Following the officer’s heartfelt judicial revelation last January, Judge Carroza is now expected to initiate a broad round of new interrogations that could reach unsuspected spheres, starting with the man everyone identifies as the captain in command of the Intelligence Section II: Víctor Echeverría, who was in charge of the detainees at the Buin.

There were five days left until the first Christmas Eve after the 1973 civic-military coup. That evening of December 19, the commander of the Buin Regiment, Felipe Geiger, gave an order: –Take the three detainees out of the Public Jail and kill them.

I don’t want them back here. Afterward, take the bodies to the morgue. Say you found them dumped there. It was 8:30 p.m. on that 19th day. A patrol from the Buin Regiment arrived at the jail on Calle General Mackenna, across from the General Headquarters of the Investigative Police.

The patrol was traveling in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck. Strangely, the order to remove the three detainees was carried by Lieutenant Kenny Aravena Sepúlveda, of the Buin, and not by the captains Guido Riquelme Andaur and Carlos Rudloff Molina, despite their higher rank.

Why? Because both captains were not part of the Buin contingent. They had arrived on September 11, 1973, on special assignment from the War Academy to reinforce the regiment, along with captains Ricardo Hidalgo Rueda and Víctor Echeverría Henríquez.

A small cell of the MIR had been discovered inside the Buin, and an investigation was initiated. Lieutenant Kenny presented himself at the jail guard post and gave the names of the three prisoners he was to remove: Jorge Pacheco Durán was 20 years old, an artisan and a militant of the Christian Left.

Denrio Álvarez Olivares was already 17 years old, a student leader and a militant in the Communist Youth. Ernesto Mardones Román was 19 years old and a university student. The Gendarmerie officer in charge that night did not back down; he demanded that Kenny call Commander Geiger at the Buin by phone.

He wanted to speak with the commander and have him certify that the lieutenant had his order to remove the prisoners. That is what happened. That call proved fatal for the patrol, as a record of the kidnapping remained. –Lieutenant, you also have to sign this book where it is recorded that you removed these detainees –the Gendarmerie officer told Kenny.

Worse still. Now the lieutenant’s name and signature were in the logbook. But Kenny was not worried. At that moment, they and their rifles were in charge of the country. Two other lieutenants from the Buin accompanied Kenny: Roberto Hernández and Ernesto Bethke Wulf.

The patrol consisted of five active-duty Army officers. The three young men had been arrested on October 3, 1973, by members of the Investigative Police, taken to their barracks on General Mackenna, then taken to the Buin, and from that regiment, they were taken to the Public Jail, from where they were now being removed.

But this time, it was their final destination. Lieutenant Bethke had another history: he was one of those who had murdered the singer-songwriter Víctor Jara at the Estadio Chile on September 14, 1973, and for that, he is currently being prosecuted.

They loaded the three detainees into the back of the truck. Night had already fallen. Now, the ones in charge were Captains Rudloff and Riquelme. In the trial for these three homicides, which is being instructed by Judge Mario Carroza, it is not yet clear who received the order to kill the prisoners from Commander Geiger.

Whether it was Rudloff, Riquelme, Hidalgo, or Echeverría, the four captains who arrived from the Academy as "experts." Kenny maintains that he was not the one who received it. That he only knew he had to remove the three and take them to the Buin.

Several people testified in the case that Captain Echeverría was the one who arrived to take charge of the Intelligence Section II of the Buin, in charge of the detainees. At least that is what has been established in the judicial investigation so far.

But Commander Geiger has already died, as has Rudloff. It is also not yet known who chose the patrol of the five officers. Lieutenant Kenny was surprised when he realized that one of the two captains, the one driving the truck, did not head toward the Buin, but straight toward the north of Santiago.

Kenny maintains in the investigation that he did not know what the true destination of the prisoners was, that he was only in charge of their removal from the jail. But he did not dare to argue with the order from the Academy captain.

He quickly imagined what the outcome would be. "Kill them one by one!" The streets of Santiago were empty due to the curfew. The truck continued moving at high speed toward the north, until the driver stopped.

Inside, the three prisoners did not utter a word. The captains had not said anything to them either. One of the captains gave the order to the three lieutenants: –Get the prisoners out. Each of you takes charge of one of them.

They must be killed; that is the order. In the midst of the pitch-black darkness and the deathly silence in the abandoned quarry of Colina, with his Garand rifle, Kenny shot the one assigned to him directly in the head.

