Between November 2019 and June 2020 three older men were killed in robberies in the Burruyacu department, a farming district in the east of Tucumán province, in northwestern Argentina. The last of the three, José "Pepe" Porcel, was a retired farmer whose death on June 26, 2020, brought rural producers into the streets and made the case front-page news in the provincial press. Within weeks, prosecutors had linked the men arrested for his killing to the deaths of José Antonio Gómez in La Marta and Damián Florentino Gómez in Tala Pozo.
In early 2023 a court in Tucumán sentenced Antonio Ismael Sánchez and José Ramón Rojas to life imprisonment for all three homicides, Contexto Tucumán reported on March 4, 2023. A third man, Juan Alfredo Acosta, was also sentenced to life, and a fourth, Marcelo Bernardo Alderete, received 10 years as an accomplice in the robbery.
The first of the three killings took place in La Marta, about 15 kilometers from El Chañar in eastern Tucumán, in November 2019. José Antonio Gómez looked after a field there. La Gaceta, the Tucumán daily, gave his age as 55 in 2020; Contexto Tucumán gave it as 68 when the case ended in 2023. He died of asphyxia, and the robbers took only a few belongings. Most reports date his death to November 15, 2019; the 2023 report of the verdict gives November 14. The prosecutor in charge, Adriana Giannoni of the homicide unit, gathered evidence against two suspects in the months that followed.
Damián Florentino Gómez was 76, according to La Gaceta. He lived in Tala Pozo, a scattered rural settlement in Burruyacu reached by dirt roads about 90 kilometers from the provincial capital. The paper's accounts of his work differ: one described him as looking after a producer's field, another as guarding a cane grower's machinery, and a third, in 2023, said he ran a small shop. He was killed in a robbery at night in early January 2020. The reports give the date variously as January 2, 3, 5 and 6. La Gaceta's first report said the cause of death was still under investigation; at trial, the prosecution described him as strangled.
Police at first were unsure whether the killing was a robbery or a personal settling of scores. In February 2020 a man was arrested with two brothers over the case, but all three were released after witnesses failed to identify them and DNA tests came back negative, Contexto Tucumán reported.
José Porcel had spent his whole life on his farm in La Ramada de Abajo, in the northeast of the province. He was a retiree who still grew vegetables in pots in his garden, had four children and ten grandchildren, and lived on the property with his wife. His sons told La Gaceta that he loved the countryside, walked for hours and did not want to leave his land, and that the family were smallholders, not wealthy producers. One son said his father was used to receiving anyone who arrived with courtesy. A family friend called him "a gentleman" who had raised his children with the same values. His age was reported as 77 in the first reports, 79 in September 2020 and 80 in other accounts.
On the evening of June 26, 2020, a group of men came to the farm. A farm employee was robbed of his phone, and Porcel was shot and killed. The attackers fled with almost nothing. The car carrying two of them overturned about four kilometers away. Neighbors who did not yet know about the shooting stopped to help and called an ambulance; when news of the killing spread, they detained one man at the scene, and staff at the local health center held the other.
The two men taken after the crash were Juan Alfredo Acosta, then 39, and Marcelo Bernardo Alderete, then 31. La Gaceta reported that both had criminal records and had previously been accused of belonging to gangs that robbed people carrying large sums of cash. Police said the group studied its targets before acting. The car was later burned by unidentified people after investigators had examined it.
The homicide division, under commissioners Diego Bernachi and Juana Estequiño, with Jorge Dib as director of investigations, carried out raids in San Miguel de Tucumán and the east of the province on the orders of Judge Alejandro Tomás. By July 1 about 14 raids had been carried out, and by July 6 the number had reached 16, with seven men and one woman detained. Seized items included clothing, phones, weapons and a dog believed to have been taken from the Porcel farm, which the prosecutor ordered tested. On July 3, 2020, witnesses picked out Acosta and Alderete in a lineup.
Governor Juan Manzur said on July 1 that the presumed killers appeared to be in custody and asked that "the full weight of the law" fall on them. The security minister, Claudio Maley, said the police had located the five main suspects quickly. Bernachi said on July 6 that the crime appeared to be fully solved.
Rojas and Sánchez were captured more than a week after the killing. On August 5, 2020, La Gaceta reported that Judge Alejandro Javier Tomás had granted Giannoni's request for 12 months of preventive detention for both, charged as co-perpetrators of homicide in the course of robbery and with aggravated robbery of the employee. The judge cited the time it took to find them, the 20 raid orders needed, and problems with the suspects' identity details: two did not confirm that they lived at the addresses they gave, and one had no identity document. On July 29 the same judge had refused a defense request to free Acosta and Alderete, citing the lineup and a seized backpack.
