Bajo Flores is a district in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, at the edge of the Flores neighborhood. Barrio Rivadavia I, where the court later placed three of the killings, lies within it. The events that led to the trial of Marcelo Alejandro Antelo took place there in 2010, in a stretch of about four months.
His date and place of birth, his family, his schooling and his work are not on record. Police and the press in August 2010 described him as 22 years old. Witnesses had been giving investigators a first name for a young man in the district since February 2010, and that is how the inquiry began, months before anyone knew who he was.
The earliest killing for which Antelo was convicted took place at about two in the morning on April 11, 2010, in Barrio Rivadavia I. The victim was Rodrigo Ezcurra, 27. The Casación judgment records that he was killed during an attempted robbery, and that the Tribunal Oral classified the act as a homicide committed in order to carry out another crime (homicidio criminis causae), in concurrence with an offence under the arms law. Antelo was held to be a coauthor; Noticias Argentinas reported that other people involved were not identified.
Ezcurra's case was the one for which Antelo was first formally held after his arrest in August 2010.
At about half past two in the morning on August 8, 2010, Jorge Alberto Mansilla, 48, was killed in Barrio Rivadavia I. The court convicted Antelo of this homicide as its author. A motive is not on record.
A week later, at about nine in the evening on August 15, 2010, two men were killed in the same barrio. The Casación judgment names them as Pablo Federico Zaniuk and Alberto Raúl Cabrera; press reports of 2010 and 2012 give the second man's name as Marcelo Cabrera and describe the two as friends. The press gave their ages as 26 and 28. The court treated the two deaths as two homicides committed by Antelo as coauthor, in material concurrence, and as one event.
Santos Valeroso Vargas, 28, was killed in Barrio Rivadavia on February 24, 2010. Antelo was charged with this homicide and tried for it. The trial court acquitted him of the facts in that case (causa 3507). The prosecutor appealed the acquittal on the ground that the court's reasoning was only apparent; the outcome of that appeal is not on record. Vargas's death is therefore not among the killings for which Antelo stands convicted.
The judgment also covers people who survived. The court found Antelo responsible for an attempted homicide of one man, serious injuries to one woman, and an attempted robbery of a third person, the last in concurrence with an offence under the arms law. In all, press and court summaries speak of three people injured. In August 2010 the press also reported that two women had survived an attack and given investigators information about the person responsible.
The Policía Federal's División Homicidios worked on the series for months, beginning in February 2010 when several witnesses named the young man. A prosecutor, Estela Andrades, was identified in the press in September 2010 as the one who would ask for his formal detention for the Vargas killing and for the combining of the other homicide files into one case: those of Maximiliano Villa, 27, on July 22, and of Zaniuk and Cabrera on August 15. Villa's killing, like the others the investigators were examining, did not result in a conviction of Antelo.
In August 2010 police said they considered six homicides proven and suspected as many as nine or ten in and around Barrio Rivadavia. One press report said police believed he could be tied to about twenty violent incidents. These were statements of suspicion, made at the time of the arrest. The trial later concerned five homicides, seven attacks in all, and the court convicted of four killings.
Antelo was detained by Policía Federal officers from Comisaría 38 in Bajo Flores in the last days of August 2010. Press reports of August 31 place the detention on the previous day or the weekend before; the court record dates the related case, numbered 3420, to August 28, 2010. He was held first on an offence unrelated to the killings, and the investigators then connected him to the Homicidios inquiry. He was 22. After the arrest he was formally held for the Ezcurra killing.
The trial opened before the Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal N° 27 of the Capital Federal on August 6, 2012. The judges were Javier De La Fuente, Jorge Romeo and Federico Salva. Thirty-seven witnesses testified. In the closing arguments, the prosecutor asked for 25 years in prison for the five homicides, and the complaining party asked for life imprisonment. On the same occasion the charges included two attempted homicides, aggravated concealment, an arms-law offence, aggravated robbery and serious injuries.
On Friday, September 7, 2012, the court found him responsible for four homicides and sentenced him to life imprisonment (prisión perpetua). The reasons were read on September 14, 2012. The operative part of the judgment, as recorded in the Casación judgment, rejected the defense's constitutional challenges and its pleas of nullity, sentenced Antelo to life imprisonment with accessory penalties and costs as author or coauthor of the offences listed above, all in material concurrence, and acquitted him in the Vargas case.
The defense appealed to the Cámara Federal de Casación Penal. Its arguments were that the court had avoided reviewing the constitutionality of article 14 of the Penal Code, which bars conditional release for those convicted under article 80, paragraph 7, and that life imprisonment amounted to a penalty equivalent to death; it also challenged the nullity rulings, the evidence and the classification of each case, and the constitutionality of article 12.
Sala III decided the case, Antelo, Marcelo Alejandro s/recurso de casación (causa 16.865), on May 9, 2014, with Judges Mariano Hernán Borinsky, Eduardo Rafael Riggi and Liliana Catucci. The court rejected the nullity pleas and the challenges to the evidence and classification. It held the sentence not disproportionate to the gravity of the acts and his culpability, and found the constitutional argument poorly supported. It treated the challenge to article 14 as premature, because Antelo could not yet qualify for temporary leave, semi-liberty or conditional release, and rejected the challenge to article 12 for failing to identify the guarantees said to be violated. A legal news report of June 4, 2014 summarized the ruling as upholding the life sentence.
His present place of detention is not on record. The last court ruling on the record is the Casación decision of May 9, 2014.
The press in 2010 spoke of seven to ten homicides and of about twenty incidents; the courts convicted of four killings and acquitted of one. The Vargas acquittal was contested by the prosecutor. The name of one of the August 15 victims differs between the judgment and the press.
February 2010: witnesses begin giving investigators a name; Santos Valeroso Vargas is killed on February 24 (acquitted).
April 11, 2010: Rodrigo Ezcurra is killed.
July 22, 2010: Maximiliano Villa is killed (examined by investigators; no conviction).
August 8, 2010: Jorge Alberto Mansilla is killed.
August 15, 2010: Pablo Federico Zaniuk and a second man named Cabrera are killed.
Late August 2010: Antelo is arrested.
August 6, 2012: trial opens; 37 witnesses.
September 7, 2012: verdict, life imprisonment; reasons read September 14.
May 9, 2014: Casación, Sala III, rejects the defense appeal.