Brenda Agüero was a young nurse at the Hospital Materno Neonatal Ramón Carrillo, the provincial public maternity hospital in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Between March and June 2022, thirteen babies who had been born there in good health suddenly fell gravely ill in the hours after birth. Five of them died and eight survived. Prosecutors said she was the one member of staff present at every one of those events, and that she gave the babies injections of potassium and insulin.
She was arrested in August 2022 and tried in 2025 alongside ten hospital managers and provincial health officials, in a trial that lasted about six months before a court made up of three professional judges and eight citizen jurors. On June 18, 2025, she was found guilty of five counts of aggravated homicide and eight attempts, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The vote was six to four, and the presiding judge wrote the reasoning of the minority that would have acquitted her. Agüero has denied harming any child. Her appeal was admitted in September 2025 and sent to the Superior Tribunal of Justice of Córdoba, the province's highest court.
Agüero lived with her mother, to whom she is very close, and her two younger sisters in Río Ceballos, a town in the Sierras Chicas north of the provincial capital, according to a profile by Gabriela Origlia in La Nación. Her parents are separated; her father lives in Buenos Aires, and the family had moved to Córdoba from there. She told the court she was single and had never had a partner. She turned 30 in prison on June 2, 2025.
She studied nursing at the Instituto San Nicolás, run by the public employees' union, and graduated with good grades. In 2018 she began working at the Sanatorio Allende, a private hospital in Córdoba. Her goal, she said at trial, was the Hospital Materno Neonatal, and she took her résumé there week after week and was turned down many times. She started at the hospital in December 2020, according to Diario de Cuyo, which reported at the time of her arrest that she had no known work or personal problems. When the case broke she had been on the staff for one year and eight months.
At the hospital she worked in obstetrics, where nurses care for mothers. Prosecutors stressed at trial that she was assigned to the mothers and was not supposed to have contact with the babies.
The deaths that formed the core of the case came on March 18, April 23 and May 23, 2022, and two more on June 6, according to reports in Diario de Cuyo in August and September 2022. All five babies had been born healthy. Eight other newborns went through similar sudden crises and survived after emergency treatment. Some of the surviving children were left with serious, lasting disability, the trial court later found.
Inside the hospital, staff noticed the pattern before anyone outside did. The Buenos Aires Herald reported, from the trial evidence, that after the first two deaths staff asked for a change in the lot of vitamin K given to newborns, searched mattresses for needles and met with a prosecutor, but that no formal complaint was filed. The two deaths on June 6 were part of a single night on which four babies fell ill within hours. Doctors who testified said they had never seen more than one such episode on a single day. That day, dozens of doctors and nurses, Agüero among them, were sent on leave, Infobae reported.
After June 6 there were no more cases. Prosecutors and the trial court both treated that fact as significant, because it coincided with her removal from the ward.
The provincial Ministry of Health did not take the deaths to a prosecutor. The criminal case began in July 2022 with a complaint from an engineer whose wife was a doctor on duty at the hospital. She had described what she was seeing on her shifts, and the couple had noticed that the share of deaths and of sick newborns had risen. The complaint went to the district prosecutor's office headed by Raúl Garzón, La Voz de San Justo reported. One of the families' lawyers, Carlos Nayi, later called the engineer the person who made the tragedy visible.
The investigation became public on August 11, 2022. Once it was in the news, about twenty families came forward to say they had been through similar experiences, and Garzón said thirteen cases were under study, counting the deaths and the survivors with serious after-effects, Diario de Cuyo reported on August 22, 2022.
On the afternoon of Friday, August 19, 2022, Agüero was arrested in Río Ceballos on Garzón's order. She was 27. She was charged with repeated aggravated homicide, and three former hospital officials, among them the former director Liliana Asís, were charged with failing in their duties as public officials, Diario de Cuyo reported that day. Agüero was one of nine hospital employees who had been removed from their posts by order of the provincial Health Ministry.
Garzón said he had ordered her detention over two of the deaths, those for which autopsy studies were furthest along. Only the last two babies to die had been autopsied. On August 22, Diario de Cuyo reported that those autopsies had found that the two babies died of an excess of potassium, and that sources in the case described the substance as having been injected deliberately. The usual injections for a newborn at the hospital were the hepatitis B and BCG vaccines and vitamin K; investigators said they were looking at a fourth injection, potassium, which they alleged Agüero had given. The case was under a secrecy order.
She was taken to the women's prison at the Bouwer penitentiary complex outside Córdoba, where she remained through the trial. Days after her arrest, health workers formed a human chain around the hospital, Diario de Cuyo reported, to call for justice for the babies and their families and to say that the staff caring for babies every day had no connection with the allegations.
