Nine years after the disappearance of Marisol Reartes (18) and her two-year-old girl, the trial began this Monday in Villa Dolores, with popular juries, the only defendant for the deaths of both. Juan José Murúa (36), who is already serving a sentence in San Luis for a previous femicide in that province, arrived at the Courts in the middle of an unprecedented security operation for the region.
The young woman and her daughter, Luz Morena Oliva, disappeared in the Villa de las Rosas area in February 2014, presumably after meeting Murúa. It is believed that the man beat them to death and made them disappear near the La Viña dam. At that time it was not known that, in 2009, the criminal had murdered and hidden the body of Brenda Arias (19) in the San Luis city of Cortaderas.
Only in 2018 was he sentenced to 38 years in prison for that crime. In December 2020, Murúa escaped from a maximum security prison in San Luis, only to be recaptured after a few hours. The case has moved Traslasierra in the last decade.
In 2022, the prosecutor Lucrecia Zambrana charged Murúa with “homicide qualified by the link and for mediating gender violence (femicide) and simple homicide, in real competition.” The man, a longtime neighbor of the Reartes family in the town of Los Hornillos, would have maintained an intermittent relationship with the young mother.
“We have no doubt that the murderer is Murúa. Due to his perversion, it is certain that he killed them both, but we hope that he will say where their bodies are, because we need to at least have somewhere to go to mourn my niece,” said Gabriela Oliva, the girl’s aunt. The small body of her never appeared. Marisol’s death, on the other hand, was confirmed at the end of 2018, after her skull appeared between the Los Pozos area and La Viña lake.
The trial has that particularity: physical evidence of the girl’s death was never found, and only part of the young woman’s corpse. The process comes after nine years of investigation and intense demands for Justice by relatives, neighbors and human rights organizations in the region.
A “repeated” assault
Marisol had grown up in the town of Los Hornillos, in a vulnerable family neighboring the Murúa. At the age of 16, she was the mother of a girl as a result of her relationship with Damián Oliva, another young man from the neighborhood, with whom she did not continue her relationship.
On Monday, February 2, 2014, after 8 o’clock, after sleeping at her mother’s house, in Los Pozos, Villa de las Rosas, the adolescent left with her daughter in her arms toward Route 14. It was believed that I would take the bus to get to Los Hornillos. They were never seen again. The girl did not bring clothes, money, or a bottle, or anything that would make her think that she and the girl were voluntarily taking a trip. Murúa’s car was seen that morning in the sector.
“I can’t take it anymore, I want to go,” was read that day on Marisol’s Facebook account. The publication initially reassured her relatives. Today it is assured that her cell phone would have been manipulated by her victimizer, who did the same when he killed Brenda Arias in San Luis. In both cases, Murúa showed solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared women, and pretended to collaborate with them.
The search for the young woman and her daughter reached the entire region and other provinces. The revelation of Marisol’s death, in 2018, eliminated several hypotheses, such as that they could have been victims of a trafficking network.
At the first hearing, Ignacia Gutierrez, Marisol’s mother, and Alicia Mattio, Luz Morena’s paternal grandmother, testified. Eduardo Cuneo is a plaintiff on behalf of the families of the victims. Luis Castro defends Murúa and Sergio Cuello is a chamber prosecutor. The court is made up of Santiago Camogli, Carlos Escudero and Facundo Gil.