He never married or had children. His only family lived in his native province, which he visited from time to time. Juana María Páez lived in house 33 on block 33 in the Infanta de Las Heras neighborhood. She was alone but not so much because she was accompanied by a couple of pets that she attended to and took care of like her children.
Nurse Páez did not meet everyone. Low profile. Reserved. Only a couple of people in the neighborhood enjoyed her trust. Especially a neighbor of hers, to whom she entrusted the keys to her house when she traveled. Not much more.
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Therefore, when on the morning of November 3, 1999, the neighbor noticed that the nurse had not turned off the light facing the street, there was concern. Marita was not one to leave like that, suddenly. She wouldn’t have abandoned her cats either. Without water or food, as she detected shortly after entering the house.
Then, Justice received the first sign that something was wrong. And an investigation began to find out his whereabouts. Marcos Pereira was the judge in charge.
Excavations in the yard and the fixed term in dollars
The typical thing was done: contacting family and acquaintances, but nothing. At Lencinas they said that he had not shown up for work for two days. Another oddity: the nurse was never absent without notifying her boss.
The house was tidy as always. Ergo: there had been no robbery; nor signs of struggle. Then, the magistrate gave the order to excavate the patio and garden.
The firefighters left several hours later, shovels in hand and a negative result on their faces.
At that point, the Investigations police were tracking Páez’s accounts. In the Social Security Bank he remained intact in a fixed-term deposit of 31,332.35 dollars that he had collected years before. A work accident. The monetary compensation for a stretcher that slammed shut, like a pair of scissors, and seriously affected two fingers on one hand.
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Nurse Páez’s deposit in dollars was left for the heirs.
The salary account had been active shortly after the disappearance. First clue to follow: the video footage of the ATM.
There were two other tips left: the cards from Provencred and the C&A store, which operated in San Martín and Las Heras de Ciudad.
Days later, it was learned that someone had bought clothes with Juana María Páez’s plastic when the woman was already missing.
The clothing trail led to another person, named Puebla, who had dealings with the nurse and who resold clothing in various places, such as the Lencinas Hospital.
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The ATM recording showed from the front, although with low quality images, a blonde woman withdrawing money from the missing nurse’s savings account.
Who was that woman? The Police found out after an investigation in Lencinas and Infanta. It was Noemí Gladys Puebla, who sold clothes and dealt with the nurse.
Two boys from the neighborhood helped crown the investigation: they had seen Puebla talking with the nurse in Las Heras hours before the disappearance. He drove an olive green Chevette.
They arrested her at her home in the City, on the way to the Fourth Section. At the same time, Miguel Gómez Valenzuela, her partner, who lived in the foothills, fell.
The man gave two different versions that equally complicated Puebla.
1) That he arrived home with the dead nurse in the car.
2) That he hanged her in front of her.
Gómez Valenzuela said that Puebla forced her to burn the body, which was reduced to ashes that she buried in supermarket bags in the immensity of the foothills.
There were excavations with road machinery and Judge Daniel Carniello led the judicial proceedings with secretary Viviana Morici.
Puebla and Gómez Valenzuela were tried.
In 2003 and 2004, they developed two oral and public trials. The Fifth Crime Chamber sentenced Puebla and ordered the release of her boyfriend.
In the Sixth Chamber a technicality was cleared up and it was confirmed that Puebla was the murderer. Guilty of the crime of simple homicide in real competition with scams.
In 2018 he was released on parole. He served the sentence imposed by Justice.
