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]: You could ask me 20 times how long it was between my first statements before the judge and the trial , and I wouldn’t remember.
[Silvia Viñas]: This is Darío Vesselizza Randi, the repentant Boca barra member and one of the most important witnesses in the trial against his fellow members of La 12. We heard his story in Episodes 4 and 5. Remember: for Darío, Boca’s barra became almost like a home in his youth. He says he shared more with them, and with el Abuelo, than with his own family. But after the ’94 superclásico and what he saw, he decided to testify before the prosecutor’s office. And they took him to the homicide division, at the central police headquarters, where he felt intimidated by some officers who showed him photos so he could identify the barra members.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I was convinced I had to steer clear even of the police, because of the way they’d acted in that moment. They’re all locked up. They all went down because of me. Cops they know are leaning on me. From leaning on me to hurting me to making me disappear, it’s just one tiny little step. I don’t want to see any cops.
[Silvia Viñas]: It wasn’t an irrational fear or paranoia. El Abuelo, the boss of La 12, met with police chiefs to coordinate security operations at the stadiums. That relationship between the barra and the police was nothing new to Darío. So, after giving his statement at the prosecutor’s office in ’94, Darío started living like a wandering ghost.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Hotels, fleabag hotels, here, there, everywhere. Changing addresses every two or three months. I instinctively tried to avoid the places where I figured I might run into people close to the barra in those days.
[Silvia Viñas]: 1995 and 1996 go by. Then comes March ’97, and the trial begins.
[Archival audio]: They can’t find the key witness, Daniel Vaselizza Randi. The defense’s strategy was to ask for the informant’s testimony to be declared null.
[Silvia Viñas]: As we said in the previous episode, the prosecutor’s office hasn’t been able to find Darío to notify him that he has to appear as a witness. But from the first hearing, the information is already in the media.
[Archival audio]: But the court decided to consider it on the 26th, the day he’s been summoned to testify.
[Silvia Viñas]: That’s how, through the news, Darío finds out that March 26, twelve days after the start of the trial, is the date he has to go testify. Expectations for his testimony are huge. A week earlier, the newspaper Olé published an interview with Darío in which he says he doesn’t know whether he’ll show up, because he’s more afraid of the police than of the barra members. And then, a few days before he’s due to testify…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I’m leaving my hotel, and at the front desk, at the concierge (and calling it a concierge is a stretch –it was a grimy counter), there were two cops with the owner, with the manager, looking at the guest register. Two cops I’d already run into in homicide.
[Silvia Viñas]: That is, when he went to the police station in ’94 to look at the photos of the barra members after the superclásico. They’re the same cops. Now they’re in plain clothes, and Darío sees them going through the hotel’s guest register.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I go up to them and, right in front of them, I ask the manager, María was her name, I think: «María, everything OK, everything in order?» «Yes, Darío,» she says. «All right. If there’s any problem, let me know,» and I leave. Five minutes later, they got the hell out of there.
[Silvia Viñas]: That same day, Darío grabs his things and leaves the hotel. And so comes Friday, March 26, ’97, the day he’s supposed to go testify.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: On the day of the hearing, if the hearing started at nine in the morning, I get up at seven thirty to buy cigarettes…
[Silvia Viñas]: And he calls the prosecutor’s office where he had given his testimony in ’94. From there, they connect him with the court. Without letting his guard down, he gives them an address that isn’t where he’s been staying, so they can pick him up there. And then a car picks him up and takes him to the central police headquarters, where they tell him that personnel from the homicide division are going to take him to the court. The same police division where he’d been intimidated three years earlier. Darío says he doesn’t want to go with them and asks to speak with the judge. The police chief calls her, and they hand him the phone.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: She identifies herself and says to me: «I’m Judge So-and-so, presiding judge of the court. At this time, you are required to testify.» I tell her, «I’m not going anywhere with these people.»
