Argentina’s government on Tuesday said Peruvian authorities had detained the suspected mastermind behind the brutal murders of two young women and a teenage girl in a live streamed attack, bringing the arrests in the case to nine.
“I want to congratulate the Peruvian National Police for their tremendous work and collaboration in capturing the two fugitives in the triple murder,” Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said in a statement posted to X.
The suspect, identified as “little J,” was arrested in Pucusana, about 45 miles south of Lima.
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Earlier, Bullrich had announced the capture of another suspect in Peru, Matias Ozorio.
Last week, the bodies of Morena Verdi and Brenda del Castillo, cousins aged 20, and 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez were found buried in the yard of a house in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires, five days after they went missing September 19.
The three were tortured and killed on a closed social media group of 45 users as a “warning” over an alleged drug theft, according to Buenos Aires Security Minister Javier Alonso.
The suspected mastermind “little J” is a Peruvian national, about 20 years old, and is alleged to operate a drug gang in the Zavaleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
Ozorio, who is around 23 years old, is believed to be “little J”‘s right-hand man, local media reported.
Antonio del Castillo, grandfather of the slain 20-year-old cousins, called the killers “bloodthirsty.”
“You wouldn’t do what they did to them to an animal,” he said during a protest in Buenos Aires.
“I have hope that the truth will be revealed,” he added. “I ask people to stand with us.”
Femicide in Argentina
Femicide “is broadly defined as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender and can take different forms, such as the murder of women as a result of intimate partner violence; the torture and misogynist slaying of women; killing of women and girls in the name of ‘honor,’ etc.,” according to the European Institute for Gender Equality.
One woman is killed by a man every 36 hours in Argentina, according to a femicide monitoring group in the country, BBC News reported.
Femicide was added to Argentina’s penal code as an aggravating factor of homicides in 2012, and is punishable with life imprisonment, according to the Guardian.
However, earlier this year, Argentine President Javier Milei said he wanted to remove the concept of “femicide” from the country’s penal code, the Council on Foreign Relations reported. Milei had argued that femicide promotes the idea that “the life of a woman is worth more than that of a man.”
Cristina Sille / REUTERS