From early July 2020 investigators said they suspected the group arrested for Porcel's killing of the two earlier deaths in Burruyacu, citing a similar pattern of visits to rural homes and robberies of older residents. Giannoni said there were "elements" connecting the cases. On August 27, 2020, La Gaceta reported a Ministerio Público Fiscal report saying that DNA from the suspects had been compared with traces from the scenes in La Marta and Tala Pozo, and that two of the accused could be classed as "serial homicide offenders" for three cases, while a third was linked to two. The paper credited the work to the prosecutor's office, its forensic medical service and the criminal intelligence department of its scientific investigation team.
In September 2020 the Sociedad Rural de Tucumán protested after Alderete was granted house arrest on health grounds, which the private prosecution described as "supposed." On September 28, 2020, Giannoni asked that Acosta, Alderete, Rojas and Sánchez be sent to trial for homicide in the course of aggravated robbery; the four other people investigated for complicity were cleared. She said three of the accused might also be linked to the deaths of Damián Florentino Gómez and José Antonio Gómez. The evidence she listed included a phone found in the car, forensic reports, testimony from Porcel's children and farm workers, genetic results and analysis of the suspects' phones.
Porcel's death came during a run of killings of older rural residents in Tucumán. In June 2020 La Gaceta counted five such deaths since October 2019, and the paper's August 2020 list of murdered rural producers set the three Burruyacu cases beside two others. One of Porcel's sons asked the governor to look after the people who worked the land. Rural associations including the Sociedad Rural de Tucumán and Apronor, a producers' group, demanded more security; protesters hung a banner with Porcel's face on the courthouse gate in San Miguel de Tucumán. A police station was later built in La Ramada de Abajo.
The trial was first set for July 2022, then moved to December after the court ordered the case files combined, and then postponed again until after the judicial recess when one victim's family could not attend. On February 16, 2023, as the trial neared its end, the Sociedad Rural de Tucumán issued a statement titled "We do not want a justice system that protects criminals" and said it would stand with the families of the three men. By then La Gaceta gave the defendants' ages as Acosta 41, Alderete 33, Rojas 28 and Sánchez 24. Giannoni had retired, and the case was argued by the chamber prosecutor Estela Giffoniello. The lawyer Adrián Ghirinhelli represented the Porcel family as private prosecutor.
According to Contexto Tucumán, the court found that Sánchez and Rojas took part in all three killings, and Acosta in the second and third. Sánchez and Rojas were sentenced to life imprisonment for the three homicides, Acosta to life, and Alderete to 10 years as an accomplice in the robbery. The prosecutor said the defendants had attacked older people who lived in remote parts of Burruyacu, and that forensic analysis of their phones had been central to the case. She summed up her view of their motive in one line: "They were people who went to kill, not to rob."
Contexto Tucumán headlined its report of the verdict "Serial killers in Burruyacu." Ghirinhelli told the outlet that the families' side would have argued that the men were serial killers if it could, but that the term was not used at trial because Argentine law does not recognize it as a legal category. The court sentenced the men for homicides committed in robberies.
November 15, 2019 (November 14 in one report): José Antonio Gómez dies of asphyxia in a robbery in La Marta, Burruyacu.
Early January 2020 (dates reported from January 2 to January 6): Damián Florentino Gómez, 76, is killed in a robbery in Tala Pozo.
February 2020: three men arrested over the Tala Pozo killing are released after witnesses fail to identify them and DNA tests are negative.
June 26, 2020: José "Pepe" Porcel is shot and killed in La Ramada de Abajo; Juan Alfredo Acosta and Marcelo Bernardo Alderete are detained after their car overturns.
July 1 to 6, 2020: police raids; eight people detained; Governor Juan Manzur calls for the full weight of the law.
July 3, 2020: witnesses identify Acosta and Alderete in a lineup.
Early July 2020: José Ramón Rojas and Antonio Ismael Sánchez are captured.
July 29, 2020: the judge refuses to free Acosta and Alderete.
August 5, 2020: 12 months of preventive detention reported for Rojas and Sánchez.
August 27, 2020: prosecutors' report links two of the accused to all three killings through DNA comparisons.
September 2020: Alderete is granted house arrest on health grounds.
September 28, 2020: the prosecutor asks for the four men to be tried; four others are cleared.
July and December 2022: the trial is postponed twice; the case files are combined.
February 2023: the trial is held in San Miguel de Tucumán.
March 4, 2023: Contexto Tucumán reports life sentences for Sánchez, Rojas and Acosta and 10 years for Alderete.