Erica Soriano: the keys to a case that shocked the country and that ended today

The Oral Criminal Court (OCD) N ° 9


Lomas de Zamora
found Daniel Lagostena guilty this morning of the crime of Erica Soriano, who was then his partner. As for the sentence,
THE NATION reconstructs below the main keys of the


case
who for eight years kept the country in abeyance

The last day of Erica

On Friday, August 20, 2010 in the afternoon, Erica visited, accompanied by Lagostena, an obstetrician at Sanatorium Mater Dei in Palermo. I was 30 years old and two and a half months pregnant. At 8:30 pm, the couple returned home to Lanús and disputed. On the way Erica spoke on the phone with a friend: it's the last record of the woman alive.

The disappearance

The version of Lagostena, who today is 58 years old, is that the next day Erica went to her mother's house, Villa Adelina, to meet her daughter (from a previous marriage). He did not take money or documents and nothing was learned from him. Almost six years later, on May 1, 2016, Lagostena was arrested by order of the safeguards judge Gabriel Vitale: it was suspected that he had murdered and cremated Erica taking advantage of the contacts of his family, who had had a funeral home.

tests

The experts determined that the midnight of August 20, 2010,
Lagostena exchanged messages with his nephew Brian Poublán, with whom he did not have a daily market, and at dawn, a phone from Poublán's mother recorded calls that were not usual either. The researchers badume that Erica's body disappeared at that time. In addition, the experts who looked for signs in the house when the woman was missing, discovered that the chimney was hot, even though it was 24 degrees, and inside, some remains of sub- clothing. It is presumed that Lagostena burned his partner's clothes.

The key witness

An identity witness reserved
He stated that on the day of the event, when they quarreled, Lagostena hit Erica, she fell and died when she banged her head against an allowance. "Erica died and Daniel called a friend who, early in the morning, took Erica's body to the Lanús crematorium," said the woman. The researchers detected with the luminol that there was a blood stain under a coffee table, but as it had been washed, one could only determine that it was a matter of time. wife.

On June 4, the oral trial began in Lomas de Zamora, during which about forty witnesses testified. Last Wednesday, at the last hearing, Lagostena said: "As I have been for eight years,
I am innocent. His defense asked that he be acquitted for the benefit of the doubt since there is no crime. The prosecution and the complaint, on the other hand, asked him to be sentenced to 25 years in prison for abortion and homicide.

The sentence

The Oral Criminal Court (TOC) No. 9 of Lomas de Zamora determined this morning that
Lagostena is guilty of homicide in an ideal contest with abortion in the context of gender violence by Erica Soriano, which took place in August 2010.