In 1985, young university student José Randolph Segovia was found lifeless on a rocky outcrop on the coast of Concepción. The discovery led to one of the strangest—or most corrupted—police cases of the dictatorship.

Death threats and express kidnappings led to the case—which the CIA eventually described as a “clumsy attempt to cover up a crime”—being closed without identifying any culprits. Thirty years later, José’s older sister embarked on a search for answers.

Practically alone, she succeeded in having the case reopened, the culprits identified, and sentences handed down. And none of that has brought her peace. Today, she still lacks the answer to one final question: “Why did they kill my brother?”

Sitting there, on the terrace of a café she had never visited—but which is located across from her apartment—Catina Randolph might seem like any other customer, living a normal life. A mother of five and grandmother of two, she wears a wool shawl over her shoulders, her hair slightly wavy at the ends.

But when she begins to recount her brother’s story, which is also her own, she shatters every stereotype.

—Thirty-three years ago, I woke up to a midnight phone call. “Your brother has been killed,” my father told me.

The story of the Randolph Segovia family from Concepción could begin in many ways. This is one: In the early hours of May 26, 1985, the youngest son of the clan, José Rigoberto Randolph Segovia, disappeared under strange circumstances from the Second Police Station (Segunda Comisaría) of Carabineros in Concepción, and later appeared dead—with a suicide note—on the rocky outcrops of Talcahuano.

The young man’s father, skeptical of the official version, requested that a homicide case be opened and publicly blamed the officers who were guarding his son for his death, in the midst of the dictatorship.

The process was marked by the falsification of police reports, death threats against witnesses, and even express kidnappings. The case, one of the most emblematic in the Biobío Region, was closed without any culprits.

Or it could start this way: In 2009, after insistently reading a book of press clippings that her father had collected for years, Catina realized she had to do something. She went to the courts alone to reopen the case, pressured lawyers and judges, and confronted face-to-face those she presumed had murdered her brother.

Along the way, she uncovered stories, culprits were sanctioned, and she obtained answers. What Catina still does not have, nearly 33 years after her brother’s death, is an ending.

Disappearance, kidnappings, and threats

Enrique Randolph and Rosa Segovia married in Antofagasta in the 1960s. There, they had their three children: Catina, the eldest; José; and Fabiola, the youngest.

Due to Enrique’s work at the technology company Phillips, the family moved to Santiago and later, in 1975, to Concepción.

—Our family unit was always comfortable. Not with great luxuries, but we were well-off—Catina recalls.

Upon finishing school, she headed back to Antofagasta to pursue her studies. A few years later, in 1985, Enrique would be transferred again—this time to Iquique—and the only member of the clan who remained in the VIII Region was José, who had enrolled in Civil Mechanical Engineering at the University of Concepción.

Catina was married and expecting her fourth child when she was awakened by a phone call from her father: “Your brother has been killed.” In Santiago, where she lived, the eldest of the siblings tried to process the information. “What do you mean they killed him?” she wondered.

The story, as established by the visiting judge (ministro en visita) Carlos Aldana, happened like this: On the night of May 26, 1985, José Rigoberto Randolph Segovia was returning to his boarding house by car with a friend after a party. On the road connecting Talcahuano with Concepción, Randolph hit a police barrier in front of the Club Hípico Carabineros station.

Hours later, he was arrested at the house where he resided, taken to the Regional Hospital for a blood alcohol test, and then, as a detainee, transferred to the Second Police Station of Concepción.

In the early hours of the following day, a fisherman found his body on the rocky outcrops of Rocoto, a beach at the mouth of the Biobío River, with an alleged suicide note. “I went to the sea because I couldn’t take it anymore. Another mess in my life,” read an excerpt from the letter.

The family immediately suspected the suicide theory. “He didn’t have a single broken rib—the cliff he supposedly jumped from was almost 100 meters high—and his wrists had wounds as if they had been tied,” Catina recalls.

