“Every now and then a changa comes out/Don’t get distracted, the years go by suddenly/To roll up your sleeves, the dramas dance,/Round numbers in a basket just a touch is enough.”
It is a verse from “Everything homemade and classic”, one of the raps by the artist Saru Monkey, who according to the prosecution is Simón Alfonso Ramírez Uribe and is 24 years old. On Monday he was sentenced to six months of preventive detention for the murder of music teacher Juan José Ramón Racco (41) in Centenario. The crime occurred on April 19 but through a series of dramatic and unusual episodes, was only discovered on May 7. This allowed the accused to stay off the radar of the investigators and meanwhile spend money from the victim’s bank account.
Racco and Ramírez Uribe they knew each other. Even the teacher had lent him money, although the public defense says it was the other way around: the victim owed 20,000 pesos to the accused. Presumably to settle those accounts, they met at the house that Racco rented in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Centenario, at 54 Illia Manzana Street, Lote 5.
It was not the first home that the teacher had rented since his arrival from Córdoba, seven or eight months ago. The habitual moves were due, among other reasons, to the fact that he was worried about security. That’s why he had also installed surveillance cameras.
Racco worked at School 342 in San Patricio del Chañar. As described by the homicide prosecutor, Lucrecia Sola, he was a lonely man but looking to socialize so he used to invite friends to his house. On April 19 at 9:30 in the morning, Simón Ramírez entered. He left around noon, locked the door and left. According to the accusation, He had with him a Samsung phone, a Lenovo notebook and two of the victim’s debit cards.. And the surveillance cameras.
More than 50 injuries
The teacher’s body had been left in the kitchen-dining room, with 50 stab wounds on the head, torso and arms (the latter were received when trying to defend himself from the attack). The skull destroyed by blows with a body element and weight sufficient to break the toughest bones of the body.
Racco, who moved constantly for fear of robberies, had fallen victim to one. The man who was looking to have friends in his new city had been betrayed by one of them.
That same April 19, at 3 p.m., Ramírez sought treatment at the Centenario hospital for a cut on the little finger of the left hand that had been provoked in the whirlwind of crime. She later posted on a social network that she was selling the phone and the notebook. for 50,000 pesos. She quickly found takers and made the transaction on a corner. At night danced with a friendtold him that he wanted to leave the city because “he had problems.”
The Facebook session
The buyer, meanwhile, gave the phone to her minor sister. She had to unlock it, and with a new chip she activated it the next night. Did you know it was stolen? With the computer she should have had fewer doubts: when she opened it found the Facebook session started and the teacher’s profile photo. He logged out and continued using it.
Would the crime have been discovered that same day, if I had reported it to the police? Prosecutor Sola has doubts. “Until that moment there was no report of theft of a notebook, and the person who bought it did not know who the owner of the computer was,” she said when asked by this newspaper. “He was able to buy himself a little time,” she added. It is a question whose answer can wait only because the crime is almost solved..
While Racco’s body was still lying in the kitchen-dining room of the house and no one asked about him, Ramírez used his debit cards. His clumsiness left traces that would later point him out: money transfers were made to accounts in your name.
The teacher’s colleagues
The days pass. The teacher’s colleagues were not surprised that he did not respond to the calls because “I changed my phone every so often”, explained the prosecutor as emerged from the interviews. It never occurred to anyone to go to the house. The teacher who was looking for new friends apparently had not made reciprocal ties in these months.
The state bureaucracy did its thing: they made a record to record his absence. When May began they deposited his salary. Ramírez took advantage: the crime had not been discovered, he still had the victim’s debit card in his possession, so he emptied his account.
The rent
Who finally found the body? The owner of the house: it caught his attention that the Córdoba teacher will be late with the rent payment. He used a copy of the key to enter and discovered the body in an advanced state of decomposition, on Tuesday, May 7.
The investigators followed the trail full of crumbs that Ramírez had left. They found the family to whom he had sold the phone and netbook. The accused turned out to be a man known in Centenario: He had worked in a newsstand from which he was fired for mistreating clients, stealing money, selling alcohol and drugs, the owner declared.
With the police on his trail, he fled to San Martín de los Andes where his parents live, but first he told some friends. He even anticipated his plans to escape to Chile. They caught him last Saturday in the city next to Lácar.
Self-defense or perpetual
The defense argues that it was a crime committed in legitimate defense. He contrasts the injury to the little finger of the defendant’s left hand with the 50 sharp puncture wounds on the victim’s body and the head trauma that caused his death. “It was a fight between two drunk people”he argues.
«Simon Ramírez. Rapper. 24 years. In the same shit but with a good face. “So high” says the defendant’s profile on Instagram.
You are accused of a crime for which you could go to trial by jury and if you are found guilty, will receive a sentence of life imprisonment.
