The last time Ana Teresa Gualteros was seen alive by one of her relatives was on Sunday the 2nd.January 0, 2013. The next day the woman was brutally beaten, raped, murdered and burned in a rural area of the municipality of Salento, Quindío.
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His family fought for 11 years so that justice was done until finally this Wednesday, June 19, he was captured by the police, Luis Alejandro Hurtado Zuleta, convicted in the first and second instance as responsible for the murder of the 35-year-old woman.
The man was arrested thanks to some neighbors alerting the authorities that Hurtado had gone to his old apartment located in the north of Armenia.
The murder of Gualteros provoked the indignation of women in the Quindío, It generated several marches demanding justice and asking that no more delays occur because this murder became the case that had been pending for the longest time to be clarified in the department.
Gualteros’ sister, Martha Liliana, recalled that initially she was reported missingbut after several days nothing was known about his whereabouts until an uncle of his read the news of the discovery of a burned body in Salento.
Armenia sit-in (2)
Photo:Supplied to EL TIEMPO
“He felt that it was my sister and she asked another relative to look for her and if he couldn’t find her, to go to the morgue in Armenia, where they finally found her. I had half my face burnedbut they recognized it from the other half, which was not burned,” he told this medium.
After the discovery of the body, a battle began to clarify the case and do justice to Ana Teresa, who left behind a 12-year-old daughter.
According to the investigation, it is believed that Gualteros was murdered between the night of January 21 and the early morning of January 22, 2013, but the details of what happened to her and why she was murdered are not yet known. However, inspection of the body revealed that she had at least 70 blunt force injuries and knife, burns with cigarettes and with the fire that was set on his clothes and that they tried to spread with a flammable liquid. In addition to the fact that she had compatible injuries with carnal access, as revealed by forensic analysis.
The last time Gualteros was seen was the night of January 21, 2013 and she was accompanied by her boyfriend Alejandro Castaño Marín and a friend of the couple, Luis Alejandro Hurtado Zuleta.
Hurtado was captured in September 2013 for his alleged participation in the events and spent 11 months in prison, but was released to face the trial in freedom. Nine years passed until finally, in April of last year, a judge sentenced him in the first instance to spend 39 years in prison for this homicide.
“The victim’s brother knew Hurtado from a very young age, he looked for him several times, but he hid from him. He said that when they were younger They used to consume narcotics and pick up women via Circassia and take them precisely to the sidewalk The pines, because they considered it to be a discreet place where no one could identify them, and It was precisely there where they found the body of Ana Teresa Gualteros“said the judge during one of the hearings.
“He had evasive behavior with the victim’s family who looked for him to tell them what had happened. And, in addition, he had his car washed just before putting it at the disposal of the Police,” added the judge.
Alejandro Hurtado Zuleta, involved in the murder of a woman in Armenia
Photo:PRIVATE FILE
The defense appealed this ruling, but in September 2023 it was ratified in the second instance by the Superior Court of the Judicial District of Armenia. Nevertheless, The man fled from justice until he was captured this Wednesday in his apartment.
“I grew up hearing my grandparents say that thank God my mother’s body had appeared and I didn’t understand why one has to be grateful for something so horrible, then I understood that they wanted to do it to my mother go through NN and it could have been worse for us to have never found her,” said the victim’s daughter, Juliana Gómez, who was 12 years old at the time of her mother’s death.
Gualteros’ former romantic partner, Alejandro Castaño Marín, was also linked to this process, who was not investigated in all these years.
“There have already been several hearings in that case and we hope that it will be decided soon, but this one will be shorter because we already have a large part of the evidentiary material that was the same used in the case of Hurtado Zuleta,” said Gualteros’ sister.
