“Hurry up, Martin. Your parents are dead in the garage in the car.”. At 9:01 a.m. on Thursday, August 25, Mary Nymph “Nina” Aquino, the domestic worker of José Enrique Del Río (74) and María Mercedes Alonso (72), the couple murdered in Vicente López, sent a WhatsApp message to alert them to the crime. The message was for Martin Del Rio, youngest son of the couple and arrested last week and listed as a double parricide. The researchers analyze the audios to further the investigation.
The dialogue between Aquinas, who was detained for two weeks as “handover” of the couple and was later released, and the alleged parricide oroccurred at 9:01 and 9:26, minutes after the couple had been found. “Hello Nina… What happened? I don’t understand you, you talk to me so fast that I didn’t understand you. What happened?”, was the response of the defendant for the crime.
In parallel, it investigate a series of videos from which they believe that, after committing the parricide, the accused Martín Del Río went to his father-in-law’s apartment in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Colegiales, to bathe and discard key evidence such as the DVR with the images of the security cameras that the killer robbed at the crime scene. After seeing the images, the older brother of the detainee did not hesitate to assure that Martín is the one that appears in the images and he would be the murderer of his parents.
The recording of the audios – which the Télam agency accessed – in which Del Río’s calls to 911 are also counted, mean a proof of courage for the investigators. “Just like 911, he responds very coldly. These audios are another indication of its staging“, said to Telam one of the judicial investigators.
The WhatsApp audios between Del Río and “Nina” Aquino
Next, the string of WhatsApp audio messages –analyzed with geolocation by cell phone antennas– between María Ninfa “Nina” Aquino and Martín Del Río Jr., which was accessed by Télam via judicial sources:
9.01 (antenna of Camino Bancalari and Uruguay, Tigre)
-“Nina” Aquino (NA):- Martín… Martín, it’s Nina, hurry up and run here. Your parents are dead in the garage in the car. Dale Martín, please hurry up, I’m outside, I’m not going into the house anymore.
-Martín Del Río (MDR):- Hello Nina… What happened? I don’t understand you, you talk to me so fast that I didn’t understand you. What happened?
9.03
-NA:- Hurry up, Martín, please, your parents are dead in the garage, both of them in the car, give him Martín, I’m dying too! I went outside. Please Martin, come!
9.04 (Del Río made a call to the 911 police emergency line at this time)
-MDR:- Yes, how are you? Look… My parents’ maid is telling me that there is a problem in their house. That my parents are dead in the garage, she says. He just called me.
9.04 (After the 911 call, send another WhatsApp audio):
-MDR:- Nina, I called the Police there, they’re going there, I’m going at a man’s pace, but hey, I’m going.
-NA:- Let your brother know, please, Martín. Can I go back into the house, Martin? If the police come, do I go in?
9.06
-MDR:- I don’t know Nina what to tell you, the truth is, they told me that they are going. Yes… they will tell you. I’m going. That’s where I let Diego know.
9.26 (Antenna of Panamericana and Avenida José de San Martín, Florida)
-MDR:- Nina, I’m already at Melo and Panamericana. It is impossible to go up but well, here I am in the queue.
9.51 (Del Río arrived at the scene of the crime. His cell phone is captured by the telephone antenna that covers the area of Melo and Gaspar Campos, the corner of his parents’ house)
Security camera video analysis
On the other hand, prosecutors Martín Gómez, Alejandro Musso and Marcela Semería and detectives from the Departmental Investigation Delegation (DDI) of San Isidro also analyze the videos obtained from the security cameras of the building at 2465 Virrey Arredondo Street in Colegiales, where it can be seen that on the day of the crime, August 24, Del Río Jr. was between 8:02 p.m. and 8:52 p.m.
Meanwhile, the investigations are focused on obtaining new images from City Police or private cameras that clarify what Del Río did in the 16-minute period that he is seen leaving the apartment with a cloth bag with something heavy and return with the same empty, in what they believe was a maneuver to discard key elements such as the aforementioned DVR and the murder weapon.
“It could be a dumpster or a sewer. The videos that we find of what he did on the street with it are going to be key to guiding us and knowing what he did and seeing if there is any possibility of recovering transcendental evidence,” a judicial source told Télam.
The apartment, which had already been raided as part of the case on the 9th of this month and where only two laptops had been taken, is owned by Del Río’s father-in-law, a man from General Villegas who is dedicated to rural activity and who he only uses it when he comes to Buenos Aires, and that is why the now detainee also used it as an office.
In the videos of three cameras that focus on the entrance of the garage, the interior of the garage and the interior of the entrance hall of the building, it was possible to reconstruct that Del Río arrived there in his Mercedes Benz ML 350 truck at 8:02 p.m., that is, an hour and a half after allegedly leaving the scene of the crime in Vicente López (the accusation maintains that the parricide was committed between 5:33 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.).
Del Río remained inside his vehicle for “seven minutes”, in which it is suspected that he may have been accommodating incriminating elements and changing his clothes, at 8:23 p.m. he removed a heavy element from under his left arm with which he left the garage; At 8:32 p.m., he walked out the main entrance with a cloth bag in which he carries a bulky object and 16 minutes later, at 8:48 p.m., he returns to the building with the empty bag.
Finally at 8:52 pm, Del Río goes to the garage, gets into his Mercedes Benz and leaves the building.