Lucila Yaconis was 16 years old when she left her grandmother’s house in Núñez on that Monday in April 2003 and began a journey of just eight blocks home. It had gotten dark early and he was walking along a path he knew by heart, a habit he had had since fifth grade, eating lunch at his grandmother’s house every time his mother worked. She never arrived: she was attacked next to the tracks of the Miter Railway, the attacker tried to rape her and eventually murdered her. Days later, the autopsy and tests confirmed information that became key to the investigation: the killer’s semen was left on the school uniform, allowing the creation of a genetic profile that to this day awaits a match in official databases.
Twenty-two years later, Isabel Yaconis returns to recreate that day, but also brings something new that raises expectations for the first time in a long time. He says that the prosecutor’s office currently investigating the case, led by Romina del Buono and with the technical work of Elías Collado, went back to a neighborhood complaint from 2004 and delved deeper with new DNA comparisons. “This prosecutor’s office, for which I am so grateful, has taken this case on their shoulders and they work a lot with the comparison, constantly collecting DNA and something always comes out that was left out,” says Lucila’s mother.
The new suspect is mentioned in the complaint filed by a Belgrano resident a year after the crime. Isabel says it was a man who came to warn about a person who was behaving disturbingly towards various neighbors. He himself did not dare to let the situation go and reported it, although at the time there were no consequences for doing so, as he had no criminal record or previous arrests that would allow him to open the file. Over the years, the data was banned, but prosecutors reanalyzed it.
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According to Isabel, “a neighbor went to a person to file a report because of a lot of suspicious behavior, and since the person had no criminal record, they would never have a form, a file; so at that moment they missed it, but the prosecutor’s office keeps working and adding DNA.” In these proceedings, the prosecutor requested court permission to take a sample from the suspect. “As soon as something suspicious is found, you have to ask the court for permission, and they have approved the blood sample, and if she refused, it would be compulsory,” he elaborates.
The description of the identified man also matches the testimony of a witness in 2003: someone young, very thin, with a bony appearance. Isabel points out: “A witness speaks of a very thin young man and from what we now see, this description matches that of this man, who must now be 48 years old.”
This intersection, he says, is no coincidence. It is also no coincidence that there are more tools today than back then. When Lucila was murdered, there were no surveillance cameras in the area and a digital recording of genetic fingerprints was just a project. Isabel signed it into law after insisting for years until Congress approved the National Registry of Genetic Data Related to Crimes Against Sexual Integrity, which has stored evidence and profiles of convicted people since 2017. She herself recalls: “Now the bank of genetic fingerprints of people convicted of sexual integrity has been expanded not only to other crimes in which murderers act, because what will we know if the person who killed my daughter later went to prison in a criminal case?”
Hope also arises from other cases that were solved thanks to persistent searches. Isabel gives an example: “I quote again the case of Lola Chomnalez, who was also a very compliant prosecutor, very obsessed with profiling and finding the murderer, something impossible, but it was achieved and Lola got justice.” That’s why he maintains that a massive comparison is always necessary: ”I believe it is compared with everything that is in the bank, it is not that difficult, they must have a service in the system that consists of reconciling the data.”
But Lucila’s case also carries with it the shadow of time and the spirit of impunity. Isabel realizes that many people believe that the case has run its course. He denies it: “I don’t know if it wasn’t the media pressure, which helps a lot, but the media treated me very well and I think that kept the case open.”
The mother also remembers what her daughter was like, her routines and the responsibility with which she took this path that turned fatal that April afternoon. This memory goes hand in hand with the feeling of guilt that accompanies so many family members: “There are so many memories that later you blame yourself for why I let her go, why she didn’t stay,” he reflects. However, she didn’t stop there: she turned pain into struggle, accompanied other families, advocated for laws, attended courts and never left the file still waiting for a name.
How security changed after femicide
LN
When Lucila Yaconis was murdered in April 2003, the area had no public cameras, no safe school corridors, and no uniform genetic registry system for sex offenders or murderers. The investigation was limited by the lack of images that would allow us to reconstruct the attacker’s path and by the lack of technological tools commonly used today.
After the crime, the city took progressive measures: patrol corridors were established at school entry and exit times, the city’s video surveillance system was expanded, coordination with sexual violence prosecutors was strengthened, and the national registry of genetic data for crimes against sexual integrity was created, approved in 2013 and operational since 2017.
In 2023, this registry was expanded by law to include crimes resulting in death, allowing comparison of the genetic profiles of murderers and opening new possibilities for unpunished cases like Lucila’s.
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