Mision Verdad
After two years of uncertainty, more than 200 investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) and a confession, we finally know the story of the disappearance of Carlos Lanz, Venezuelan social leader, university professor and researcher, a friend of this tribune. Due to the joint work of several state powers, it was concluded that he was murdered after his capture.
At the time of this article’s publication, 13 people are being held as suspects.
The plot was made known nationally and internationally by Attorney General Tarek Wiliam Saab in a press conference, with irrefutable proof: the confession of one of the material intellectual authors of the kidnapping and murder of Lanz. The highest representative of the MP warned from the beginning of his statements that this was “a terrifying case with chilling aspects”.
The order of events was as follows: first came the kidnapping by hired assassins on August 8, 2020, which resulted in the disappearance and subsequent murder of Carlos Lanz by firearm. The Attorney General warned that, from the first moment “there was an attempt to attach political overtones” to the case.
He mentioned that the media treatment of Lanz’s disappearance was similar to that of the massacres of Tumeremo (2016) and Barlovento (2016) with political agendas, even when the crimes were clarified involving, in the first case, mining mafias, and in the second, security bodies prosecuted by the authorities.
To date, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has put to work six prosecutors, who are working with other security and intelligence entities of the State to deepen the investigation. Saab himself was directly involved, interviewing the main suspects.
The complexity of the case is due to the preparation by its material and intellectual authors “who had the perfect alibi for the perfect crime, just as they revealed it in their necrophiliac gatherings. We say that ‘there is no perfect crime'”, said the Prosecutor.
DETAILS OF THE CASE
According to the investigations, it was a hired assassination.
The Attorney General informed that Lanz’s wife, Maxiorisol “Mayi” Cumare, was the mastermind of the disappearance, kidnapping and subsequent murder.
She offered Glenn Castellano, the informer of the plot, one of the material authors of the crime and Cumare’s lover “for years”, according to Saab, 8 thousand dollars: 5 thousand for a “pran” of the Tocorón prison and two hired killers, and 3 thousand for him as facilitator and contract killer. This happened three months before the criminal acts.
Castellano tells that Tito Viloria, union leader and lawyer, took Lanz, under deception, to a supposed meeting with militiamen in Mariara because there would be, supposedly, “a conspiracy underway against the government” of President Nicolás Maduro. Lanz agreed to go, because of his trust in Viloria, but instead he was taken to La Fortaleza farm, in Cojedes state, where the assassination took place.
This corroborates the initial hypothesis, issued in the first weeks of investigations by the MP, that Lanz left his house, at a time of radical quarantine at national level due to the covid pandemic, with someone he trusted and voluntarily. There was no trace of the use of force in his house, so the kidnapping occurred due to Viloria’s betrayal, according to the investigation.
Lanz, according to the informant, was bound and gagged, and was shot twice at close range in the right temple, which shattered his skull. Then, the two assassins and the foreman of La Fortaleza farm, Elsy Becerra, stripped him naked, used two machetes and a knife to dismember and mutilate Lanz’s body and threw it into the pigsty to disappear.
Cumare’s order was to disappear the body, so that no traces would remain.
According to Castellano, Viloria would be implicated in a corruption network together with his sentimental partner, Zaida Suarez, and Cumare, who was regional director of Inces Aragua, carrying out procedures with suppliers and charging at least 20% commissions. In other words, there was a corruption scheme in the background of the conspiracy against Carlos Lanz.
NEW EVIDENCE
“On April 28 we traced a new line of investigation based on elements that emerged this year”, said Saab, and related that, seven days before the fact, a person who worked as domestic staff in Lanz’s house changed residence, named Maryorie Acevedo.
In an interview with the citizen, he added new information: hostility in the relationship between Lanz and his wife, revealing that the citizens Oliver Medina and Glenn Castellano were the extramarital partners of “Mayi” Cumare.
Medina confirms that at the time of the facts he had a love relationship with Cumare, and also reveals that he received economic benefits.
After the incorporation of a psychiatrist to the Criminalistic Unit of the MP, and two experts in polygraph, in addition to conducting interviews with the family circle of Lanz, neighbors, work team and friends, Cumare was diagnosed as a person who has the typical psychological profile of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Castellano in her confession revealed that Cumare confessed that she was fed up with how Carlos Lanz continued to be an obstacle to her corrupt actions. Saab issued his hypothesis: “I think it was evident that Lanz was going to denounce his partner. So she decided to hire hitmen”.
On the other hand, during the beginning of the official investigation, Tito Viloria assured that the motive for Lanz’s disappearance was the kidnapping by the Mossad in retaliation for events that took place years ago in which the researcher and university professor was a protagonist. The forced extraction by international forces had no credibility, evidence or basis whatsoever.
In addition, there were inconsistencies in the alibis of Cumare and Viloria, according to the Attorney General: “We did not discard any type of theory, not even those of a personal nature, although they did not present proof. We corroborated the time of departure from their house, there was an informative gap and contradictions, in the polygraph tests the implicated persons looked like liars”.
After Castellano’s confession, “he took us to the farm La Fortaleza, in Cojedes, being accompanied by a team of forensic experts and a group of canines with special preparation for the location of corpses”, said the Prosecutor. He showed a photo of the remains of the victim’s flannel (garment that Castellano informed that Lanz was wearing at the time of the facts) and confirmed that in a grave were found, by means of forensic resources, remains of blood.
Saab emphasized that most of these findings of the investigation were uncovered in the last four days, in which he personally conducted the interviews and coordinated the follow-up of all the actions to solve the case.
ONGOING INVESTIGATION
“I do not rule out that there will be new detainees”, Saab affirmed.
He insisted that this case is not over, there are still some elements and persons involved in the fact that have not yet come to light, including the arrest of one of the hired assassins (the other one is already in the hands of state powers) and the name of the “pran” in charge of the hired assassins.
For this reason, it should not be considered concluded. Besides, the judicial process against the defendants and the accused is still pending, since what the Attorney General of the Republic did was to present the case to the public opinion.
However, there were some sectors trying to contaminate the case from the beginning.
Saab reported during the press conference that the Committee for the Search and Liberation of Carlos Lanz Rodriguez, an organization unofficially dedicated to the case, made accusations against the State for the disappearance of Lanz, blaming it of “forced disappearance”, and defamed every step taken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in a public manner.
He also informed that one of the lawyers of said Committee said that he would take the case to international institutions, specifically to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, with the intention of attacking the Venezuelan State as a violator of human rights. “The aforementioned Committee even attacked me and the Public Prosecutor’s Office as alleged accessories”, he said.
In spite of the fact that some political sectors, on the right and on the left, are interested in spreading another version, it must be emphasized that this is still an ongoing investigation. Further details and clarification of the plot can be expected in the wake of a crime as regrettable as it is deplorable.
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