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío tells her he doesn’t trust these officers, and not only that: he doesn’t want to run into anyone from that police station at the court. Finally, the judge tells him she’s going to send a car with court staff to pick him up.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The two cops were left standing there like statues. And straight to Tribunales. One of the members of the court explains to me what’s going to happen: there’s going to be a trial and you’re a witness. Period.
[Silvia Viñas]: Darío arrives at Tribunales, enters the courtroom, and walks up to the witness table, where he sits down in front of the microphone. After almost three years, in full view of the whole court, the victims, the barra members (his second family), and el Abuelo (almost a father to him), Darío begins to recount every detail of what he lived through that April 30, 1994.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»
Episode 8: You Don’t Know What You’ve Done
As we mentioned in the previous episode, there’s no audio of the hearings. But we have the case file. So we know that at the trial, Darío’s 1994 statements are read to him, and that he then answers questions from the judges and all the lawyers for hours. And of course, we have what he told our producers. So, with all that, we’re going to reconstruct what he lived through that April 30, 1994.
Let’s start by remembering the things that were «out of the ordinary» that day, which Darío told us about in an earlier episode:
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The lead-up to a clásico, especially a home game, was always a day when the barra would gather at one spot; we’d go, we’d all go together, we’d all leave together, we’d all disperse together.
[Silvia Viñas]: The barra always had a very set routine. They started early at Manzanita’s house, their base of operations, and from there they all left for the stadium together. But that day the routine was broken.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «You have to head to the stadium; everyone go separately.» That right there was something that broke from the norm. Maybe they had been tipped off about something, that something could happen, that they were after something.
[Silvia Viñas]: So Darío rode to the stadium in a truck with other barra members who had been left stranded. Partway there, the police stopped them on the highway, made them get out, and searched the truck. After a few minutes, they let them continue on their way. And when they got to the stadium, the barra members who had left earlier, el Abuelo included, weren’t waiting for them.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: They were already going in! One of the first times I went into the stadium separated from them.
[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues the story.
[Mariano Pagella]: Despite all these «out of the ordinary» things, Darío went into the stadium as usual. When the match kicked off at three thirty in the afternoon, the barra was already in its spot in the stands.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Through the first half, the match went relatively normally. Me right behind José.
[Mariano Pagella]: Remember that Darío was one of the people in charge of holding up José Barritta, el Abuelo, when he climbed onto the main paravalancha at La Bombonera to lead the crowd. When the referee blew the whistle for halftime, the match was 0-0. During halftime, it was normal for the stadium’s food and drink vendors to bring things to the barra without them having to ask.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The Coca-Cola guy would bring you four trays of Coca-Cola, the guy selling burgers would bring you four boxes full of hamburger sandwiches. It got passed around, people talked…
[Mariano Pagella]: Up to that point, everything was normal. But then, in the second half…
[Archival audio]: River keeps pushing for a second goal with Toresani. Off the post, gooooal, Crespo goal, Crespo goal, Crespo goooooal…
[Mariano Pagella]: River went up two to nothing. And in Boca’s stands, the mood began to change.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Little by little you started to hear: «Let’s go get them. Let’s go get them. We have to go get them.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío testified that a group from Boca’s barra wanted to go to River’s stands in the middle of the match, with knives or shivs, to take on the leaders of the rival barra. El Abuelo managed to calm them down by telling them that «after the game, something will be done.»
[Archival audio]: Ladies and gentlemen, the superclásico of Argentine soccer went to River Plate.
[Mariano Pagella]: As soon as the match ended, several barra members came up to el Abuelo.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Now, there were two groups. Niponi’s group (he was the one leading) wanted to go to where things finally ended up happening.
