and case files everywhere: on shelves, in filing cabinets, stacked on the floor and on top of the tables. There’s a lot of movement, people coming and going, carrying folders or papers from one place to another. At the back there’s a door that leads to a second room. This room is a quieter office with a desk in the middle, and it’s where statements are taken. Sitting in that room is Darío, with prosecutor Asaro and the clerk, who is typing up the statement on a computer.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: She says to me, «OK, start telling me what happened and the events themselves, calmly, without leaving anything out. And when you’re not sure about something, let me know.»
[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues the story.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío begins his statement by explaining that he’s been a Boca fan since he was little, and that he’s been part of the barra for about three years. Then he goes on to describe in meticulous detail everything that happened that day, before and after the match. Throughout the episode, we’ll learn details of what Darío testified, but first we want to tell you what that day was like for him, what it was like to testify against the barra he loved so much. So let’s stay for a moment with the scene in the prosecutor’s office, with the clerk typing up everything Darío says on the computer.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Before I knew it, almost four hours had gone by, four and a half hours.
[Mariano Pagella]: After all that time, prosecutor Asaro leaves the office, and Darío is left alone with the clerk.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: He says to me, «You realize what you’re doing, right? You realize you could incriminate yourself?»
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s as if he wanted Darío to grasp what making this statement really meant, and how damaging it could turn out to be for him. But Darío is convinced.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «I came here to tell you what happened. Period. Afterward it’s up to you who goes to jail and who goes home.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Shortly after, Judge César Quiroga, who is leading the investigation, arrives. Darío testifies for about another half hour. When he finishes, they read his statement out loud so he can confirm everything they recorded, they print it, and he, the judge, and the clerk all sign it. Then the judge makes a phone call, and a few minutes later…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The head of homicide arrives with two other people. They introduce me, they hear a few words, and the judge says to me, «OK, now I need you to go with these people to the police department to see if any more information comes up, any identifications, so we can track down everyone involved.»
[Mariano Pagella]: The judge adds that he shouldn’t worry, that he’ll be well protected, and that afterward he can go home or wherever he wants. Darío says goodbye to the judge and the clerk and leaves with the three officers. But it’s already late afternoon, and outside, on the street, you can hear quite a lot of people moving around.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: How do I get out of here now? I say, «I don’t want to go out on the street, I’m not going out that way, they’re going to recognize us.» «Let’s do this.» He hands me the little bag they used to carry their guns in back then…
[Mariano Pagella]: That «little bag» is the gun holster, which is worn across the body from one shoulder and sits at belt level. Darío puts it on to «pass» as an officer. He says they go down a very long internal staircase. There, Darío and the officers have an unmarked car waiting for them, with nothing to show it belongs to the police. The chief gets in the front with one of the officers, and Darío gets in the back with the other. They pull away from the courthouse, and then the officer sitting next to him…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: He puts his arm around my shoulder and gives me a pat, a pretty, pretty pointed one. And he says to me, more or less, «You Idiot, you have no idea what kind of trouble you’re getting into. Are you sure about what you’re going to do?»
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s the third time someone has asked him this. The previous times, at the courthouse entrance and with the judge’s clerk, Darío felt they wanted to make sure he understood what he was about to do. This time, coming from a police officer, he takes it as a threat.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: It’s the same kind of strong-arming we used to do at the stadium when there was a checkpoint that wanted to see our tickets.
[Mariano Pagella]: The car arrives at the police department, and they go in. There, the head of the homicide squad asks Darío to summarize what he had already testified. Then someone comes in with photos and asks him to identify the people he saw that day.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «This one, this one, this one, this one, this one.» «Are you sure?» «Yes.» They put it in writing, I sign it. «Are you sure about what you’re going to testify?» «Yes, completely.» «Done.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío has just pointed out members of the barra, and once again, for the fourth time, they ask him if he’s sure about what he’s doing. As they’re finishing the identifications, someone brings the head of homicide a phone call. It’s the judge, who wants to know how everything is going. After speaking with him, the judge asks to be put through to Darío. The judge tells him that if he needs protection or a safe place to stay, the homicide team can provide it.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I say to the judge, «I’m not coming back here. In your court, in your office, at the Palacio, with you, the clerk, and the prosecutor present.» I tell him, «Don’t leave me with these people again. And I’ll take care of my own security.» «But how do we reach you? What do we do if we need to confirm or corroborate something?» «You have my word that I’ll call the court once a day. If you tell me you need me to confirm something, I’ll do it.»