He avoided looking him in the eyes. The body fell lifeless at his feet. The other two prisoners were murdered from behind by Lieutenants Bethke and Hernández. According to the autopsy protocols, Pacheco received four bullets: one in the skull and three in the thorax.

Álvarez received two shots and Mardones six shots. –Load the bodies into the truck quickly, we are taking them to the morgue –ordered one of the captains. The vehicle left at full speed down the highway.

At the morgue, they delivered the bodies without identification. They said they found "these NNs dead on the side of the road." Afterward, they all returned to the regiment. The captains headed to the officers' mess to bolster their spirits with a few drinks.

On October 10, 2013, Judge Carroza prosecuted the now-retired Lieutenant Colonel Kenny Aravena as the perpetrator of the three homicides. The only certain information the judge had was that it was proven that it had been Kenny who had removed the prisoners from the jail.

This was certified by the gendarme’s call to Commander Geiger, but above all by Kenny’s signature stamped in the prison’s logbook. At the end of 2013, the magistrate closed the investigation. He had not managed to obtain another certain lead to prosecute anyone else.

Mysteriously, until then, in the process, it had only been possible to establish that the three detainees arrived at the regiment from the jail, and from there, their trail was lost until their bodies appeared in the Santiago morgue as NNs.

Everyone questioned had lied. Even Kenny. When the judge asked him directly about the three bodies, he said, "I do not remember this situation at all." Bethke said the same: "It seems strange to me that Buin personnel removed them from the jail." The now-retired General Guido Riquelme stated: "I have no knowledge whatsoever, I am ignorant of any type of information." None of those questioned "knew anything," and they had been the authors of the murders according to what is now known. "I want to rethink" Kenny was affected by the prosecution and his ordered arrest.

In the midst of his anguish, he meditated. Until January 10, 2014, he confessed everything to Judge Carroza. "I want to rethink. I was nervous and confused. Fearful of covering up for third parties who gave the dire order to eliminate three detainees." With his solid confession, the judge reopened the investigation.

Now everything starts over. Now the magistrate has a confession, and Kenny is firm in his statements. His lawyer, Jorge Balmaceda, convinced him to speak, not to fall alone. That he could not remain wrapped in the mantle of loyalty toward his comrades-in-arms.

To whom did Commander Geiger give the order to kill the prisoners? Did he give it to one of the captains who were in the patrol, or did he give it to one of the other two captains from the Academy who remained at the regiment that night?

It was the captains of the patrol who knew they had to kill them. The one to whom Commander Geiger does not seem to have given the deadly order is the Academy captain, Ricardo Hidalgo. According to him, he did not agree with the coup d'état, and his actions cost him his discharge from the Army, promoted by Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda when he was director of the War Academy. "Colonel Contreras obtained the signature of my classmates at the Academy, asking that I be exonerated from the institution because I was not to be trusted; they discharged me with the rank of major," Hidalgo declared to the judge. Hidalgo maintains that while he was at the Buin, he spoke with the lawyer Roberto Celedón, who remained a prisoner in a place "incommunicado and separated from the rest of the detainees, and whose custody was in charge of the Intelligence Department." He states that, some time later, he ran into the lawyer Celedón on the street: "We greeted each other and talked for a few minutes." The confession of the current retired Lieutenant Colonel Kenny Aravena is a drop of water in the desert of the secret of the pacts of silence. In the midst of more than 1,600 cases open to date, these certain confessions that clarify the facts of a crime and its authors are no more than three or four. A secret kept for 40 years. There are more than 1,600 cases, because with the 1,200 complaints filed in 2011 by the Association of Families of Political Executions, they add up to that amount. But who killed the brothers Arturo and Francisco Deila Santos, 20 years of age each, Luis Miranda Gálvez, 36 years old, a plumber, and Manuel Pacheco Sepúlveda, 19 years old, a street vendor? These four people were detained between October 14 and 15, 1973, at the Parque Santa Mónica in Conchalí and taken to the Buin regiment, from "where their trail is lost." However, just as happened with the previous three prisoners, their bodies appeared in the Santiago morgue with bullet wounds. Until now, no one has confessed to these other crimes, of the same nature as the previous one. A task also for Judge Carroza, who already has at least one guiding thread with Kenny’s confession. From what can be deduced from the process, there would be another patrol with officers from the Buin and apparently also with the participation of the captains who arrived from the War Academy to reinforce, who could be the authors of the crimes against these other four victims. Who was it, the Buin officer or one of the four captains brought there from the War Academy, who killed the eight-year-old boy Héctor González Yáñez, while he was playing ball on a field inside the company Endesa S.A., in the commune of Cerro Navia, on September 26, 1973? This is another crime linked to the mournful episodes of the Buin regiment that Minister Carroza is investigating. Tejas Verdes in San Antonio, the Artillery School in Linares, and the Tucapel regiment in Temuco, the Tacna and Buin regiments in Santiago, appear as the barracks where the most crimes were committed after the civic-military uprising of September 11, 1973. Following the dramatic confession of Lieutenant Kenny last January, Judge Carroza is now expected to initiate a broad round of new interrogations that could reach unsuspected spheres, starting with the man everyone identifies as the captain in command of the Intelligence Section II: Víctor Echeverría, who was in charge of the detainees at the Buin.