The provincial health minister resigned on August 25, 2022, after criticism that he had not raised the alarm in time. Gabriela Barbás replaced him. In September 2022 Garzón charged the former minister with failing in the duties of a public official, and charged the same offense against a former deputy director of hospital management; Diario de Cuyo reported on September 20 that the former hospital director and the former head of neonatology were also charged, and that three other health officials had been removed from their posts.
Garzón also widened the case against Agüero. The Diario de Cuyo report of September 20 said he added the charge of attempted homicide for about eight babies who had survived. In November 2022 he extended the homicide charges to the earlier deaths of March 18, April 23 and May 23, and charged eight attempted homicides, Cadena 3 reported, citing the state news agency Télam and judicial sources. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team had exhumed three of the babies the week before to try to establish their causes of death. Her lawyer at the time asked for the new questioning to be put off until her challenge to her pretrial detention had been decided.
In September 2023 Garzón sent the case to trial. He said everything pointed to a single perpetrator, that a criminal profile suggested a serial pattern, and that the officials he was charging with concealment had presumably known what was happening and failed to report it in time. He said the deaths could have been prevented if they had acted sooner, Hoy Día Córdoba reported. Her lawyers by then, Gustavo Nievas and Juan Manuel Rivero, opposed the referral, arguing that there was no direct, indirect or circumstantial evidence against her. The former hospital director was placed under house arrest in February 2023, according to Perfil.
The trial began on Monday, January 6, 2025, at the Tribunales II courthouse in Córdoba, before the Seventh Criminal and Correctional Chamber. The court was presided over by judge Patricia Soria, with judges Laura Huberman and José Daniel Cesano and eight citizen jurors. Eleven people were in the dock: Agüero, accused as the direct perpetrator, and ten hospital managers and health officials accused of concealment and related offenses.
The prosecutors at trial, Sergio Ruiz Moreno and Mercedes Balestrini, told the jury that the thirteen cases were linked, that very high levels of potassium and insulin had been found in some of the babies, and that only one employee had been present at all the events. Ruiz Moreno called the case voluminous but not complex, and asked the jurors to weigh the evidence as a whole rather than in fragments. Lawyers for the mothers, among them Daniela Morales Leanza, Nicolás Ruades, Carlos Nayi and Ana Pagliano, described thirteen criminal attacks on healthy newborns, carried out by the accused nurse and covered up by officials, Perfil reported.
Nievas began by pointing to the political setting of an investigation carried out in a year before an election. He offered the jurors what he called a pact: if he proved ten points, they should vote for her innocence. Among them were claims that two complete lots of medication had gone missing without investigation, that the obstetric center had been dismantled, that controlled drugs had been left unsecured, that a document about potassium found on her phone had reached her through a WhatsApp group rather than a download, and that not all the babies had died of the same cause.
Agüero spoke on the second day of the trial for about 45 minutes and wept. She said she would not deny that the babies had died, that there was no proof against her, and that justice had to be fair. She criticized the press for portraying her as a serial killer and asked how a person with no psychiatric history could go out to kill overnight, the Buenos Aires Times reported. She declined to answer questions.
In April 2025 she spoke again. She said she was still unable to believe she was accused of things she had not done, that she had never had problems at any job, and that witnesses who called her diligent and studious had seen that held against her. She denied a mother's account that she had mistreated her and another mother's account that she had touched her baby, and said she understood the mothers' pain but had never harmed a baby. She had meant to take questions but changed her mind, her lawyer said, after seeing how aggressive the prosecutor and the families' lawyers were, Hoy Día Córdoba reported.
On June 11, 2025, in her last words before the verdict, she told the court that whatever happened she was calm, that she had never done anything to those children, that she was innocent of the charges and that she loved children. She said the evidence showed there was no serial killer in the case, Diario de Cuyo reported. She also objected, La Nación reported, to the way some mothers had read from papers while testifying.
At trial the prosecution's account, as Infobae summarized it on the day of the verdict, was that Agüero gave the newborns potassium and insulin. Prosecutors said she had what they called exclusive proximity to the mothers and babies, and that she had been placed under strong suspicion and moved out through a leave that only appeared routine.
The motive they put forward was professional. She wanted, they said, to be the first to notice a baby's symptoms, raise the alarm and stand out, so that she could move from obstetrics to neonatology. Witnesses said she often anticipated a baby's crisis before it was visible. Evidence included staff time sheets and patient records placing her on the ward, mothers who said they recognized her, and photographs of babies' medical records on her phone, the Buenos Aires Herald reported.
