Thursday April 20, 2023 | 4:00 p.m.
Shortly after two and a half years after the murder of Marcelo Antúnez Sequeira (34), whose body was found inside a well on a farm in San Vicente, the Criminal Court One of Oberá received the file that has Juan Grdeñ as the only defendant. (73), ex-patron of the victim.
Consequently, it only remains to define the date of the oral and public trial. In this regard, when asked by this morning paper, a spokesperson mentioned that the debate could be held in the second half of this year.
The defendant will come to the debate in freedom since since May 2021 he has enjoyed the benefit of house arrest due to his age and pre-existing health problems. In addition, while staying at the local police station, he was diagnosed with Covid-19.
Testimonies collected in the investigation point to the material authorship of the act towards Grdeñ, while the motive for the crime would be the settling of accounts, since the suspect accused the victim of a series of robberies perpetrated on his farm in Picada Zulma, in San Vicente . The defendant never testified in court.
The autopsy report indicates that Antúnez Sequeira was alive when he was thrown into the well; he suffered severe head trauma, although he died as a result of a blow to the thorax from a crushed trunk.
The accusation against Grdeñ is based on successive judicial testimonies that syndicate them as the only suspect, whom on January 4, 2021 several witnesses saw heading towards the property of the El Progreso neighborhood, where 40 days later they found the body of Antúnez Sequeira.
Likewise, on January 4, the victim was seen for the last time, when he left his house to go to work on the defendant’s farm.
Repeated robberies in the farm
In his statement of January 7, 2021, when the whereabouts of the victim were still unknown, Antonio Antúnez Sequeira (55), father of the murdered young man, specified that ten days before the defendant arrived at his home, in the Trinidad de San Vicente neighborhood , to talk about work with your child.
“On December 23, Juan Gardel went to my house with his truck to look for my son to work. That day he talked to Marcelo and gave him a job. On January 4, at 6, my son left home to go to work on Gardel’s farm and since then we haven’t heard from him,” he said on the third day of the disappearance.
In the same statement, the father questioned that the defendant had stated that he had not seen his son for three months.
“That is a lie, because on December 23 he was at home,” he remarked, after which he added: “What he says sounds strange to me because I am sure that on January 4 my son left to work on his farm.”
As the days went by and with no news about the whereabouts of the boy, the father made an extension of the complaint where he acknowledged that on two occasions Gardel accused his son of stealing tools, but later offered him a job again.
He also provided information that foreshadowed his worst fears: “Juan Grdeñ has wells on the farm and there is a cutwater nearby,” Antonio Antúnez Sequeira opportunely indicated.
In the instruction it was also proven that the farmer was the victim of several robberies on his property, including tools, valuables and even cash.
It happens that like many people who live in rural areas, Grdeñ kept the money at home. On one occasion they even stole a large sum that he had buried in a plantation.
previous threats
On January 7, three days after the disappearance of the victim, in a brief statement at the police headquarters, Gardel assured that it had been three months since he had seen Marcelo Antúnez Sequeira for the last time, while denying that he had gone to see him at his home on January 4, as stated by relatives of the victim.
Subsequent raids on his home in Picada Zulma yielded negative results. But the farmer’s situation became complicated on February 13, when the Police and Volunteer Firefighters found the body in a well located on the farm in the El Progreso neighborhood, owned by Gardel’s son-in-law.
Although the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, it was easy to identify it because the DNI was among the clothes.
“It is not ruled out that the victim was thrown into the well still alive, since her hands were up and on the sides of the well there were marks compatible with scratches,” confided a source with access to the file.
It is presumed that the defendant threw the victim into the well while still alive and then threw a log on him.
In relation to the hypothesis of the crime for reckoning, in his statement at the police headquarters, Enrique Juscuv (52) reported that a friend of a taxi driver told him that some time ago they stole a motor scythe and two jugs from the suspect’s farm.
“The owner of the farm distrusted Antúnez and said that he himself would take care of making him disappear. And that he just disappeared when he went to work on the same person’s farm. That seems weird to me,” he stated.
compromising traces
Among the testimonies that complicate the accused is the account of Leandro Antúnez Sequeira (27), the victim’s brother, who mentioned that on January 4 he told him that he was going to work at Gardel’s farm, in Picada Zulma.
It is presumed that the pawn arrived at Picada Zulma on his own and was later transferred by the suspect to the El Progreso neighborhood farm, as other voices pointed out.
Such is the case of Miguel Ángel Tarnowski (23), who testified that on January 4 he was felling pine trees in the El Progreso neighborhood, on kilometer 997 of National Route 14, when at around 7:30 a.m. he saw a dark gray Toyota Hilux pass by. , with stripes on the sides.
“I didn’t see who was inside, but the boss said it was Grdeñ. Later we did not see the truck leave, ”he mentioned. His brother José Tarnowski (19) declared in the same sense.
The brothers were working for Rogelio Foleto (50), who indicated that he knows that the truck they saw was from Grdeñ because he bought it from a neighbor of his.
Days later, he saw on television that the person who disappeared on January 4 was an employee of Grdeñ, which seemed at least suggestive to him, and for this reason he approached the police to comment that that same day he observed the filming of the accused going to the farm where They found the body.
He indicated that he clearly remembered him because it was not usual to see him in the area.
Meanwhile, Diego Duarte (25) was a neighbor of Antúnez Sequeira and mentioned that on January 4, at 6, they passed each other and told him that he was going to work in Picada Zulma.
The body was found on February 13, 2021 on the property of Spanish citizen Miguel Planell Lapuente, son-in-law of the defendant. Hours later, Grdeñ was arrested in the center of San Vicente.
“I looked there, look there…”
On February 13, 2022, after the discovery of his brother’s body, Cristian Antúnez acknowledged that from the outset they provided indications that pointed to Marcelo’s former employer and even mentioned the El Progreso neighborhood farm.
“From the first day we named the farm, we said ‘look there, look there…’, my brother worked on the two farms that were raided, both the one where that person lived and the other. The police were asked to please look there. They waited for forty days to search there, ”he remarked. Likewise, he remarked that in the previous days they toured the properties of the defendant and relatives, a circumstance in which “the first days that we went looking we spoke with a son-in-law. We arrived at his house in a Zulma tailspin and he told us to be careful, that this man (by Juan Gardel) is foul-mouthed, a bandit”. And he added that “that same old man with whom Marcelo worked for more than five years is the same one who came home, the one who invited him to work, who he called him to his farm that Monday morning. That’s why we were sure that my brother went there and that something had happened as I said the first time. There are witnesses that he came looking for my brother. On top of that he denied, that’s why we were suspicious”.