[Mariano Pagella]: After that call, Darío leaves and, as he told the judge, starts arranging his own security. Years earlier, at one of his first jobs, his boss had been a senior noncommissioned officer in the Air Force, and he owned apartments in a building where a lot of military personnel lived.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The building even had an Air Force guard posted and everything. So I explained the situation I’d been going through and asked if I could stay a few days, and I stayed. I stayed there a week, 10 days. Nobody knew about it, or where it was either.
[Mariano Pagella]: While he’s there, in hiding, Darío keeps his promise and checks in with the court every so often. Five days later, he goes back to the courthouse to give a second statement. From then on, Darío will live moving from place to place every two or three months, renting a room in some cheap hotel and, above all, avoiding anywhere barra members might gather, including…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Going to any stadium, forget it. That was the last day I went to Boca’s stadium.
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, April 30, 1994, the day of the superclásico, was the last time Darío set foot in La Bombonera, his second home.
We’ll take a short break and be right back.
[Paula Asaro]: Well, I remember I was at that statement. It was taken during regular hours. And he knew in detail how the events had unfolded.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is prosecutor Paula Asaro, and the «statement» she mentions is Darío Randi’s, the repentant barra member we’ve been hearing in this episode. She refers to him by his last name, Randi.
[Paula Asaro]: At the point we were at, and in order to move the investigation forward, yes, we had to rely on Randi’s testimony.
[Mariano Pagella]: Five days have now passed since the double murder, and the pressure to get answers was mounting. Even the country’s president at the time, Carlos Menem, makes statements in which he says, and I quote: «The individuals responsible for this act are true savages.» He urges that «if anyone has seen anything, they should report it immediately,» and promises that «those responsible will be found.»
[Paula Asaro]: Before this witness, Randi, showed up,, who was, well, illuminating, who opened up a significant range of steps we could take, we had certain information about the people who might have taken part in this incident. That is, who were, in a way, the «hotheads» of this group.
[Mariano Pagella]: By «hotheads,» she means the most violent barra members of La 12, who were already on their radar. By that point, the prosecutor’s office has identified several La 12 members, but they aren’t clear on their role in the double murder on the day of the superclásico. In fact, for some of them they only know their nicknames.
[Paula Asaro]: The nicknames they gave each other made me laugh a lot. It’s not that the barra brava had any glamour, but it gave it a sort of, I’d say, funny side.
[Mariano Pagella]: El Lechero, El Narigón, Chiquito, Dedos, Pachi, Charly, Pelé, Curli. When Darío went to give his statement, the prosecutor’s office read him several names, and he answered which ones he knew and which ones he didn’t. He said none of these men had been at the ambush, but he did confirm other names, and he not only specified who had been there, but also who had fired.
[Paula Asaro]: So, well, from then on a whole lot of search warrants are requested, to, well, go straight in and arrest them, right?
[Mariano Pagella]: So now we’re going to draw on statements and testimony from the court case, other evidence in the case file, press coverage from the time, and interviews to reconstruct who the main suspects were, their role within La 12, and how some of them were caught. Because, as Gustavo Grabia, the journalist who covers barras, reminds us…
[Gustavo Grabia]: Boca’s barra brava, as we know, had a lot of connections. So some of them had been tipped off that they were going to come looking for them, and the most important ones, or some of the most important ones, managed to escape, among them, obviously, El Abuelo.
[Mariano Pagella]: So first, let’s focus on the ones who didn’t escape. The prosecutor’s office requests arrest warrants that same Thursday, May 5, after Darío’s first statement. And in the early hours of Friday the 6th, the operation gets underway.
[Paula Asaro]: Obviously it was organized so it would be simultaneous. Some turned up all at once, others turned up little by little, but sooner or later they all turned up.
[Gustavo Grabia]: La 12 had a kind of pyramid structure, let’s say. The boss back then was El Abuelo. But below him there was a sort of inner circle of power and control that El Abuelo trusted quite a lot, if not completely.
[Mariano Pagella]: One of the people closest to El Abuelo is Miguel Ángel Santoro, known as «Manzanita.» His is one of the names that starts to come up most in the first stage of the investigation. You may remember him, because we already mentioned Manzanita in the previous episode: his house was the «base of operations» where the barra gathered before every match.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And he was also the person in charge of keeping what are commonly called the «trapos,» –the «rags»– which are the barra’s banners. That gave him a lot of power.
[Mariano Pagella]: Manzanita Santoro is a founding member of El Abuelo’s group, from before they joined the barra. He met him when he was 14; they worked at the same sawmill. The fact is that Manzanita had been on the police’s radar since the day of the match: a sergeant from the La Boca police station testified that he saw him with a group of people, but since they were calm, he didn’t pay them much attention. A while later, he heard over the police radio that there was a dead man at the intersection of Huergo and Brasil. A corporal also testified to seeing him a few blocks from that intersection.
