Alleged Argentine serial killer caught with ‘bones, blood’ at home

BUENO AIRES, Argentina – Argentine police have arrested an alleged serial killer who lured homeless people to his home, where he murdered and dismembered them, officials said on Aug 5.

The murders – at least five known to investigators – always took place on Fridays.

A 37-year-old man was arrested after a raid on his home last week yielded human “bones, blood, pieces of skin and even a nose”, Attorney-General Sergio Lello Sanchez of the Jujuy province told AFP by phone on Aug 5.

The raid was the result of clues gathered from analysing security camera footage.

At the house where they arrested the man, the police also encountered a 16-year-old boy who appeared scared and said he was the owner’s nephew, Mr Lello Sanchez said.

“I want to talk,” the boy told the police, and then recounted that his uncle would go out on Friday afternoons and return at night with different people.

He apparently lured them with offers of a job or a drink.

The boy said his uncle would “beat them, kill them, cut their bodies, burn them and take them out in garbage bags”, case prosecutor Guillermo Beller told the A24 news channel.

Mr Lello Sanchez said the victims were homeless and mostly elderly people.

The investigation started after evidence emerged that five missing people had last been seen alive in the same place, near an old bus terminal in the city of San Salvador de Jujuy.

Security footage showed two of them getting into taxis with the same person at different times.

A taxi driver took the police to the house where he had dropped them.

The man, who insists he is innocent, was charged on Aug 4 with aggravated homicide and placed in pre-trial detention for four months pending the investigation that Mr Lello Sanchez said was at an “early stage”.

Investigators were still in the process of analysing the remains and extracting DNA samples from relatives of missing persons to try to identify the dead. AFP