Source: elsiglo.cl, March 11, 2014

Minister Carroza issues conviction against three retired Army officers for homicides in Colina in 1973.

The Magistrate sentenced Guido Riquelme Andaur and Ernesto Bethke Wulf to 10 years and one day in prison and Hugo Schudeck Toutin to 5 years and one day in prison. The visiting Minister Mario Carroza issued a sentence against 3 retired members of the Army, who at the time of the events were serving at the Buin Regiment, as responsible for the qualified homicides of Jorge Pacheco Durán, Denrio Álvarez Olivares, and Ernesto Mardones Román, which occurred on September 19, 1973, in Colina.

The Magistrate sentenced Guido Riquelme Andaur and Ernesto Bethke Wulf to 10 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as authors of the 3 homicides. Meanwhile, Hugo Schudeck Toutin was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison for his responsibility in the same events.

Roberto Hernández and Hugo Gajardo Castro were acquitted. The sentence established that on December 19, 1973, at 8:30 p.m., a military patrol of the 1st Motorized Infantry Regiment "Buin" of the Chilean Army, led by Captain Carlos Enrique Rudloff Molina (deceased) and composed of Captain Hermes Riquelme Andaur and Lieutenants Kenny Godofredo Aravena Sepúlveda (deceased), Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf, and Hugo Jorge Schudeck Toutin, in compliance with orders issued by the unit commander, Colonel Felipe Geiger Stahr (deceased), which were transmitted to the officers by Captain Rudloff, proceeded to remove the detainees Jorge Pedro Pacheco Durán, Denrio Max Álvarez Olivares, and Ernesto Domingo Mardones Román from the Public Jail of Santiago, a circumstance that is recorded on the sheet with folio No. 284, order No. 50, of the Guard Service Book of that penal establishment, and they were transported in a 3/4-ton pickup truck with railings to an unpopulated area called Las Canteras in the commune of Colina. The ruling immediately adds that once at the location, the commanding officers, Captains Rudloff and Riquelme, ordered the detainees, who had their hands tied and were blindfolded, to get out of the vehicle and ordered the rest of the patrol, Lieutenants Aravena, Bethke, and Schudeck, to execute them, which they carried out through long-distance shots, causing the victims to suffer bullet wounds and lose their lives at the same place. Once the crime was committed, the patrol took the lifeless bodies of these people and transported them to the Legal Medical Service, where they finally abandoned them. In the civil aspect, the Treasury was ordered to pay a total compensation of $160,000,000 to the victims' families in amounts detailed in the ruling.

Source: pjud.cl, May 12, 2017

Santiago Court confirms sentence and increases sentences against former agents for the homicide of political prisoners in 1973

The Fourth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, unanimously, issued a sentence against former Army officers (r), members of the Buin Regiment, as authors of the qualified homicides of three political prisoners: Denrio Álvarez Olivares, Ernesto Mardones Román, and Jorge Pacheco Durán, an event that occurred in Colina on December 19, 1973.