All of this is enough for a wiretap to be requested on the phone at Manzanita’s house in the days right after the superclásico, and several conversations are recorded. The most important one is from Thursday the 5th, the same day Darío goes to testify at the prosecutor’s office. In those phone calls, Manzanita talks to his brother, who tells him he’s with people from the La Boca police station, that they’re looking for him, that they have photos, and that he should lie low because he’s in their sights.
In his statement, Darío also confirms that Manzanita was with the group of attackers at the intersection, but that he didn’t have a weapon. With all this information, the prosecutor’s office takes action:
[Paula Asaro]: Manzanita’s house was raided, and at Manzanita’s house, well, sure enough, a gun was found.
[Mariano Pagella]: The gun is a .32-caliber «Doberman» revolver with what’s called a «seizure order» from the year before. In other words, it’s a stolen gun. They also find the barra’s banners at his house. But Manzanita isn’t there. In the recorded phone conversation, Manzanita asks his brother whether he should run, leave the country. His brother answers, «Hang on a bit,» and asks him what he plans to do. Manzanita tells him, and I quote: «The bus gets to Azul at 6 in the morning.» Azul is a city 300 km from Buenos Aires.
In that call, Manzanita and his brother end by saying that before Saturday they’ll be having a barbicue together. But on Friday at 8 in the morning, two hours after he gets off the bus, the police in the city of Azul arrest him.
That same Friday, other barra members are also caught in different parts of Buenos Aires.
The phone conversation between Manzanita and his brother is key to his arrest, but it also provides more information. At one point, his brother tells Manzanita that the police are focused on finding the ones who fired. Manzanita answers that he didn’t shoot, so his brother asks him for the names of the ones who did. «Can you give me a name?» he asks Manzanita. And he says: «Villagarcía»… «Corbacho.»
[Gustavo Grabia]: Jorge Corbacho Villagarcía was more from the western part of Greater Buenos Aires. Boca’s barra always had, especially in that core, something like a river, feeding like a very large tributary into that sea called La 12.
[Mariano Pagella]: Corbacho is the leader of a very large group that spans several neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires. Manzanita names him as one of the shooters. Darío also identified him in his statement as someone who was at the ambush, but added that he didn’t know his name, only his nickname. Corbacho is also arrested in this first operation. In the raid on his house, they find bullets but no gun. Another man they find at home, in a very marginalized neighborhood of Buenos Aires, is «Querida» Quintero.
[Gustavo Grabia]: «Querida» Quintero, while he wasn’t a man who rounded up a lot of people, was a pretty violent person and very close to El Abuelo.
[Mariano Pagella]: In his statement, Darío didn’t give many details about «Querida,» except that he saw him firing at the truck, «ten or twelve rounds,» while shouting, and I quote: «Let’s keep hitting them, they’ve stalled,» when the truck slowed down. The prosecutor’s case file also shows that «Querida» had two prior cases, one of them for fraud.
[Paula Asaro]: I was able to take part in the raid when they went for «Querida,» and his wife was saying, «Take him and never bring him back, please, take him right now.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Of course, the police took him.
[Archival audio]: The Barras Bravas case. Thanks to testimony from repentant members, the courts now know who fired the weapons and are on a concrete lead.
[Mariano Pagella]: So, less than a week after the double murder, the authorities have their first suspects in custody: «Manzanita» Santoro, «Corbacho» Villagarcía, and «Querida» Quintero.
[Archival audio, Carmen Cárdenas]: My boy was a clean kid, a hard worker, and for some nobody to come along and kill him like that, in cold blood…
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Carmen Cárdenas, the mother of Walter, one of the victims. We heard part of this interview in the second episode. It was a few days after the superclásico. Well, the exact date is Friday, May 6, the day of the first arrests. But Carmen doesn’t know that yet. At the end of the interview, this happens:
[Archival audio]: «César, you have good news, I’ve just been told. Is it true?»
«It’s news that just broke. The Federal Police have arrested several members of Boca’s barra brava and handed them over to Judge Quiroga. The news just came out.»
«Thank you, I’m very grateful. Because if it weren’t for all the TV outlets that have helped me, there’s no way we could have gotten this far. It would have been forgotten and nothing would have happened, right?»
[Mariano Pagella]: So, let’s remember that at this point there are three people in custody: Manzanita, Corbacho, and Querida. Of the three, Manzanita has the highest profile, and he’s also one of those with the most evidence against him.
