On March 19, 2004 Matias Sebastian Diaz I was 21 years old. That day Carlos “Chanín” Albermajer and Damian “el Negro” FernándezThey entered the computer room where he was in charge to rob and shot him, despite the fact that he did not present any threat. There the life of Graciela Mónica Pera changed forever. “Matías was a good person,” she recalls.
From that fateful day, Pera, who had dedicated her life to taking care of her children, Matías and Fernando -who was 18 years old in 2004- sank into a depression. She then regained her strength and managed to bring the killers to trial, who were sentenced to 18 and 17 years in prison respectively.
Along with the prosecutor, Diego Onorati, She decided to investigate: she entered a village, tracked down people, interviewed witnesses and visited them dozens of times until she convinced them to go to the prosecutor’s office to testify. She wrote down word for word what they said to her, secretly recorded people and even threatened one of the murderers.
With everything she had experienced and the memory of her son always present, Pera decided to write the book that she dedicates to him: “Matías, the tenacious and silent struggle of a mother to reach the truth”.
At 63, today she is an announcer and studies Law at the University of Buenos Aires. She says that she loves to travel but that with her “Matías would have been different”. “Sometimes I force myself to enjoy myself because I don’t know when the moment of my death is going to be,” she confesses.
News: How was that day?
Graciela Mónica Pera: It was at 12:15 more or less. I was told that my son had had an accident. When we arrived at the hospital they told us that he had died because they wanted to rob him in his workplace.
News: How did the investigation start?
Pera: There were some indications that they could be from Villa Garrote, which is on the other side of Tigre. A witness stated that one had a tattoo and that is why they saw that it could be Albermajer. They refused to testify and since the evidence was not very strong, they were released.
News: When and why did you make the decision to investigate on your own?
Pear: More or less at three months. I had been very depressed, six months in bed, and since I saw that the case was not progressing, I decided to go see the prosecutor. He told me not to intervene, to mourn, but I decided to start looking for people who lived in the village to see if I could get anything.
News: How did you start collecting the evidence?
Pera: I only had the first name of a person who I will never reveal his name, or if he is a man or a woman. This person who lived in the villa and had heard in a corridor, from the mouth of the murderers: “oh idiot, you lost your hand, you screwed up the life of an asshole”.
News: How did you find it?
Pera: A man who lived in the village and gave the social plans told me that a person very close to the witness had a store. He gave me his address and the next day I met with this person. He told me everything very extensively and I spent two or three days convincing her to come with me to the prosecutor’s office and expand on her statement.
News: How did you collect the evidence?
Pera: I wrote everything in a large wire notebook, and I wrote everything they told me word by word in case there were contradictions. She had a very old tape recorder in her bag. He had to press the two keys together without the person noticing. From that moment, I have about twenty cassettes, because there wasn’t even a cell phone to record.
News: What breakthrough did you make?
Pera: When I took this person to testify, the prosecutor interviewed her and from three lines that she had declared in March, she declared three pages in December 2004.
News: What was it like coming face to face with one of the killers?
Pera: Crazy things happened. I went to see “Chanín” Albermajer at the market stall where he said he worked, as if to make good lyrics –because he was a repeat offender–, and I told him that he and the “black” Fernández had killed my son. I was recording it, but he denied it to me. Later he told me, “I’m afraid of you.” “And why are you afraid of me? I ask him and he answers “and because you never know how a mother can react”. And that’s when I turned off the recorder and threatened him. I showed him the gun that he had in his bag.
News: How did the investigation proceed?
Pera: They summoned Albermajer’s entire family to testify and they were never able to prove anything. Once they said that they all had lunch that day because it was the birthday of “Chanín’s” mother. I went to the school of one of his brothers and found out if he was on the list and that’s how I dropped the alibi. A school director cannot give you that information, but if I waited for the court order, 18 more years would pass.
News: Before the conviction, you finally pleaded guilty, what was that moment like?
Pera: When the trial was over, they both confessed, but only to see if they had a lower sentence, due to a legal strategy, not due to real repentance.
News: How were the years in which you were imprisoned?
Pera: The sentence execution stage was a great suffering for the whole family because every so often they asked for temporary releases. Every time they asked for something, I went to the prosecutor’s office and insisted until they denied it.
News: Are they now free?
Pena: One since September of last year and the other since May of this year. Due to exhaustion of sentence.
News: What was it like writing the case book?
Pera: Since the prosecutor was struck by everything I had done, he said to me “why don’t you write a book?”. I started in the middle of 2008, when the trial ended, and the following year, I finished it. I took a year.
News: At what time of the day does Matías remember?
Pera: All the time, when they play a Boca game because I was a fan. On Sundays I get very sad because it is a more familiar day, you get together, eat a roast. His birthday, his death, Mother’s Day, are screwed up dates. Then there are moments when I remember it well, that amuse me, jokes, anecdotes… I remember it all the time, but I never dream about it. I would love to dream it.
*Melisa Ferrante is a student at the Profile School of Communication.
by Melissa Ferrante*