[Mariano Pagella]: Niponi was one of the most violent members of La 12, and he was close to el Abuelo. His name is Freddy Cáceres Romero, but in the barra he was known as «Bolita Niponi» because he had a tattoo of that word, «Niponi.» Nobody knows what it means. In his statement, Darío described him as, quote, «a mercenary, an executor of the most abhorrent orders,» who «boasts of being willing to do anything.» So Niponi and his group wanted to go to the intersection of Huergo and Brasil.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Supposedly, and this is what was expected, the only route River’s people were going to have was to leave by Huergo, wherever they were headed.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s because that intersection is one of the main ways out of the La Boca neighborhood, so it made sense to go wait for them there. But there was also another plan, led by Francis de Maio, a former police officer and the leader of one of the barra groups that backed el Abuelo when he took power in 1981.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And Francis, with a group, wanted to go to Caminito. You knew the visiting fans always ended up in that area of Caminito. That’s where they left their cars, their buses, everything.
[Mariano Pagella]: Caminito is one of the most historic parts of La Boca, where the classic colorful houses are, and where the away exit is, the one River fans use to leave. Francis proposed going to look for them there. But el Abuelo told everyone no, because…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: That day the police were everywhere. Police everywhere. Of all the home superclásicos I’ve known, that must have been the day I saw the most police activity.
[Mariano Pagella]: «Don’t be stupid,» el Abuelo said. «There are too many cops, and it’s like a suicide mission.» In other words, it was a very risky move. But Niponi and Manzanita, el Abuelo’s second-in-command, didn’t listen to him either.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: You see groups starting to break off within the barra, right there in the stands. And a group of about 20 guys heads out. It wasn’t normal for me to go around with them, but I went along to see what, what was going on, what they were doing.
[Mariano Pagella]: That group included Niponi, Manzanita, Francis, and other barra members we met in earlier episodes, like Gomina and Corbacho. Darío testified that the group left the stadium and went to a lot near La Bombonera, where the barra usually parked their cars.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: There were several cars parked there, but we all headed for Corbacho’s car…
[Mariano Pagella]: …which was a Ford Falcon, a big car. Corbacho opened the trunk and moved a box aside…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And there were all the pieces, lined up one next to the other.
[Mariano Pagella]: Almost ten guns, according to Darío.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: What was especially striking was that behind the car, about 30 feet away, there was a huge Federal Police post.
[Mariano Pagella]: Police officers were coming and going the whole time. The match had just ended, and the fans were leaving the stadium. It was around 6 p.m. in April, so it was still daylight. Even so, none of the cops noticed what was happening at Corbacho’s car at that moment. And if any of them did see something, they didn’t say anything.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The ones who were used to, uh, grabbing a piece start coming over. For example, there was a 9mm pistol that was known to be Querida’s. Corbachito grabs a .38. Corbachito is what they called Corbacho’s youngest brother.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío figures that at the time Corbachito was 10 or 11 years old. He was a little kid.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: So, like it was nothing, everyone finishes loading up. If I had to tell you, I’d say there were eight pieces. He locks it, pockets the key. And then… A small group stayed there, and another one started forming to get moving.
[Mariano Pagella]: A group of barra members, furious over their team’s defeat, take to the streets of La Boca armed, looking for River fans.
We’ll take a break and be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: OK, before we continue with Darío’s account, let’s go over what we know so far. A few minutes after the end of the superclásico, a group of about 20 members of La 12 decided to go attack River fans, even though el Abuelo, their leader, told them not to. There were two plans. One, pushed by Niponi, one of the most violent barra members, was to go to the intersection of Huergo and Brasil, because it’s the main way out of the La Boca neighborhood and lots of River fans were sure to pass through there. The other plan, Francis’s, the former cop, was to go to the Caminito area, where the away exit is.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Maybe Francis’s original idea of going to Caminito was to go straight to where the stuff was.
[Mariano Pagella]: «The stuff» means the River fans’ flags, the most prized spoils of war for a barra. In the end, this is the plan most of them choose. Darío decides to go with them.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And with about 20 of us, with Francis, Corbacho, Gomina, and several others, we head off walking along the train tracks, knowing they came out right at Caminito.