Let’s go over that evidence: the testimony of the two police officers who saw him at the crime scene, Darío’s statements, and the recording of Manzanita’s wiretapped phone call. But now another witness, a Boca fan, comes forward. He testifies that he was passing the intersection of Huergo and Brasil just as a group of people was shooting at a small «mosquito» truck, yelling, «Dale Boca!» Among those people, he says he recognized Manzanita.
And on Wednesday the 11th, five days after his arrest, Manzanita’s wife, Claudia, goes to the prosecutor’s office to testify.
[Paula Asaro]: I mean, she gives her testimony, sort of confronting him, saying he’d been so stupid as to get mixed up in this.
[Mariano Pagella]: Again, prosecutor Asaro.
[Paula Asaro]: She says that afterward El Abuelo came to Manzanita’s house and confronted them because they’d gotten out of control. She said El Abuelo had been there, and that her husband, well, was an idiot who had taken part, but in no way she said that he had fired.
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, Claudia testifies that after the superclásico, El Abuelo and other barra members met at her house. Among them were Querida and Corbacho, the other two men arrested on suspicion of shooting. Claudia says that there, at her house, El Abuelo got angry with them because, and I quote, «they had started shooting […] at River Plate supporters.» She also says that Manzanita, her husband, arrived later, and that El Abuelo scolded him for going out on the street, since he, Manzanita, was «very well known.» El Abuelo had a point, considering all the testimony that placed Manzanita at the scene…
Claudia also says that a while later, when El Abuelo found out there were two dead, he told them, and I quote: «It’s been three months since we got out of the Mendoza problem, and now this.» The «Mendoza problem» is the Battle of Desaguadero, which we told you about in the third episode, when they got into a shootout with Independiente’s barra.
At the end of her statement, Claudia says she thinks another barra member «planted» the gun among the banners to frame her husband. This adds to what Darío said, that Manzanita didn’t have a weapon, and to what Manzanita himself said when he was arrested and asked about the gun: that he didn’t know where it had come from.
But that same day Claudia goes to testify…
[Archival audio]: Manzanita Santoro was wounded at Devoto prison with five «shankings,» as they say in inmate slang, and transferred to the infirmary at Caseros prison, where he is recovering from his injuries.
[Mariano Pagella]: The newspaper Página 12 runs the story under the headline: «They Made Mincemeat of Manzanita.» The article says a group of inmates tried to take his sneakers, he fought back with his fists, and ended up getting five «shanks» in the leg. In other words, he was stabbed with a sharp object. They also report that when he was asked what happened, Manzanita said, «I slipped in the bathroom,» following the prison code.
A day later, on Thursday, May 12, the news keeps coming.
[Archival audio]: While the courts continue investigating and moving closer to a final resolution, two more barra brava members were arrested early this morning.
[Mariano Pagella]: Two new arrests. One is «Uruguayo» Bellusci Martínez. He’s someone Manzanita mentioned in the wiretapped call, when he was asked for the names of barra members who had fired.
The other is «Chino» Allende. Darío, the repentant barra member, named him in his statement to the prosecutor’s office. According to Darío, Chino had a small pistol.
So, to sum up: just over ten days after the double murder, the authorities manage to capture five members of Boca’s barra. But despite the arrests, the investigation is still missing a key piece.
[Archival audio]: During questioning, all the detainees agreed that ten weapons were used in the ambush, which had been hidden in a car belonging to the man known as Corbacho.
[Mariano Pagella]: The murder weapons are nowhere to be found. We’ll take a short break and be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: In his statement, Darío said that the one in charge of handing out the weapons before the ambush was Corbacho, one of the first to be arrested. He also described them as several revolvers and pistols of different calibers. But after 10 days of investigation, only one had been found, at Manzanita’s house, the one his wife said someone had «planted.» And although that gun is similar in caliber to the shots fired in the ambush, forensic analysis couldn’t identify it as one of the weapons used. Weapons are a key element in any investigation, but Darío didn’t see whether they were thrown away or hidden somewhere. In other words, there’s no sign of where they might be, until…
[Paula Asaro]: What looked like a father and son showed up at the court to testify, and they gave the exact location of the weapons.
[Mariano Pagella]: The «father» prosecutor Asaro mentions is Carlos Varani, «El Capitán,» who works up the nerve to testify after finding out that several of the barra members are already in custody. And he goes with his nephew, not his son, as Asaro says.