In this way, said Chamber, composed of ministers Gloria Solís Romero, Natacha Ruz Grez, and the Ad-hoc Lawyer Mr. Jorge Norambuena Hernández, confirmed the first-instance sentence issued by the visiting minister Mario Carroza, increasing the sentences of the retired uniformed officers Guido Hermes Riquelme Andaur and Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf from 10 years and one day to 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree; and from 5 years and one day to 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree, to Hugo Jorge Schudek, all as authors of the qualified homicides of the three victims. Likewise, the first-instance sentence that had acquitted Hugo Gajardo Castro was revoked, and he was sentenced to 5 years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree, as an accomplice to the illicit act. The resolution was celebrated by lawyer Andrea Gattini who, through the Law Firm, represents the victims' families. According to what is established in the investigation, on December 19, 1973, at 8:30 p.m., a military patrol of the 1st Motorized Infantry Regiment "Buin" of the Chilean Army, led by Captain Carlos Enrique Rudloff Molina (deceased) and composed of Captain Hermes Riquelme Andaur and Lieutenants Kenny Godofredo Aravena Sepúlveda (deceased), Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf, and Hugo Jorge Schudeck Toutin, in compliance with orders issued by the unit commander, Colonel Felipe Geiger Stahr (deceased), which were transmitted to the officers by Captain Rudloff, proceeded to remove the detainees Jorge Pedro Pacheco Durán, Denrio Max Álvarez Olivares, and Ernesto Domingo Mardones Román from the Public Jail of Santiago, a circumstance that is recorded on the sheet with folio No. 284, order No. 50, of the Guard Service Book of that penal establishment, and they were transported in a 3/4-ton pickup truck with railings to an unpopulated area called Las Canteras in the commune of Colina. The same investigation establishes that once at the location, the commanding officers, Captains Rudloff and Riquelme, ordered the detainees, who had their hands tied and were blindfolded, to get out of the vehicle and ordered the rest of the patrol, Lieutenants Aravena, Bethke, and Schudeck, to execute them, which they carried out through long-distance shots, causing the victims to suffer bullet wounds and lose their lives at the same place. Once the crime was committed, the patrol took the lifeless bodies of these people and transported them to the Legal Medical Service, where they finally abandoned them.

Source: caucoto.cl, May 12, 2020

Supreme Court sentences retired military personnel for homicides of detainees in the former Public Jail

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court confirmed the sentence that condemned the appellants Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf and Jorge Hugo Schudeck Toutin to 15 years and one day and 10 years and one day of effective prison, respectively, in the capacity of author of the crimes.

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeals filed by the defenses against the sentence that condemned retired Army officers for their responsibility in the crime of qualified homicide of Jorge Pedro Pacheco Durán, Denrio Max Álvarez Olivares, and Ernesto Domingo Mardones Román, who were detained and admitted to the former Public Jail of Santiago after September 11, 1973, a penitentiary facility from which they were removed and executed in Colina.

