Police have uncovered grisly evidence at the home of an alleged Argentine serial killer. Photo / Getty Images
Police have uncovered grisly evidence at the home of an alleged Argentine serial killer. Photo / Getty Images
Argentine police have arrested an alleged serial killer who preyed on homeless people he brought to his home where he murdered and dismembered them, officials said on Tuesday.
The murders – at least five are known to investigators – always took place on Fridays.
A 37-year-old man was arrested aftera raid on his home last week yielded human “bones, blood, pieces of skin and even a nose,” Attorney General Sergio Lello Sanchez of the Jujuy province told AFP.
The raid was the result of clues gathered from analysing security camera footage.
At the house where they arrested the man, police also encountered a 16-year-old boy who appeared scared and said he was the owner’s nephew, said Lello Sanchez.
He told police: “I want to talk,” and then recounted that his uncle would go out on Friday afternoons and return at night with different people.
He apparently lured them with offers of a job or a drink.
The boy said his uncle would “beat them, kill them, cut their bodies, burn them, and take them out in garbage bags,” case prosecutor Guillermo Beller told the A24 news channel.
The victims were homeless and mostly elderly people, added Lello Sanchez.
The investigation started after evidence emerged that five missing people had last been seen alive in the same place, near an old bus terminal in the city of San Salvador de Jujuy.
Security footage showed two of them getting into taxis with the same person at different times.
A taxi driver took police to the house where he had dropped his clients.
The man, who insists he is innocent, was charged Monday with aggravated homicide and placed in pre-trial detention for four months pending the investigation that Lello Sanchez said was at an “early stage”.
Investigators were still in the process of analysing the remains and extracting DNA samples from relatives of missing persons to try and identify the dead.