[Mariano Pagella]: The tracks were from an old railway that no longer ran. In a few minutes, they reached Caminito’s main avenue.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The first thing that passes us by is a squad of police motorcycles. By then they were already in the habit of riding two to a bike, one cop driving and the other with a shotgun on the back. But they pass us at six, ten feet away. They go by, they look, and they keep going.
[Mariano Pagella]: The group of barra members kept moving forward. They were about to reach the exit for River’s fans, and then…
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: From behind me I hear: «Pa, pa, pa, pa, pa,» shooting at River’s people. People scattered in every direction.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío testified that the first one to shoot was Francis, who fired a few shots into the air, shouting, «Come on, Boca!» Right after that, another barra member, whom Darío didn’t know, fired straight at the River fans.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You hear shots, which at the time I thought were fireworks, those famous three bangs. And no, it turns out there had actually been a couple of real gunshots and people scattered.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s how River fans remembered it in the first episode.
[Diego Buenaño]: And we heard what we assumed were gunshots. They were like explosions.
[Mariano Pagella]: The gunshots took Darío by surprise too, and he got down to the ground. He told us he hadn’t expected it. Remember, the plan was to blend in with the fans and steal their flags, not to start shooting indiscriminately. He couldn’t believe they hadn’t killed anyone. After a few seconds, he got up and reacted.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: When all this happened over there, they flat-out started shooting and all, my first reaction was to turn around and head back the same way I’d come.
[Mariano Pagella]: Some barra members stayed there, trading punches with the River fans. But others (including Francis, who fired the first shots) did the same as Darío, and after a few minutes they all came together again in the parking lot, where they’d started. A group of barra members had stayed behind there, and a few more had already joined them.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And so, the main guys are there now. Manzanita was there, Francis was there, Marcelo de Lomas was there, Corbacho was there with his younger brother, Niponi was there. So then Niponi goes: «OK, let’s go get ‘em. Let’s go to Huergo.»
[Mariano Pagella]: His original plan. So while the police were arriving at Caminito to try to get the situation under control, this group set off in the opposite direction: to the intersection of Huergo and Brasil.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: At least in the group up front, all the pieces were already there. I knew everyone up front was already armed.
[Mariano Pagella]: They were all armed, Darío says: Gomina, Marcelo de Lomas, Corbacho, and even Corbachito, his little brother, who was about 11.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The little brother was walking next to me. The little brother pulls out a piece, pulls out a .38, and pulls some bullets out of his pocket, because somebody was asking the kid for bullets. And Corbachito says, «No, I can’t give them to you, because they’re my brother’s. I have to pass them to him now.» Corbacho was walking behind.
[Mariano Pagella]: This whole situation may seem unreal. Why follow a group of armed people? But let’s try to look at it in context. The barra always went around armed, and at that moment Darío was following the most important members of La 12 after el Abuelo. Within the barra, it was a situation that was easy to normalize. In all, they walk about 10 blocks, cutting through the side streets. Darío remembers there were about 40 barra members at that point.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The one paying the most attention to everything was Niponi. Because Niponi was telling Manzanita, he was saying: «Hey, we gotta take a good look at the faces of the ones who are with us, huh, because these kids are never with us. It’s good that these kids are with us. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.» Psyching each other up, you know? That sort of thing.
[Mariano Pagella]: On Brasil Street, some tennis courts took up almost the entire block. And near the intersection with Huergo, on the corner, there was a warehouse. Between them ran a railroad track, and there, hidden by the warehouse, the group of barra members waited for the River fans.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: An ambush. I know you’re going to come at me head-on down a street, and that street has only one way out, so I’m going to wait for you in a spot where you can’t see me, and I can attack you. Where you have no choice but to come straight on, I’m going to wait for you off to the side, facing you.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s how they positioned themselves. They were hidden so that they would see the River fans first when they started arriving. About ten minutes went by, and they still hadn’t come. So Niponi told two of the kids, one of them Corbachito, to go up ahead to Huergo and let them know when River’s people were coming. These moves put Darío on alert.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I had already started falling behind that group, some 60, 90 feet, waiting for things to kick off and then to see what happened. And you hear one of the little kids say: «Here they come, here they come.»