In a unanimous ruling (case roll 63.256-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court –composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, the lawyer (i) Carolina Coppo, and the lawyer (i) Gonzalo Ruz– confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which condemned the appellants Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf and Jorge Hugo Schudeck Toutin to 15 years and one day and 10 years and one day of effective prison, respectively, in the capacity of author of the crimes. “That, regarding this particular, our procedural system requires, in order to file an appeal for substantial invalidation, that the scope or meaning of the law that is said to have been infringed be clearly specified and that the way in which it has been violated be determined. In other words, a true prosecution of the legal provisions whose ignorance is invoked is indispensable, in order to demonstrate that they have been incorrectly applied, in such a way that these judges are in a position to address the legal problems submitted to their decision in a concrete and defined manner, because otherwise these remedies would become a new instance of the litigation that the legislator expressly wanted to avoid and which is precisely what underlies the case file,” the ruling states. The resolution adds: “That what the law pursues, by establishing that express mention must be made of how the contraventions of the law influence the dispositive part of the ruling, is a whole reasoning, an intellectual construction aimed at demonstrating, in an indubitable way, what result the appealed court would have reached in the case of having applied the law in the way the claimant deems correct; and to demonstrate, likewise, that having done so in a different and erroneous way has resulted in a ruling that is wrong in law.” “That, on the contrary, in the aforementioned document, a series of deficiencies are noted, which due to their significance allow us to conclude that they do not meet the minimum requirements already noted above, which prevent it from prospering, as it is constructed by challenging the facts of the process established by the judges of the merits and attempts to vary them, proposing other decontextualized ones that, in the opinion of the challengers, would be proven,” it adds. For the country’s highest court: “Such a purpose, of course, is alien to appeals of this kind, intended to invalidate a sentence in the cases expressly established by the law. That is, in the cassation, the legality of a sentence is analyzed, which means that a scrutiny is carried out regarding the correct application of the law and the right, but not the facts as they have been sovereignly given as proven or established by the magistrates in charge of the instance, unless the effective infringement of rules regulating the probative value has been denounced and proven, which did not happen in the proposed case, since as is evident from reading the document, the challenger only limits himself to stating the cause related to the infringement of the rules regulating the evidence, without specifying the way in which those errors could have occurred concretely in the logical reasoning of the sentence, generically denouncing infringements of procedural rules that do not share the nature of rules regulating the evidence –alluding to articles 451 to 487 of the Code of Criminal Procedure– and invoking those that do hold that quality, but without specifying the section of the referred precept that is deemed infringed, basing the denounced infringements on a weighting different from the evidentiary elements brought to the process, from that carried out by the judges of the merits, as indicated.” “By virtue of all the above, the remedy deduced in favor of the convicted Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf cannot prosper and will be dismissed,” the resolution states. Likewise, the ruling records: “That, without prejudice to what was reasoned above, the constant jurisprudence of this Criminal Chamber has used the following arguments to dismiss the cause in question, based on the violation of article 103 of the Penal Code: a) On the one hand, the classification of a crime against humanity given to the illicit act committed forces the consideration of the regulations of International Human Rights Law, which excludes the application of both the statute of limitations and the so-called half-statute of limitations in this class of crimes, by understanding such institutes as closely linked in their foundations and, consequently, contrary to the regulations of ius cogens coming from that orbit of International Criminal Law, which reject impunity and the imposition of penalties not proportional to the intrinsic gravity of the crimes, based on the passage of time. b) On the other hand, it is emphasized that whatever interpretation can be made of the foundation of the legal precept in discussion, it is certain that the rules to which article 103 refers grant a mere faculty to the judge and do not impose the obligation to reduce the amount of the penalty, even if several mitigating factors concur (among others, SCS Roll No. 35.788, of March 20, 2018, Roll No. 39.732-17, of May 14, 2018, and Roll No. 2458-18 of July 27, 2019). c) Finally, just as this Court has also held in previous rulings, article 103 of the Penal Code is not only contemplated in the same title as the statute of limitations, but is developed after it, and as both institutes are based on the passage of time as a justifying element for their application, the impropriety of applying the total statute of limitations must necessarily reach the partial one, since no reason is seen to recognize to time the effect of reducing the sanction, because both situations are based on the same element that is rejected by the international humanitarian penal order, so that none is appropriate in illicit acts like the one in the species (SCS No. 34057-16 of October 6, 2016).” “Under such conditions, this section of the cassation appeal under examination will be dismissed,” it concludes. In the first-instance sentence, the visiting minister Mario Carroza Espinosa established the following facts: “1.- That, on December 19, 1973, at 8:30 p.m., a military patrol of the 1st Motorized Infantry Regiment ‘Buin’ of the Chilean Army, led by Captain Carlos Enrique Rudloff Molina (deceased) and composed of Captain Guido Hermes Riquelme Andaur and Lieutenants Kenny Godofredo Aravena Sepúlveda (deceased), Ernesto Luis Bethke Wulf, and Hugo Jorge Schudeck Toutín, in compliance with orders issued by the unit commander, Colonel Felipe Geiger Stahr (deceased), which were transmitted to the officers by Captain Rudloff, proceeded to remove the detainees Jorge Pedro Pacheco Durán, Denrio Max Álvarez Olivares, and Ernesto Domingo Mardones Román from the Public Jail of Santiago, a circumstance that is recorded on the sheet with folio No. 284, order No. 50, of the Guard Service Book of that penal establishment, and they were transported in a 3/4-ton pickup truck with railings to an unpopulated area called Las Canteras in the commune of Colina; 2.- That once at the location, the commanding officers, Captains Rudloff and Riquelme, ordered the detainees, who had their hands tied and were blindfolded, to get out of the vehicle and ordered the rest of the patrol, Lieutenants Aravena, Bethke, and Schudeck, to execute them, which they carried out through long-distance shots, causing the victims to suffer bullet wounds and lose their lives at the same place; 3.- That once the crime was committed, the patrol took the lifeless bodies of these people and transported them to the Legal Medical Service, where they finally abandoned them. The autopsy report established that the cause of death of Pacheco Durán was three thoracic bullet wounds and one craniocerebral, with projectile exit, that of Denrio Max Álvarez Olivares two thoraco-abdominal wounds with projectile exit, and those of Ernesto Domingo Mardones Román, six wounds with projectile exit and one without projectile exit.” The Supreme Court did not issue a pronouncement regarding the cassation appeals filed by the defenses of two convicted persons who died while the case was being processed.

Source: pjud.cl, December 8, 2023