At 22 years old, maximum thomsen is the embodiment of evil. He threatened Fernando Baez Sosa with a gesture in a bowling alley Villa Gesell, kicked him in the head until he was dead and then went to eat at the Mc. Donald’s. The whole country saw him do that. It was filmed, like in a horror movie. During the trial, his silence and iceberg face didn’t help either. Former prisoners licked their lips on TV predicting “what they would do” to thomson in jail once he was convicted of this aberrational act. And no one believed him when he rehearsed a cold apology to Báez Sosa’s parents, on the last day of hearings. “And cry, cry, cry, Thomsen cries,” they sang to his family at the door of the Courts of Dolores.
The young leader of the eight rugbiers, who at the close of this edition were awaiting a sentence from the Oral and Criminal Court No. 1is one of the defendants most involved in the crime of Fernando Baez Sosa because of the amount of evidence against him. The prosecution requested, for him, a life sentence that would imply 35 years in prison. A Cyclone sneaker stained with blood and its mark on Fernando’s face seem unappealable elements.
However, despite the fact that his name was consumed with horror as obligatory news on all TV channels during the month of January, little is known about his history. NEWS toured Zárate, his hometown, and spoke to more than twenty people who knew him, including friends, neighbors and sports colleagues. Most preferred anonymity because, in a small town, big hell, the Thomsen surname still causes stinging.
In this town in the province of Buenos Aires, Thomsen was known as “Machu” and he knew how to earn a place in the neighborhood comments: he painted for crack. Máximo played sports from a very young age, but his passion was always on rugby. At Club Arsenal Náutico, located about 20 blocks from his house, he stood out as one of the best players. And already at that time the local journalistic media took care of him projecting him as a future member of the Pumas, because the Argentine Rugby Union from Buenos Aires had cataloged him as a new talent. “From the lower ranks, he stood out from the rest,” say those who knew him.
Back then, no one wondered about his dysfunctional family or about the ties, bordering on violence, that made his mother Rosalía Zárate and her father, Marcial Javier ThomsenThey separated when Máximo, the youngest of two brothers, was little. What counted, in his sporting golden age, was the illusion of making a leap to the first division that not only assured the adolescent a promising future but also, in the short term, guaranteed him a reputation as a winner. “He had several girlfriends and had become the new star of the city,” say the neighbors. With this combination of masculine strength and skill, Máximo forged his leader’s profile on his land.
But not everything was rosy when, in 2017, he finally landed in the youth team of the San Isidro Athletic Club (CASI), Leaving behind the privileges of the people. “He never finished integrating into CASI. In the squad of the new club he was no longer the benchmark, nor the strongest player, nor the captain. That is why he never moved to San Isidro and continued to live in Zárate to maintain his social circle, ”they say around him. The San Isidro club expelled Thomsen when the Báez Sosa crime occurred on January 18, 2020.
However, training for more rigorous competition left Thomsen gains that would be crucial for what happened three years later: his muscles. That new physique had another purpose off the pitch. He served the young man to be “invincible” in the street fights in which he participated in Zárate’s early mornings. In fact, he and his friends had set up a WhatsApp group called “Los Demoledores” and that, in 2019, left a kid in the hospital seriously injured. “Here we all knew that this bandage was out looking for a fight. Sometimes they didn’t even drink alcohol, they went out to fight”, says a neighbor of the same age. They inspired fear and no one dared to confront them.
“Máximo wasn’t the one looking for a fight, those were the Pertossi, but every time there were pineapples, Máximo transformed and they couldn’t stop him,” explain those who saw him perform, especially on the outskirts of the Apsara bowling alley, trendy in Zárate. Such was the physical rigor of this group that, more than once, Thomsen and some of his friends worked as patovicas in the dance hall. This perhaps explains the testimony of Le Brique’s corpulent bodyguard, Alejandro Muñoz, who was in charge of taking Thomsen out with a suffocation shot, when he said that he had had trouble subduing the rugby player after his fight with Fernando inside the bowling alley.
Many said about the rugbiers as “sons of power” belonging to an elite of Zárate. However, the influence of the Thomsen family is less than others, such as that of the Pertossi family, which financially concentrated the defense of the accused (see box). To pay for his physical education studies at the Institute for Teacher Training No. 85 in Zárate, Thomsen did odd jobs placing fences.
He and his brother Francisco – who lives abroad but returned to the country to accompany Máximo at trial – were raised by their mother alone, who is an architect and worked in the Municipality of Zárate. The marriage dissolved after the birth of Máximo and Marcial moved to Campana where he rebuilt his life with another couple. “The father was always erased,” say those who know the family.
The bond between Máximo and Rosalía was always very close. In his environment they explain that the young man feels guilty since in recent years his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer that he is currently dealing with. For this reason, during Rosalía’s statement, it was the only moment in which Máximo cried in the audience. “He feels that everything that is happening to his mother is the fault of the bitterness that she suffers for him,” say sources close to him. Three years ago, when her son killed Báez Sosa, Rosalía resigned from her position as Secretary of Public Works of the Municipality of Zárate. A little by her own decision, and a little pushed by the mayor Osvaldo Cáffaro, due to the public repercussions of the case. “Rosalía was in politics, but she was one more employee”, they lower the price of her in charge of her.
Now she is confined to the family home, in a residential neighborhood of Zárate with middle-class buildings, and only goes out to the streets for her medical treatments and to visit her son in jail. NEWS tried to contact her, but no one answered her doorbell. Some claim that the family no longer answers the land line and that after Máximo’s arrest they disappeared from the neighborhood. “They were not seen anymore,” a neighbor of the chalet located in front of the Defensores Unidos field told NEWS.
THE FATHER. The people of Zárate point to Marciel as the one who can have a stronger weight. Not only because they affirm that he has a better financial situation, but also because of his past links with political power. He has a shop that sells auto and motorcycle parts, but between 2007 and 2015 he was part of Merco Golf SA, a company in charge of earthmoving and land preparation work. According to what they say in Zárate, this firm would have been awarded a large part of the works tendered by the municipality.
“He has never been seen around here. I was surprised when I saw it on television ”, they explain about Thomsen’s appearance to accompany his son throughout the judicial process. Marcial’s first public statement was a week after Fernando’s crime and, beyond the surprise of many of those who knew him in Zárate, his presence generated noise for other reasons. “We are all paying for what happened that night in Villa Gesell. In my family we are all dead, ”he told the media, becoming the first parent of one of the defendants to speak. After that, Hugo Tomei, the defense lawyer, ordered an unbreakable silence that was maintained until today because he considered that any public opinion could complicate his defense strategy.
BEHIND BARS. In prison for three years, Máximo continues to be the leader of the detainees. He does not lose his virtues of the past: several “fan clubs” proliferate that on Instagram fill their photos with clicks, hearts and romantic words.
Despite the fact that he requested psychological assistance at the end, sources close to the cause indicate that it was he who insisted that his friends keep the pact of silence. “Shut him up or I’ll shut him up with punches,” they say he ordered one of his cellmates to cell.
Thomsen not only reads fantastic literature, but now he has incorporated a more spiritual reading material: the Bible. Some say that it is a strategy to be able to attend an evangelical pavilion and thus stay safe from the bad omens that were predicted for him. An evangelical pastor already visits them and preaches his repentance. But that doesn’t seem to have happened, at least in public. Specialists speak of moral disconnection: that person who cannot see the inevitable moral consequences of his actions. Thomsen, the very image of evil, one step from hell.
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