[Mariano Pagella]: At that moment, several barra members came out of hiding and moved quickly toward the intersection of Huergo and Brasil. The first ones to go ahead were Manzanita (who didn’t have a gun), Corbacho, Francis, and Niponi. That front group signaled to the rest to crouch down or move slowly, because the mosquito trucks, full of River fans, were already approaching.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The first time I hear shooting, I hear it right next to me. I turn my head and see the little kids: Corbachito and one other. Corbachito with the revolver.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s when the shooting broke out. Niponi started firing his weapon (a .38 caliber revolver), shouting: «You’re all gonna die, you’re all gonna die!»
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And then you hear it, now it was: «Pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa.» All the other shots started going off.
[Mariano Pagella]: The first truck went by fast. But the second one took the full force of the gunfire.
[Diego Buenaño]: And that’s when we started to see people sort of ducking down, and so on. And I started hearing what I thought were rocks hitting the metal of the truck. I’d hear pin, pin, pin, pin, pin, but lots of them.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I curl up into a ball, and you hear gunshots, pim, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[Mariano Pagella]: The barra members fired as they shouted «Go Boca!» and «Come on, Boca!» When the second truck went over the train tracks, it braked briefly.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I closed my eyes. I heard the truck brake, from behind it, and saw someone fall.
[Mariano Pagella]: We don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that the person Darío saw fall was Walter Vallejos, one of the victims. When the truck stopped, some barra members took the opportunity to get closer. Darío says that Querida took up a position at the back of the truck, shouting, «Let’s keep hitting them, they’re stuck,» while he fired 10 or 12 shots.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: In the middle of the shooting, someone said, «Let’s go, let’s go.» It all happened in a matter of seconds.
[Mariano Pagella]: Querida is the one who shouted, quote, «Let’s go, let’s go, that’s it, the police are gonna come!», according to Darío’s testimony. So the barra members with the guns pulled back and escaped the same way they had come, along the path between the tennis courts and the warehouse on the corner of Huergo and Brasil.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And specifically, of the ones I saw coming, the last of the stragglers to pull back was Niponi. He takes off a hoodie he was wearing and made, like, a little bag out of the hoodie, and you could see that each one who came up to him was dropping off the pieces: Miguel, Querida, Marcelo, Corbachito, Corbacho, all of them.
[Mariano Pagella]: At that point, they reached some small soccer fields around the corner from Huergo and Brasil, run by El Capitán Varani, another member of Boca’s barra, whom we met in an earlier episode. He was closing up the place’s food and drink cart, a kind of food truck, when the barra members showed up.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I stay about 150 feet back, and I see Niponi, Miguel, Querida, and a couple of other guys get up into that cart. They get in there with that bag, which by then was a little bundle…
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, the hoodie with the pieces wrapped up in it.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And right away they come down without it.
[Mariano Pagella]: The guns were left in Captain Varani’s care, and he would later throw them into the Riachuelo, the river that borders the southern part of Buenos Aires. The first sirens could already be heard coming from the intersection of Huergo and Brasil. Darío and the barra members, now without their guns, decided to go back to the stadium, but separately, so as not to draw attention.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Five one way, two another, three another. Me, I had this thing: when there was a ruckus, I didn’t like to run off. I preferred to walk away and keep a good eye out in every direction.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío says that on the way back he once again crossed paths with a huge number of police officers, as many as before. About 20, 25 minutes after the shooting, they all met up again at La Bombonera. And there were three or four cars there.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: They’re the same three or four cars that had been there at the start, before the match, at Manzanita’s house, to come to the stadium.
