“We were all desperately looking for him. I have nothing to hide. “I have my truth and that’s what happened.”
Laudelina Peña de Benítez said it. It was on Tuesday, June 18, when five days of searching for the body had passed. Danilo Peña Loan (5) and the media began to point it out. Today, two weeks later, she told another truth.
Laudelina testified throughout Friday night before the Corrientes justice system and told in detail what she knows about the disappearance of her nephew, a case that has the country in suspense. He said Loan had been hit by the truck. driven by former sailor Carlos Pérez, accompanied by his wife, former municipal official María Victoria Caillava.
Laudelina is free today. She went to testify before an investigating prosecutor in Corrientes and what she did was report a traffic accident and the subsequent cover-up, which is bailable.
As she reported, she helped hide the truth at the request of the former official, and with the collaboration of Commissioner Walter Maciel, one of the six detainees. The police officer had received a shoe that he planted three kilometers from the farm, to divert the investigation, according to the courts.
At that time, they did not imagine that the search for a child lost in a field would become a national cause.
The mystery of Loan’s disappearance began as a search for a person, which led to a first case for “abandonment of person”. In that first instance, the main suspect was Antonio Benítez, Laudelina’s partner. He is the one who had taken the boy and others to an orange grove. 500 meters from the house to look for some fruit. Also arrested were Daniel “Fierrito” Ramírez (49) and Mónica Millapi (35), a couple who were at that lunch and had accompanied the boys to the field.
Since the three adults had gone to the countryside with the children, the courts began by accusing them of having lost the boy. Of the three, Benítez was the only one with a criminal record, a minor case of cattle theft. For this reason, he was targeted more than the rest. Laudelina, for being his partner, too.
And in that first instance Laudelina began her game of statementsin a scenario where it was perceived that there were internal family issues flowing beneath the surface.
“Antonio called me and told me to check if Loan had arrived. I told him he hadn’t arrived and we went out to look for him,” said Laudelina in her first statement to C5N, on Tuesday 18th, day 5 of the search. An interesting detail: she had asked to give this interview with her back to the camera, so that her face could not be seen.
There he stressed that the situation was “very strange” since, according to his recollection, in less than half an hour the child left the house and disappeared. “I have no suspicions about the surroundings, we were all looking for him,” he said. But he cast doubt on the situation by clarifying: “Only the mother and brother stayed here (in the house) waiting for him to return. I would go to the bottom of the earth for my son. It moves me that he did nothing for his son, he did not look for him.”shot Maria, Loan’s mother.
As the days went by, while doubts continued to surround her husband, the woman continued to defend him. “I believe him,” she said. At the time, neither Caillava nor Pérez appeared as defendants. However, due to the secrecy with which she testified, Fierrito and Millapi’s lawyers began to suspect her. On June 19, they asked that she be investigated and even charged.
On Saturday the 22nd, on the tenth day of the search, Laudelina spoke again. In an interview with A24, the woman again slipped allegedly false clues. He said he heard the police comment that “the baby had appeared.”
“I heard the radio coming out of the commissioner’s office. The radio rang and said, ‘Boss, boss, we have news: the kid has appeared, in a shack, he’s scared but he’s okay, he’s in a shack,’ he said,” Laudelina said. “Also, they told him (the commissioner) to stay where he was, but he left ‘in a flash.’ The next day the commissioner changed the story of what I had heard.”
“I doubt the commissioner, because for me they lied to me with the drone. Now I am afraid of the Police.” The commissioner he was referring to was Maciel, arrested for concealment. Now, according to his testimony, he would be the one who collaborated in the plan by planting the found loot. A shoe that Laudelina had given to the boy, when he stopped getting into one of her boys.
Caillava and Pérez were arrested last Saturday, the 21st, when the case began to investigate the couple for alleged human trafficking. Added to this was a positive examination by the dogs in the Ford Ranger truck that the couple drove to lunch at Catalina’s house, Loan’s grandmother.
Who had invited the couple to the lunch was another point of contention. Laudelina had initially said that it was Catalina who had told them to go. She even told the couple by text message. Catalina denied this version.
Catalina and Laudelina, Loan’s grandmother and aunt, gave different versions about who invited the couple involved to lunch.The octogenarian, who spoke to the media on several occasions, never kept quiet. She vented her anger towards her father-in-law Antonio, whom she did not like because of his problems with the law. However, she said that she maintained confidence in her own daughter and in everyone at the table.
“Laudelina accompanies me every day. She is angry with me, she tells me that I am sinking Benitez every time I speak“She can’t leave the house because she’s locked up and because her husband is in prison,” Catalina complained in one of her last notes, highlighting the tensions that existed behind closed doors, while judicial and media pressure continued to surround the case.
In recent days the figure of Laudelina was once again at the center of the scene. She had been the one who took the photo of the lunch, where everyone present in the house appears. She had also accompanied the group to the orange grove. But at the time she had not spoken in court.
After so many twists and turns outside the record, he now broke down and told another truth.
