Arrested in Lima man implicated in triple drug-related murder in Argentina: three young women tortured
Abel Josuel Taya Humpire, aged 32, was detained in Lima in a joint operation between the Argentine Federal Police and Peruvian police. He is identified as a member of the gang Los Pulpos, responsible for the murder of three young women in Argentina.
Detention in Lima of suspected member of drug gang linked to triple femicide in Argentina
Abel Josuel Taya Humpire, aged 32, was captured in Lima as part of a coordinated operation between the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) and Peruvian police, reports crprensa.com. Taya Humpire is identified as a suspected member of the drug trafficking organisation known as Los Pulpos, to which Argentine justice attributes the torture and murders of Brenda del Castillo, Morena Verdi and Lara Gutiérrez.
The three victims, aged between 15 and 20, were kidnapped on 19 September last year in La Tablada, the municipality of La Matanza, Buenos Aires. According to a message that Lara sent to one of her cousins, they had been promised 300 dollars each to attend a party at a country house. Security footage recorded the moment the young women boarded a red Chevrolet Tracker van reported as stolen, in which they were taken to a dwelling in Florencio Varela.
Torture broadcast live and discovery of the bodies
In that house in Florencio Varela, the perpetrators tortured the young women to make them reveal the location of drugs that they allegedly had stolen from Tony Valverde Victoriano, known as Pequeño J. During the torture, a live broadcast took place. The tortured and mutilated bodies of the three victims were found at the corner of Jáchal and Chañar streets, in Florencio Varela.
The investigation, conducted by the federal judge of Morón, Jorge Ernesto Rodríguez, established that the triple femicide was carried out as revenge linked to drug trafficking and that the gang Los Pulpos operated in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. Several of its members fled to Peru following the public impact of the case.
Extraditions underway and more than a dozen arrests
A month before Taya Humpire's detention, Luis Alan Valverde Rodríguez was also detained in Lima in connection with the same case. Both face an extradition process to Argentina. Tony Valverde Victoriano, known as Pequeño J, considered the main suspect, had previously been captured in Pucusana, Peru, whilst travelling in a lorry to meet with Argentine Matías Ozorio.
The case file contains more than a dozen arrests. Among those first detained, between 23 and 24 September 2025, were Maximiliano Parra, Daniela Ibarra, Miguel Ángel Villanueva Silva and Celeste González Guerrero, all with direct links to the dwelling where the bodies were found. Between 27 and 30 September, Víctor Sotacuro Lázaro, Ariel Jeremías Giménez, Florencia Milagros Ibáñez, Matías Osorio and Pequeño J were arrested. On 7 October, Alex Ydone Castillo was detained; twenty days later, Mónica Débora Mujica and Joseph Freyser Cubas Zabaleta. On 19 December, Bernabé Jesús Mallón was arrested. At the beginning of this month, Eugenia Quispe Gallardo, Verónica Emilce Chieto, María Inés Olivera and Luis Ramiro Mansur were detained, and in September last year the capture of David Alberto Godoy was reported.
Video found in separate case broadens circle of suspects
A chance discovery in a parallel case widened the number of suspects. On 16 October, federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado sent to judge Rodríguez a video recording found on the mobile telephone of Pablo Macalopu Cafferata, a 35-year-old Peruvian drug lord being prosecuted with preventive detention as the organiser of drug trafficking. Rodríguez requested his detention also in connection with the triple murder.
The video shows an attack on Lara Gutiérrez, who identifies a man as Roger, an alias that justice assigns to Macalopu Cafferata. In the recording, the man asks the victim: "What happened that day?" and "So, are you going to talk or not?". Judge Arroyo Salgado interpreted that the violence was an instrument to obtain answers and that the threats, such as "I'm going to blow your finger off", represented an escalation of punishment conditioned on the victim's statements. Orders can also be heard such as "Grab her, grab her, buddy..." and "Blow her finger off", carried out by those surrounding the speaker, which, according to the judge, would demonstrate that the attacker claimed the power to decide over the life of the person subjected to torture.
Source: Google News PE — Crime