[Mariano Pagella]: In one of them, a white Fiat Spazio, was José Barritta, el Abuelo.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And so, José sticks his head out the window of the Spazio: «All of you, get the hell out of here. You don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t want to see any of you.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío doesn’t know whether el Abuelo was angry because they’d gone to fight the River fans, because they’d fired shots, or because he already knew there were people dead. The cars started up and left.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: One car one way, another car the other, everybody the hell out of there.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío took a bus and went home. The next day he got the mysterious visit we already told you about, from the man who told him el Abuelo’s orders were for «everyone to disappear.» And so came the nerves, the sleepless nights, the doubts, and finally the decision to go to the prosecutor’s office to testify. A decision that, three years later, brought him to the chair where he’s sitting now, in front of a microphone, facing the judges. And where he has just recounted everything that happened after that superclásico in ’94.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: Don’t ask me how long that hearing I had there at Tribunales lasted. But it included everything. It included testifying, rubbing salt in the wound again, stirring it all up again and again.
[Mariano Pagella]: In all, including the questions from the victims’ side, the defense, and the court, his testimony lasted more than five hours. But it doesn’t end there.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: One of the lawyers asks for a careo.
[Mariano Pagella]: A careo is a kind of confrontation between two or more testimonies, to argue over their contradictions. And the one who wants a careo with Darío, a one-on-one, is Freddy Cáceres Romero, alias Bolita Niponi. One of the most savage barra members, whom Darío himself described as, quote, «an executor of the most abhorrent orders.»
One last break, and we’ll be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: Before we go on, I think it’s worth telling how Bolita Niponi was arrested, how he ended up in the defendants’ dock at the trial. It gives us a better idea of the kind of person Darío was facing in that careo we mentioned before the break.
The story is this: when the prosecutor’s office issued the arrest warrants after Darío’s testimony in ’94, Niponi was one of the barra members who had gone on the run.
[Gustavo Grabia]: The police knew nothing about Bolita Niponi. It was as if the earth had swallowed him up.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Gustavo Grabia, the journalist and barra expert we’ve heard in other episodes. Niponi had a reputation as a savage, violent barra member, but he had a weak spot: he was also a thief.
[Gustavo Grabia]: The thing is, Bolita Niponi had pulled off a robbery with a buddy of his from Lomas de Zamora.
[Mariano Pagella]: That is, an accomplice from his neighborhood. When they pulled off this robbery, his partner hid the loot, but then the police caught him. And Niponi never found out where the stolen money was. But now that he was on the run, he needed it to get by. So a few months after the superclásico, he decided to go visit his partner in prison.
[Gustavo Grabia]: So he’d tell him where the loot was hidden, the half that was his. And there at the prison, Bolita Niponi left a trail. Someone recognized him, and they started following him.
[Mariano Pagella]: And that’s how they figured out he was hiding in the Villa Albertina neighborhood, in Lomas de Zamora. It was an informal settlement, with makeshift houses and narrow inner streets, but they didn’t know the exact place. So the police came up with a plan to catch him.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Back then, Villa Albertina didn’t have natural gas; you could only cook with gas canisters. So to find out who Bolita Niponi was, or which block of the villa he lived on, the police came up with a pretty clever strategy. They dressed up as workers from the gas company at the time, which was called Metrogas, and went house to house telling people to sign up so they could get natural gas installed.
[Mariano Pagella]: The neighbors, trusting and surprised that the work was being done, signed the authorization, filling in their information on the forms they were given to sign.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And so they went knocking on every house, until at one of the houses someone signed with the name Jorge Freddy Cáceres Romero, which was Bolita Niponi’s real name. The next day they got the arrest warrant, they had his exact address, and they went to get him. Natural gas, of course, was never installed in that villa.
[Mariano Pagella]: As a result of that operation, almost three years after his capture, Bolita Niponi is being tried along with the other barra members for the double murder.