Something did not add up. Before his body was found, José had been declared a “fugitive.” The Carabineros’ version was that the university student had escaped from the station and then committed suicide. “That was already strange, but on top of that, the police drew up two reports: one said he had escaped from the Hospital during the blood alcohol test, and the other said he had escaped from the station.

Logically, one of the two reports was lying,” Catina states.

The Randolph Segovias hired a lawyer. The case was already occupying the front pages of regional newspapers, and visiting judge José Martínez Gaensly was carrying out the initial proceedings. At first, the case moved with unusual speed.

In a few days, the case label was changed from “suicide” to “homicide,” and the Military Justice system prosecuted two young officers for “falsification of a police report and failure to perform military duties.” These were Mauricio Vera and Jaime Barría, two of the Carabineros who were on duty when José was detained.

But, at the same time, some things began to get complicated. The Randolphs’ lawyer received death threats—he would eventually leave the case; the wife of Judge Martínez’s clerk was kidnapped—the captors left a mark on her chest—and other witnesses in the case also suffered reprisals.

Despite the difficulties, the Randolphs saw some progress with optimism. The autopsies on José had shown that his death had been caused by the “action of third parties,” and the existence of a “false witness,” presented by the Carabineros, was proven.

—I have the conviction that my son did not commit suicide—an emphatic Enrique Randolph declared to the media. —I will use every last breath I have left in my life to ensure that justice establishes and sanctions the culprits—.

But then came the second kidnapping of the clerk’s wife. This time, they left a mark on her forehead and a message for the judge: “The next one will be you.” Thus, in January 1986, the suspects were dismissed. José’s death was left without culprits.

Catina, her book, and her struggles

The closing of the case left visible scars on the Randolph Segovia family. Overwhelmed by depression, Enrique resigned from Phillips and moved with his family to La Serena. In 1990, he died by suicide.

Rosa, his wife and the young man’s mother, would do the same three years later.

—Despite the pain, I think both of them had incredible coldness and courage. Deep down, they considered that their lives had ceased to be livable—Catina summarizes, sitting on the terrace of a café in Providencia.

After the funerals, Catina took a thick notebook that her father had compiled with press clippings about José. On the brown leather cover, Enrique had had his son’s favorite nickname embossed in silver letters: “PEPE.”

Among the clippings were interviews with ministers, Carabineros, and authorities, as well as valuable information from the dismissed case.

—Time passed, and reading that book, I began to extract names, to note down data. At one point, I felt that through the book, my dad was talking to me. He was saying: “Daughter, it’s all there. Do what I couldn’t do”—she says.

In 2009, Catina made a decision: she had to do something. “I started doing unusual things. For example, with the names of these two sub-lieutenants, I went to the General Directorate of Carabineros to find out where they were.

I got the number of one of them and called him. I read the entire Transparency Law even before it was enacted, and I managed to meet with Javiera Blanco when she was Undersecretary of Carabineros,” she says.

Due to a lack of new witnesses, many lawyers refused to take the case. Catina only received a response from the Judicial Assistance Corporation of Concepción, which promised to help her.

“Using my father’s book, I drafted the reopening letter practically by myself,” she says. Part of her argument was based on one of the phrases that Vera Cortesi—one of the Carabineros previously accused of José’s death—had stated to the press in 1985: “This is not the time. Someday we will talk.”

Before sending the request letter, Catina visited Judge Carlos Aldana, who still handles all cases related to human rights violations in Concepción. “I went to the Court with my book—the one my dad left—and went up. I entered the office and the clerk stopped me. ‘But how did you get in here?’” Judge Aldana, who was at his desk, told her to come in.

—He took a look at my book and said: “I can’t promise you anything, but I will see how I can help you.” That was my first big step. A year later, the case was reopened—she recalls.

“That was a miracle to me. Imagine: alone, practically without lawyers, seeking to reopen a dismissed case,” she says.

