The story of Nora Dalmasso is an unsolved case of black news in 2006 and, over the years, capable of splitting the Argentine company, between public indignation, distrust in the institutions and a series of theories that have ended with nothing done. Netflix has decided to create a document entitled “killed a thousand times: the Nora Dalmasso case”, which in addition to bringing new attention to history could bring out new elements of a very intricate case, which we try to reconstruct in chronological order.
The Nora Dalmasso case: true story
The night between 25 and 26 November 2006, Nora Dalmasso – 51 years old, mother of two children, woman of Córdoba well – is found dead in her daughter’s room, in the elegant house she divided with her husband in the residential neighborhood of Villa Golf, in Río Cuarto. He is half -naked, strangled with the strap of his dressing gown and has signs of violence compatible with a physical aggression. The alarm starts from the woman’s mother, worried about her missing answers on the phone, who sends a close to checking. He will be the macabre discovery. From that moment there is one of the most emblematic and twilly cases of the Argentine black chronicle, marked by judicial errors, interrupted tracks and a cobweb of hypotheses never resolved. After many years, five prosecutors, three acquired defendants and hundreds of pages of appraisal was discovered a new genetic track, which emerged from analyzes that led to the identification of a new suspicion.
In the years following the crime, Argentine justice has gagged in the dark. Starting with the crime scene, where 23 people passed before the investigators managed to isolate it. Among them also a priest, friend of the family, who covered the body for “modesty”, thus potentially altering the evidence. The hypotheses followed were manifold: murder during a bad relationship that ended badly, sexual violence, femicide and commission crime. The appraisals confirmed that Nora had been asphyxiated and that her body had been left on her daughter’s bed in an unclear context.
The first to end up in the sights was Gastón Zárate, a painter who worked in the neighborhood and who was immediately labeled as the “ideal culprit”, the classic scapegoat. Briefly arrested, he was then exonerated due to absolute lack of evidence, but the clamor was such as to generate popular manifestations in his favor. Then it was Facundo’s turn, the victim’s son, accused on the basis of genetic traces compatible with his lineage: he was also acquitted, but only after six long years of investigations and suspicions infamous.In 2022, under the guidance of the fifth prosecutor Luis Pizarro, was her husband Marcelo Macarrón – estimated traumatologist – to end up on trial. The accusation: murder aggravated by emotional bond, premeditation and possible economic motive. Pizarro considered him the principal of a commissioned crime, but the jury acquitted him for lack of evidence, also because the man was at a golf tournament in Uruguay in the days of the murder.
In 2022 an additional genetic analysis on 200 collected samples found concrete compatibility with a subject outside the family. The man, whose identity is not yet public, has been identified, convened and questioned by the Unidad Fiscal Especial de Río Cuarto. According to the public ministry of Córdoba, he was formally registered in the register of suspects and appointed a defense lawyer. It is the first real element of novelty after years of limping investigations. The authorities are now focusing on the elaboration of new hypotheses that include this genetic test and on the possible relaunch of the criminal action, even if the crime itself would now be technically prescribed.
But if these latter hypotheses seem cunning, the documentary of “Netflix” killed a thousand times – the Nora Dalmasso case “tries to reconstruct the whole story, with the aim of providing some response to a case that seems, for the most, destined not to find the answers due.