Niponi’s defense is that he was never at the intersection of Huergo and Brasil, and that after the match he went by Caminito and from there went home. Darío’s testimony says the exact opposite. It not only places him at the scene, but also identifies him as one of the main instigators. In other words, he’s one of the people most damaged by Darío’s version of events. That’s why Niponi’s lawyers ask for the careo, this kind of confrontation between testimonies.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: The prosecutor was against it.
[Mariano Pagella]: We’re back with Darío, who at this point knows that one of the defendants wants a careo, but he doesn’t know who yet.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: And the lawyer kept pressing the presiding judge. The presiding judge looks at me, starts talking to me, and asks me: «Are you willing to do a careo with the person requesting it?» «Yes, I don’t have any problem with that.» And it was Niponi.
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío stays seated in the same spot where he’d been testifying for hours. On a platform facing him, they set a chair with armrests. Niponi sits there. They’re face to face. Niponi is short, and his feet don’t reach the floor. He looks furious.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: It started out like a typical careo, going in studs-up: «And who are you? How do you know me? I don’t know you.» «What a bad memory,» I told him in front of the court, «you’ve got such a bad memory. I was next to José.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío was, remember, one of the people in charge of holding up José Barritta, el Abuelo, when he climbed onto the main paravalanchas. Niponi’s strategy is to discredit Darío’s testimony by saying he’s lying and that he isn’t even part of the barra. Darío, for his part, stays calm, watching Niponi and listening to him.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «All these lies you’re telling, who sent you? I want to know who sent you,» he kept asking me. «My conscience sent me. And who sent you to kill innocent people? Because you and I know innocent people were killed.» «But it wasn’t me.» «But you know who it was; you were right there next to them.»
[Mariano Pagella]: To back up Niponi’s argument, the defense lawyers ask the other accused barra members to say whether they recognize Darío as part of the barra. One by one, each barra member says he doesn’t know him. They all hold firm to that answer until they get to the last one: José Barritta.
El Abuelo says he does know him.
After all this back-and-forth, the prosecutor stands up and says:
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: «Never in my life, in my entire career in the justice system, have I seen a witness being mistreated like this.»
[Mariano Pagella]: So the prosecutor asks for the careo to end and for the witness to stop being exposed like that. Darío steps down from the stand, and they have him wait outside the courtroom while other witnesses come in to testify. The hearing ends at 6:20 p.m.
[Darío Vesselizza Randi]: I remember it clear as day: it ends. They tell me I can leave. At the same time, right beside me, behind me, one of the judges is leaving, and she says to me, «What would you like to do? Do you want protection? I’m offering you protection.» «Your Honor,» I tell her, «it’s all over now. It’s all over now, Your Honor, enough. Tomorrow my life begins.»
[Mariano Pagella]: «He Went, He Talked, and He Ratted Them Out,» reads the next day’s edition of the newspaper Olé, in huge orange letters that take up the whole front page.
[Gustavo Grabia]: When he talks, he confirms everything he had told us in the interview and many other things he says there on the stand, and there’s, let’s say, a kind of scalpel-cold chill that runs down the backs, mostly of the defense lawyers, going: «Hey, I think after this, we’ve lost. «
[Mariano Pagella]: Darío’s testimony is key to the homicide charge the barra members face, but that’s one of two charges being argued at trial.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Extortion, ticket scalping, parking rackets, illegal merchandise, and, well, all the businesses La 12 had.
[Mariano Pagella]: The hardest part is still to come: proving the barra’s illegal businesses. And the main target there is el Abuelo.
[Archival audio]:
Antonio Alegre: I had el Abuelo over at my house one day.
Journalist: What for?
Alegre: To neutralize everything that was going on at Boca Juniors for three and a half, four years.
[Mariano Pagella]: The end of the trial and the fate of the barra members, 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 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.