It had been three weeks since Edgardo Sanoner, 84, had not heard from his daughter. So, he decided to go to his apartment, in the Belgrano neighborhood, together with a locksmith. It was last September 19, and before entering the building he called the City Police. Accompanied by an officer from the Buenos Aires security force, he entered the building. As soon as they opened the living room door, a nauseating smell caught them.. They sensed the worst. They walked down a corridor to the suite room. in the bathroom was Laura Sanoner51. Dead. His corpse was in the bathtub, with his head covered with a white sheet and a wool stocking that covered his mouth.. The autopsy determined that she had suffered mechanical asphyxiation from suffocation. The suspicion is that the homicide occurred 34 days before his discovery.
The alleged murderer was arrested by detectives from the City Police Homicide Division and in the last hours he was processed with preventive detention. Is about diego arener42, a former partner of the victim, as reported to THE NATION judicial sources.
The motive for the murder would have been robbery. The same day the crime is supposed to have taken place, Arener bought a motorcycle for which he paid 990,000 pesos in cash, according to the judicial file, to which he had access. THE NATION.
Furthermore, at the end of last August, the suspect would have bought a Volkswagen Vento for US $ 16,200 that he would have put in the name of his current partner, Pamela G., who was prosecuted without preventive detention for the crime of concealment.
Almost six years ago, on October 23, 2016, Sanoner had denounced Arener. In the presentation, the woman maintained that this man had been her partner and that, after the separation, he stole 40,000 dollars, 50,000 pesos, jewelry and cell phones.
After the discovery of the body, the case was filed in the Buenos Aires Criminal and Correctional Court No. 13, subrogated by the magistrate Gustavo Pierretti and the Núñez-Saavedra decentralized prosecutor’s office, in charge of the prosecutor Jose Maria Campagnoli.
“Death was caused by mechanical asphyxiation due to suffocation, since the sheet that completely covered her head and neck and the stocking tied around her neck and face as a gag, caused the corner of her mouth to pull. and the consequent opening of the mouth that, together with the sheet, obstructed the respiratory tract and prevented the entry of air, “said Judge Pierreti in the resolution where the suspect’s preventive detention was issued.
Arener was prosecuted for the crime of homicide triply aggravated by the bond, for having been committed the cause of the crime and through gender-based violence. An embargo was placed on his assets to cover the sum of 15,000,000 pesos.
According to the court file, the crime “occurred on a date not yet determined, but it could have taken place between August 16, dating from the last record of the victim’s phone, and at least 15 days before that the corpse was found the corpse”.
The police and judicial detectives had the collaboration of the Secretary of Criminal Investigations of the Fiscal Unit Specialized in Complex Criminal Investigation (Ufecri), a unit dedicated to putting a face on NN criminals, to identify the suspect and which is also in charge of the prosecutor Campagnoli.
The victim lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of a building located at 11 de Septiembre al 2600, in Belgrano.
Investigators suspect that before being suffocated, the victim was tortured by the killer into telling him the key to the apartment’s safe, which was empty when the murder was discovered. One of the last times she saw her daughter, Edgardo Sanoner had given him $8,000.
“The victim had three wounds on his face, made with a knife. We assume that was when the killer threatened her to tell him the key to the safe deposit box,” she told THE NATION a case investigator.
At the crime scene, investigators found traces of the suspect on a perfume bottle, a glass and a metal can.
In addition to the sheet that covered his head, his body was tied hand and foot with a pink cord.
“Although, I repeat, at the moment the circumstances of time are unknown, it can be conjectured that Arener, knowing that his ex-partner accumulated a large sum of money in his home and that he had money stored in the closet, accessed the apartment without the consent of the victim, for which, perhaps, he could have used the access card and/or apartment key that he kept from his old love relationship, with the aim of illegally seizing Sanoner’s assets and killing her in order to prepare or facilitate the robbery and/or seek their impunity”, affirmed the magistrate when substantiating the prosecution with preventive detention.
The judge did not overlook the fact that Arener had been sentenced in the province of Santa Fe to 20 years in prison for a crime involving robbery. He killed the driver of a pickup truck. The sentence expired on August 13, 2018, but the murderer was on the run because in 2013 he had not returned to prison after a temporary release.
“That is to say that in 2016, when Laura Sanoner reported him for theft, the suspect should have been in jail”, said a judicial source.
What’s more, between Sanoner’s report of theft and the murder, Arener had been captured, but in December 2021 he absconded again during a temporary outing. Until his arrest for the homicide that occurred in Belgrano, he was in absentia, according to official documentation to which he agreed. THE NATION.