Former Salvadoran Police Officer Hugo Osorio Sentenced to 70 Years for Chalchuapa Femicides
A Santa Ana court gave him 35 years for each of two women, a mother and daughter killed at his house, where clandestine graves were later found.
Published
On the night of Friday, May 7, 2021, a mother and her daughter were killed inside house 11A on the Callejón Estévez in Chalchuapa, a town in western El Salvador. Mirna was 57. Jackeline was 26. The house belonged to Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, a former officer of the National Civil Police, and what investigators found in the ground there would make Chalchuapa notorious.
On Friday, June 10, 2022, a court in Santa Ana that hears cases of violence against women sentenced Osorio, 53, to 70 years in prison for the femicides of the two women. The judge gave him 35 years for each victim, basing the figure on a Salvadoran life expectancy of 70. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum, 50 years for each, a total of 100. Osorio followed the trial by video link from the maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca.
Mirna's father, José, was in court for the verdict. "They gave him 35 years for my daughter and 35 years for my granddaughter," he told reporters as he left, in tears. "That does not heal the wound."
The judge ordered psychological treatment for the women's close relatives. She also directed the state, through its national council for the elderly, to guarantee health care, security and housing for the grandfather, as the main support of the family left behind, so that he could have a dignified old age.
Prosecutors did not speak to reporters at the courthouse, but the attorney general's office wrote on social media that it had proved Osorio's guilt and was committed to seeing that femicides received exemplary sentences.
Remains of other people were found in clandestine graves on the Callejón Estévez, and twelve more victims had been identified and returned to their families by October 2021. At the time of this sentence, though, Osorio had been convicted only of the deaths of Mirna and Jackeline.
What the record shows, and what it does not. The attorney general's office later confirmed the 70-year sentence for the two femicides and said further sentences from other proceedings against Osorio would be added to it. In May 2021, after Osorio named them in a confession, police arrested nine people whom prosecutors linked to nine femicides and five homicides whose remains were found at his house; the office filed formal charges against ten people in June 2022. The total number of bodies at the property has been reported differently: El Mundo said authorities believed at least 30 more were buried there, beyond those already identified. The women's surnames are not given here because the court reporting used only their first names. Reports also place the house in different neighborhoods of Chalchuapa.
Sources
- Expolicía Hugo Osorio es condenado a 70 años de cárcel por dos feminicidios en Chalchuapa, Diario El Mundo (El Salvador), Gabriel Aquino and Jaime López
- A juicio imputados relacionados a feminicidios y homicidios cometidos por Hugo Osorio en Chalchuapa, Fiscalía General de la República (El Salvador)