More than 15 years passed and, with the prescribed crime, the Córdoba Judiciary finally put the traumatologist on the defendant’s bench Marcelo Macarron for the murder of nora damasso, committed in the early hours of November 25, 2006. Five prosecutors and four defendants passed through the case. 44 bodies, 7,800 pages and more than 9,000 pages of annexes were produced. But uncertainties remain: the widower is accused of being the instigator of his wife’s crime, but there is no trace of the murderer.
“Macaroon was the one who wanted and prepared the homicide by hiring an individual or several, hitman, who without hate, passion or personal motive decides to kill for a profit agreed by a principal interested in that happening, in the case the accused Marcelo Eduardo Macarron”, he explains in his 180-page indictment Louis Pizarro, the prosecutor who took the case to trial. his predecessor, Daniel Miralleshad accused the widower of being the perpetrator of the homicide based on the genetic test: the discovery of his DNA on the sheets where they found the body of norain her genital area -internal and external- and in the towel belt with which she was strangled, they located him at the crime scene.
“I have lived through an ordeal for 15 years. I had a stress stent placed. From the day of the incident I take antidepressants and I am with a permanent psychiatrist and psychologist, just like my children. Many times I thought of committing suicide, but I have two children, Facundo and Valentina, and I wanted to give them studies so that they could defend themselves in life,” said a disconsolate Marcelo Macarron before the popular jury and the technical judges. It was his first statement as a defendant and contrasted with the press conference given fifteen years ago, when he “forgave” his wife for the alleged infidelities attributed to him by the unstoppable wave of rumors that the prosecutor now considers part of the widower’s macabre plan to get rid of of Nora.
Dalmasso case: new suspect
As part of the studied defensive strategy proposed by the lawyer Marcelo Brito -an old fox from the Cordovan courts-, Macaroon He changed from a conceited widower to a victim medicated by his media and judicial ordeal. On Monday the 14th, when the Palace of Justice building was fenced off and cordoned off by police, he entered through the main door and answered the journalists’ questions. And he cried like he hadn’t in all these years. His children did the same thing the next day, when they testified as witnesses and sowed suspicions about the agricultural businessman Miguel Rhoreralias “El Francés”, former president of the firm Del Monte Fresh.
Member of the inofficious list of lovers of nora that circulated without shame or mercy the weeks after the crime, rhorer He sold his house in a hillside country to Villa Golf, closed the multinational offices and disappeared from the city. Valentina accused him of looking at her mother a lot, throwing her into her pool during a visit to her country house, and causing her to have a crying fit the last time she saw him. “It’s like a feeling. I am very afraid of him. He is an arrogant, horrible man, ”the young woman insisted, without providing a single proof.
Facundo Macaroni he also did his part. “If you are looking for economic power, it is there,” she warned, referring to rhorer, whom he defined as a “macho, violent, disgusting, arrogant” person. He denounced the prosecutors for not having investigated the clues that led to the businessman and, instead, raging against him due to gender prejudice: “The guilty party had to be gay,” he complained. “They didn’t arrest me because there was no proof, but they wanted to arrest me for being gay,” he insisted.
The proof
Actually the young Macaroon he was charged based on genetic evidence collected at the crime scene. That at that time pointed to the “Macarrón lineage” and to which, years later, with better technology, the US FBI laboratories gave it its own name: Marcelo Eduardo Macarron. This scientific finding made the second prosecutor in the case, Daniel Mirallesimpute the widower as the perpetrator of the crime of nora and guide the investigation towards the hypothesis of the clandestine flight.
In his statement, Facundo Macaroni -who traveled from Brussels to accompany his father in the trial- also distanced himself from his “uncle” Daniel Lacase, to whom he attributed the politicization of Nora’s crime. “The lawyer who was advising us, Lacase, had his rivals and sought to use the assassination politically to harm Bertea,” he said. Alberto Bertha he was Secretary of Security of the province and had to resign when the prosecutor Javier Di Santo blamed his collaborator Raphael Magnascoaccused of being the victim’s lover (it was later proven that they did not even know each other).
In the breakdown of that triangle of power that formed Daniel Lacase, “Michel” Rhorer and his own Macaroon could be the key to unveil the mystery of Villa Golf. They were inseparable friends, they had businesses with each other and they continued to meet after the crime, until the shrapnel of the media explosion of the case began to affect them. The question that haunts the corridors of court is whether Julio Riverothe same prosecutor who acquitted The hunt Despite having proven that he paid for the stay of the policemen who arrived from Córdoba to frame a “parsley”, he will go to the bottom with a process that has the humanized version of the widower as the only accused. Nor does an inexperienced court help, which until now has been more zealous in interfering in the work of journalism than in guaranteeing the transparency of a process tainted by the ineffectiveness of the Judiciary itself.
