He killed four people for mortadella fetas and a wine

The most memorious remember the stir that caused in Córdoba the massacre of Barrio San Martín, or, as it was called vulgarly, the case of the man who "killed by mortadella fetas".

It was May 1959, near midnight, when José Villalba arrived at the neighborhood warehouse, which he was a client.Therefore, although it was closed, for their insistence they decided to attend it.It was the worst decision: four members of the family that owned the premises ended up killed.

Villalba, who was a mason, had finished working very late and decided to go through the warehouse, about 20 blocks from the city center, an area inhabited by working families.The trade was from the Yalovetzky, known in the neighborhood for its activity.

Before the insistence of Villalba, who did not stop hitting the door and shouting, Jacobo Yalovetzky opened.I knew him and preferred to attend him and that he went to keep listening to him to shout.The mason bought a bottle of wine and mortadella fetas, but said that the money had forgotten and asked to write down the purchase.It was also frequent that he asked to be trusted, to the point that his debt did not stop growing.

For that reason, Don Jacobo refused to write down the spending on the "notebook".Villalba that refusal made him crazy;He started screaming and insulting Yalovetzky.That outbreak was unpublished.The scandal attracted the rest of the family, which was in the house, behind the premises.

Juana Lerner, Jacobo's wife, and Bernardo and Saul, the children, wanted to know what was happening.But the mason did not understand reasons and his fury became unstoppable.He took a bar from the bag and undertook it to Fierzos;She didn't stop until she killed them all.

Villalba was born in Santiago del Estero, where he was a policeman;Then he arrived in Córdoba.I was 37 years old and I was married.He lacked criminal records and did not even register neighborhood problems.On the contrary, they defined him as a little sociable man.

Suddenly, for a bottle of wine and a little cold, the mason became a murderer and, then, a sad celebrity.

"Here I bring it to Villalba, which is not a cachilera.For a lumbre slice, he killed an entire family...", Prayed the Chacarera that José Ignacio" Chango "Rodríguez, the folklorist who was also imprisoned for four years for killing his compadre, after the alcohol.

Years after being pardoned by Juan Carlos Onganía, in 1968, Chango remembered the massacre in a composition;He and Villalba had been companions in jail.

"Cachilera" means insignificant, without value, of lower quality than normal.Thus, in a song, the crimes continued in the memory of the Cordoba even a decade after committed.In the province, the massacre of the San Martín neighborhood had not been any cachilera.

The doubts

Far from the playful, and when specific to the case, the next morning of the massacre, the neighbors called the police surprised that the warehouse "of the Russian" would not have opened at the indicated time.The agents entered and met the horror scene.Above the counter was still cut, and on the floor, made pieces, the wine tube.

For several weeks the disorientation dominated the investigation.A journalist listened to Villalba's last name and mentioned it.That was the starting point of the search for mason that "works around".He was still in the same work;He had not altered his routine.They arrested him at home and, in parallel, they accused of being his accomplices to two co -workers.They were investigated, but very soon they were out of the cause.

Villalba's lawyer insisted from the beginning that his defendant was a "parsley" and that the police had "tightened" to take care of the deaths.Questioned the lack of witnesses and forceful evidence.But nothing attenuated the penalty that the fourth chamber of the crime dictated on October 25, 1960: 25 years.Already in the years of lead, and when he turned 15 years of imprisonment, he left free and nothing else was known about him.

The quadruple crime had two suspicion -based readings that could never be tested.One was the racial issue and pointed to Villalba as a hired hitman to take revenge on the Jewish family.The other theory - even more risky - linked "somehow" (it was never told which one) to Governor Arturo Zanichelli with the case.Chosen by the Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI), had assumed a year before the massacre and lived with his family in the same neighborhood.His political adversaries used different issues to harass him.One was the alleged cover -up of the quadruple homicide.

At the point of the political use of the case, the "Massacre of the Yalovetzky" was related to the disappearance of the girl of Marta Ofelia Stutz, which occurred in the same neighborhood on Saturday, November 19, 1938.The radical Amadeo Sabattini ruled Córdoba at that time;Due to the problems in the investigation, the Democratic opposition managed to challenge her government minister.In addition, due to police torture that ended with the death of a suspect, his police chief had to resign.

Referrals

In addition to the song of Chango Rodríguez, De la Matanza emerged the play Machinita de Mata, directed by Rodrigo Cuesta, and the book Massacre in Barrio San Martín, of the historian Esteban Dómina.In dialogue with La Nacion, Dómina recalled that the case "shocked" public opinion."It was commented in the cafes, on the tram...They were other times and these types of crimes generated a huge impact, "he said.

Dómina believes that those who consider the hypothesis of the murder for "racial hatred" responded to "a time climate, since there was an activity of anti -Semitic groups in the country".A year later the "Garibaldi Operation" of Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, which kidnapped the Nazi Adolf Eichmann hierarch in Buenos Aires and transferred it to Israel.That story reached the big screen and Netflix.

The Yalovetzky were a middle-low-class family without public activity, known only in the neighborhood.That discourages racial "revenge" theory.

As for political connotations, Dómina argues that when Villalba was arrested and taken to the 9th police station there was an attempt to lynch and Governor Zanicelli went to the place."He was in the 'tightrope', the political atmosphere was very complicated in the country and that contributed to the end of responsibility in the case".

"Villalba confessed and he knew what that meant because he had been a policeman.He was a man of few words, very sparse.Despite that confession, people had the feeling that it was a 'parsley'.The investigation was a 'mamarracho': the police was unprofessional;The crime scene was altered;The tests were few and very precarious, "he explained.

Dómina ruled out that Villalba has acted in a state of violent emotion "because after the first victim he continued.It was after the wife and children, even that he wanted to escape.It gives the impression of a very cold, calculated series ".

The crime, in three stages

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