Buenos Aires, Dec 4 (NA) – This Thursday, a new hearing session was held in the trial against Marcelo Tagliaferro and Patricia Godoy for the crime of false testimony. Meanwhile, the accused answered questions and maintained that he had requested the 300,000 pesos reward offered by the Ministry of Security.
According to what Argentine News Agency (NA) learned, the hearing took place in the La Plata criminal court. The taxi driver, accused and charged with aggravated false testimony, testified for an hour before Judge Emir Caputo Tartara (TOC 4).
Court sources stated that the taxi driver presented himself as a witness interested in the case's resolution. Tagliaferro would have received the 300,000 pesos reward from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Security only if Osvaldo Martínez was found guilty of the murders of Susana De Barttole, Micaela Galle, Bárbara Santos, and Marisol Pereyra.
The bet did not pay off, as in 2014, Javier “La Hiena” Quiroga was sentenced to life imprisonment for the four crimes. In the unanimous ruling by the La Plata Oral and Criminal Court III, it was determined that Osvaldo Martínez was innocent and that Tagliaferro himself had contradictions in his three testimonies, two of which were provided during the investigation stage and the third during the trial.
Call from Burlando to Tagliaferro on 11/30/2011 before testifying against Martínez.
The taxi driver tried to defend himself and clarify his multiple versions but generated more doubts. During today's hearing, he recounted that in his first statement made at the police station in 2011, he was afraid of the police and therefore could not provide details about the person who picked him up at the victims' house on the night of November 27, 2011.
Hours later, he met with lawyer Fernando Burlando, and after seeing Martínez's image in the media, he changed his version: “I have a clear image of him because I saw him in the car's rearview mirror, I am sure it's him,” he expressed on November 30, 2011, before prosecutor Alvaro Garganta in his expansion made with Fernando Burlando's advice.
A telephone record from that November 30, 2011, accessed by Noticias Argentinas shows a phone call between the lawyer and the then “star witness.”
A forensic psychologist who interviewed Tagliaferro also testified on this Thursday. He stated that the accused has low frustration tolerance and has accommodative tendencies when facts do not align with his ideas.
After 1:30 PM, it was the turn of journalist Fernando Tocho, author of the book “The La Plata Quadruple Crime, the investigation.” The graduate in social communication from UNLP contributed his journalistic investigation in book form to the judicial file, as requested by prosecutor Mariona Sibuet.