On April 30, 2025, Ruiz Moreno asked for life imprisonment, which he told Cadena 3 was the only penalty the law allowed for the aggravated homicides once the facts were proved. He asked for prison terms for three senior hospital managers, saying their responsibility was greater because earlier action could have prevented many of the incidents, and a three-year suspended sentence for the former minister.
Nievas told the jury that no one had seen Agüero harm a baby. He said the hospital's fingerprint records showed her entering the neonatal unit, not the obstetric center, and he challenged the contents of her phone, the psychological profile and the failure to investigate missing medication, Perfil reported. He argued that the investigation had been built around a single hypothesis.
The defense also offered an alternative explanation. Nievas told the Buenos Aires Herald that she was a scapegoat for systemic problems at the hospital, that the babies had likely died of generalized sepsis in an overloaded hospital, and that cleaning of the building had erased the evidence and explained why the deaths stopped. Morales Leanza answered that the insulin levels were far too high to be accidental and that there was no medical reason to give insulin to healthy newborns.
The jury began deliberating early on June 18, 2025. After more than ten hours, the court secretary read the verdict after 8 p.m. Agüero was found guilty of repeated homicide aggravated by insidious means, five counts, and the same offense attempted, eight counts. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, the only penalty the Penal Code provides for the offense, Infobae reported. Under the law she cannot seek parole before serving at least 35 years, the Buenos Aires Times reported. She was led out in handcuffs and taken back to Bouwer.
The court also found that all thirteen babies had been victims of institutional violence. In the written grounds it said the state, through its agents, had acted against rights protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and by Argentine law, including the law on protection of women, and it described the evidence of mistreatment of the mothers, from blaming them to misinforming them about the deaths, as overwhelming, Hoy Día Córdoba reported. It awarded the families about 550 million pesos in damages plus interest, to be paid by the Province of Córdoba jointly with those convicted once the judgment is final, and ordered a special program of care for the surviving children, Perfil reported. It recommended psychological screening of applicants for hospital jobs and sent two matters to the prosecutor general for possible investigation: a complaint by doctors that they were kept waiting for hours and badly treated when they tried to report a death at a police station on June 6, 2022, and a ministry complaint that was prepared but never filed.
Five of the ten officials were convicted, also subject to appeal. Perfil reported that the former hospital director Liliana Asís, the former head of neonatology Marta Gómez Flores, the former head of patient safety Adriana Moralez and the former administrative director Alejandro Escudero Salama each received five years in prison and four years' disqualification from public office for aggravated concealment and related offenses, and that the former provincial health secretary Pablo Carvajal received four years. Those convicted were released from the courtroom; the sentences take effect only when the judgment is final. Asís's house arrest was lifted.
The former minister was acquitted. The written grounds showed the jury split eight to two on his case: judges Cesano and Huberman would have convicted him, but the majority found that once he learned of the events on June 7, 2022, he ordered an intervention of the hospital, removed the staff involved, started an administrative inquiry and ordered a criminal complaint, which was still being prepared. Four other defendants, a doctor, a former deputy director, a former head of nursing and a former head of the ministry's legal department, were acquitted unanimously, Hoy Día Córdoba reported.
The court published its written grounds on July 23, 2025. They run to 3,161 pages, Infobae reported. Judge Cesano wrote the majority opinion on Agüero, joined by judge Huberman and four jurors.
The majority found that she had administered substances incompatible with human life, especially potassium and insulin, and that her conduct caused the deaths in five cases. Cesano wrote that there was no obstacle to reaching certainty on indirect evidence, and pointed to what he called a plurality of unequivocal indications, Diario de Cuyo reported. Hoy Día Córdoba listed them. She was the only person present on every day an event occurred. She had direct contact with the babies in eleven cases and the opportunity in the other two. She alerted doctors to babies' decline, sometimes before symptoms were clearly visible. Insulin pens and potassium ampoules were found in a medicine cabinet in the recovery room, in a form the hospital did not supply there. Expert reports described narcissistic and omnipotent personality traits. The events stopped when she stopped coming to the hospital. And when she learned she was under suspicion, she showed an intention to move to another province.
The court accepted the prosecution's account of motive, that she wanted to be first to spot symptoms and stand out in order to move to neonatology. It cited a police behavioral analysis unit that found a consistent pattern in the choice of victims, place, timing and method. Official psychological and psychiatric experts described narcissistic, self-referential, omnipotent and psychopathic traits and a lack of emotional empathy; defense experts found no such integrated profile. Files on her phone about potassium dosing and the effects of insulin, which she said a colleague had sent her, were treated as reinforcing the suspicion, Infobae reported. The majority concluded that her guilt for all thirteen events was proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Cesano also addressed the families. To the surviving children he said that a nurse had tried to harm them and had been convicted, and that most health workers devote themselves to doing good. To the parents of the five babies who died he acknowledged that no legal process could repair their loss.