El Capitán had been second-in-command to Quique el Carnicero, El Abuelo’s predecessor. But when El Abuelo took power, El Capitán stopped going to the barra’s section of the stands, because, according to him, he didn’t share «certain ideas» of the new group. Even so, he stayed on good terms with La 12, and got charged with running some small soccer fields near La Bombonera that also sold food and drinks. And those fields were none other than right around the corner from the intersection of Huergo and Brasil, the site of the shooting that killed the two River fans.
In his statement, El Capitán says that on the day of the superclásico, around 6 in the evening, he was cleaning up the fields to close for the day when he heard the shots. He says that shortly after, Manzanita and Querida came over. Querida asked him for a beer. And Manzanita handed him three or four guns, telling him, «Take these, hold onto them until tomorrow.»
El Capitán testifies that he decided to take them because he was afraid they’d hurt him, and he hid them until the following Monday. That day he was too affraid that someone would find them and accuse him of something, or of how the barra would react if he went to the police. So he decided to put them in a green garbage bag and gave them to his nephew so he would «make them disappear.» The weapons ended up in the Riachuelo, the river that runs along the La Boca neighborhood, near where the shooting happened.
[Paula Asaro]: Well, at that point the whole plan is laid out for how the divers would go to the site, because, well, the Riachuelo was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
[Mariano Pagella]: Like looking for a needle in a haystack.
[Archival audio]: Since ten this morning, divers from the Federal Police and the Coast Guard have been trying to locate a bag on the bed of the Río de la Plata, at Dársena Sur. Inside it, wrapped in a t-shirt, are the weapons used in the murder of the two River fans.
[Paula Asaro]: The whole team of divers, everyone, had started in the morning. And, well, we took turns in shifts…
[Mariano Pagella]: But on the first day, nothing turns up.
[Archival audio]: The search did not produce results. Due to the lack of light, Judge Quiroga decided to suspend the search, which will resume first thing tomorrow.
[Mariano Pagella]: On the second day, Saturday the 14th, two weeks after the superclásico, it’s prosecutor Asaro’s turn to be at the site.
[Paula Asaro]: I remember it was freezing cold. I mean, the media was there, people filming, all that. Well, I go off to rest for a bit, and let’s say an hour went by, and, well, they tell me that yes, the weapons had turned up.
[Mariano Pagella]: The weapons are wrapped in the green garbage bag El Capitán described. There are four: two .22-caliber revolvers, a .32-caliber revolver, and a 9 mm pistol.
[Paula Asaro]: They matched the weapons Randi had described, and the ones these two people I told you about had described. They were exactly the same, and the forensic analysis matched them to the bullets that had hit the mosquito truck, the wounded, and the dead.
[Mariano Pagella]: Ballistic analysis shows that the 9 mm pistol recovered from the river was the one that fired the bullets that killed Ángel Delgado.
[Archival audio]: At a press conference, Judge César Quiroga confirmed that so far, five Boca barra brava members will stand trial for, among other crimes, the double homicide of the River supporters.
[Mariano Pagella]: About two weeks after the double homicide, the authorities now have five people in custody and several pieces of evidence, including the weapons used in the crime.
[Archival audio]: The judge also acknowledged that the statements of a repentant barra brava member were essential to the course of the investigation.
[Mariano Pagella]: He’s referring to Darío. Even though the investigation was sealed, it leaked to the press that his testimony had been key to the case.
[Archival audio]: I have ordered the indictment and pretrial detention of Ricardo Quintero, alias Querida; José Martín Villagarcía, alias Corbacho; Miguel Santoro, alias Manzana; Edgardo Allende, alias Chino or Alex; and Mario Inés Javier Bellusci Martínez, alias el Uruguayo.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s Judge Quiroga speaking.
[Archival audio]: The charges are doubly aggravated homicide, and attempted homicide, doubly qualified and aggravated for having been committed with treachery and with the premeditated participation of more than two people.
[Mariano Pagella]: While this is a big step forward, the investigation isn’t over yet, because several suspects are still on the run. And the most important of them all, the one who will be hunted most intensely, is the head of La 12: José Barritta, El Abuelo.
Several weeks will go by full of theories, with Interpol and the FBI searching for him internationally, but the way he’s finally caught will be much more surprising.
[Archival audio]:
«Good morning. We’re… Better if you say it. What’s your name?»
«José Barritta.»
«José Barritta. Alias?»
«El Abuelo.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Because he’ll turn himself in to a journalist, on a live broadcast, landing the reporter the scoop of the decade.
[Horacio Caride]: I’m Horacio Caride. I’m the journalist El Abuelo turned himself in to.
[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.
The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.
Fact-checking is by Ana Prieto.
Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolás Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme music. Martín Cruz handled the 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. 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.