Suspect in double femicide refused to testify in Retiro murder case
Renato Iván Tabella, charged with the murders of two women in Córdoba and Buenos Aires, refused to testify before Buenos Aires court. The Córdoba case has been reclassified from homicide to femicide.
Tabella did not testify in Buenos Aires and Córdoba case moved to femicide
Renato Iván Tabella, 28 years old, the main suspect in the murders of Daniela Villalba in Córdoba and Tatiana Micaela Fernández in Buenos Aires, refused to testify on Tuesday in the case concerning Fernández's death. According to hoydia.com.ar, Tabella appeared before the National Criminal and Correctional Court No. 22, presided over by Judge Guillermo Rongo, and exercised his constitutional right not to give testimony.
At the same time, the Córdoba courts modified the legal classification of the Villalba case: prosecutor Pablo Camacho, from the Gender and Domestic Violence Prosecution First Shift, ordered the case to be reclassified from simple homicide to femicide, that is, homicide aggravated by gender-based violence.
Autopsy and early investigation
The autopsy determined that Fernández, 27 years old, died from "mechanical asphyxia by compression", according to the Fiscales website. The investigation began last Sunday, when a friend of the victim reported finding her dead in an apartment located on Libertad Street at number 1200, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Retiro. Both were renting the property to offer escort services through a sexual services application.
The person making the report declared that, on the day before the discovery, a man identified as "Iván" contacted Fernández through the Gemidos TV site to request a service. Since Fernández needed to work that day, her friend forwarded the request to her.
Arrest and intelligence operations
Tabella was arrested the same Sunday night, following a series of intelligence operations aimed at establishing his whereabouts. As part of the investigation, four telephone lines were intercepted: that of the victim, that of her friend, a shared line that both used to receive service requests, and the line corresponding to the alleged client.
Connection to the Cofico murder
The Retiro case is linked to the alleged femicide of Daniela Villalba, 29 years old, which occurred on 19 October in the Córdoba neighbourhood of Cofico. Villalba allegedly contacted Tabella through the same application used by Fernández. With the reclassification ordered by prosecutor Camacho, that case is no longer being investigated as simple homicide and is now being handled under the femicide category.
Source: Google News AR — Buenos Aires