The four jurors in the minority would have acquitted her. Under Córdoba's popular jury law the presiding judge, who votes only to break a tie, writes the reasoning of the jurors' position, and Soria wrote it; she said she had only set out their arguments. The minority found that in some of the thirteen cases it had not been proved that the events happened as charged, and that in the others her participation was not proved. Their reasoning was in part medical: in their view a potassium injection into muscle leaves a visible mark, and a compatible lesion appeared in only one of the thirteen babies, Hoy Día Córdoba and Infobae reported. They also noted that only two of the babies had been autopsied, because of the delay of about a month before the deaths were reported.
The defense said from the day of the verdict that it would appeal. Nievas told Perfil that four of the eight jurors had found the events did not happen at all, that the court had ignored a doctor's testimony that one of the babies who died had died of heart disease and that Agüero had never been in contact with that child, and that hospital records lacked a chain of custody. He also argued that in Buenos Aires province a life sentence requires a unanimous jury, while in Córdoba she had been convicted with four jurors voting for her innocence.
On August 26, 2025, the Seventh Chamber rejected a defense motion to annul the trial on the ground that a juror had hidden her past treatment in the public health system and an academic link to one of the acquitted defendants. The court found that nothing had been concealed and that jury selection had followed the law, La Jornada Web reported.
On September 4, 2025, judges Cesano, Soria and Huberman admitted all the casación appeals in the case and sent it to the Superior Tribunal of Justice. Agüero's lawyers had filed three. Their brief, of more than 165 pages, argued that the judgment was arbitrary and violated the presumption of innocence, that no one had seen her give any baby an injection, that the toxicology was partial and debatable, that the psychological report was methodologically inconsistent, and that the juror question tainted the trial, El Ancasti reported, citing Noticias Argentinas. The convicted officials also appealed. Prosecutor Ruiz Moreno and the families' lawyers appealed the acquittal of the former minister, and one lawyer for the families appealed two other acquittals. The acquittals of the former head of nursing and the former ministry legal head were not appealed and became final. Nayi said a ruling from the high court typically takes about two years, La Voz de San Justo reported. As of September 2025, the appeal was pending.
The central dispute is whether all thirteen events were crimes and whether she committed them. Six members of the court found both proved beyond reasonable doubt; four found neither proved in full. The case against her rested on indirect evidence, and no witness described seeing her give an injection.
The cause of the earliest deaths is also disputed. Only the last two babies who died were autopsied soon after death; three others were exhumed months later. The defense argued that infection and poor hygiene explained the deaths, while the families' lawyers and the majority pointed to insulin and potassium levels they said could only have come from outside.
The officials' convictions and the former minister's acquittal are under appeal, as are the civil damages.
2018: Agüero begins working at the Sanatorio Allende in Córdoba.
December 2020: She joins the Hospital Materno Neonatal Ramón Carrillo.
March 18, 2022: The first baby in the case dies; the series of thirteen events begins.
April 23 and May 23, 2022: Two more newborns die.
June 6, 2022: Four babies fall ill within hours; two die. Dozens of staff, Agüero among them, are sent on leave.
July 2022: An engineer married to a doctor at the hospital files the complaint that starts the criminal case.
August 11, 2022: The investigation becomes public.
August 19, 2022: Agüero is arrested in Río Ceballos and taken to Bouwer.
August 22, 2022: Autopsy findings on the last two deaths are reported.
August 25, 2022: The provincial health minister resigns.
September 2022: Officials are charged; the case against Agüero is widened to include attempted homicide.
November 2022: Homicide charges are extended to the three earlier deaths, with eight attempted homicides.
September 2023: The prosecutor sends the case to trial.
January 6, 2025: The trial of eleven defendants opens before the Seventh Criminal and Correctional Chamber with a popular jury.
April 30, 2025: The prosecutor asks for life imprisonment.
June 11, 2025: Agüero gives her last statement and declares her innocence.
June 18, 2025: Verdict: guilty on five counts of aggravated homicide and eight attempts, by six votes to four; life imprisonment. Five officials convicted; the former minister and four others acquitted.
July 23, 2025: The written grounds are published.
August 26, 2025: The chamber rejects the defense motion to annul the trial.
September 4, 2025: All appeals are admitted and sent to the Superior Tribunal of Justice of Córdoba.