In 2010, Aldana surprised Catina with more news: they would conduct a reconstruction of the scene. Together with her younger sister, they arrived at Rocoto—where her brother had supposedly committed suicide—to witness the proceeding.

“It looked like a movie, it was full of PDI (Investigative Police) and Carabineros,” she remembers.

There, Catina spotted a tall, well-dressed man wearing dark glasses. It was Mauricio Vera.

—I could have pushed him, spat on him, pulled out a weapon, but I confronted him and asked him if he knew who I was and what had happened to my family. “Yes,” he told me, “I know everything”—Catina recalls.

“Do your children know this?” she asked him. “No,” he replied. “They found out yesterday.” Catina remembers that Vera asked her how old her brother was on the day of his death. “I answered that he was 24. He told me that at that moment he was 23. In other words, the policeman was younger than my brother at that time. A few tears fell from his eyes,” Catina recalls.

After the reconstruction, the judge ordered the detention of Vera and Barría. “There is a contradiction in the versions provided in the various cross-examinations,” Aldana explained at the time.

“Because my colonel ordered me to”

On August 19, 2016, more than three decades after José’s death, visiting judge Carlos Aldana issued a sentence. Vera Cortesi and Barría Sánchez were found guilty as co-perpetrators of the homicide of José Rigoberto Randolph Segovia and sentenced to three years and one day of suspended imprisonment.

Aldana considered that the former Carabineros met the requirements to serve said sentence under supervised release. In addition, he ordered the State to provide monetary compensation to the Randolph sisters—the only survivors of the family—for the moral damage suffered.

For Catina, however, the case was far from closed. Almost immediately, together with lawyers Rafael Poblete and David Vargas, she appealed the sentence. She was not satisfied with the suspended sentence.

Furthermore, she considered that Aldana’s ruling left several questions unanswered. Where and under what circumstances did José die? What were his last hours like? The family expects the Concepción Court of Appeals to rule on the request for a review of the sentence this month.

The CIA report Comments on human rights and internal Carabinero reforms, declassified in 2002, refers to the José Randolph case: “The facts tell us that Randolph escaped from custody, was recaptured, mistreated, and died at the police station. Then came the clumsy attempt to cover up the crime.”

“To finally close this: to know why they killed him. Why were they so cruel to him? Why did they make him write that letter, while in agony?” she says.

During the conversation they had in 2010, Catina told Vera one of her theories. “I’m going to tell you what I think happened,” she said: “You guys went too far, you pulled off the stunt of the year, and you had to try to cover up the hole.” Vera did not answer her.

That afternoon, Catina tried once more to break the former Carabinero’s silence.

—Why did you alter the police reports?—she challenged him.

Today, embracing the leather book that tells her brother’s story, Catina opens her eyes before quoting the answer she heard that afternoon.

“Because my colonel ordered me to.”

Source: theclinic.cl, August 10, 2018

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeals of 2 former Carabineros sentenced to 5 years and one day for the homicide of José Randolph Segovia, perpetrated on May 26, 1985, in Talcahuano.

The country’s highest court confirmed the sentence against Mauricio Edmundo Vera Cortesi and Jaime Fernando Pedro Barría Sánchez for the homicide of the University of Concepción student, whose body was found by a fisherman on the rocky outcrops of Rocoto beach.

The former uniformed officers tried to pass the event off as an escape and subsequent suicide, an investigative summary that remained closed until 2012, when the Supreme Court ordered the case to be reopened following the persistence of the student’s family.

Thus, the special judge for human rights cases in the Bío Bío Region, Carlos Aldana, determined that Randolph had been murdered by the former Carabineros. Despite this, he had only sentenced them to 3 years and one day, without jail time.

However, the Concepción Court of Appeals increased the criminals’ sentences to 5 years and one day of effective prison time, which was ratified by the country’s highest court.

According to the investigation, the student was detained at his home after having been involved in a traffic accident. After being taken to the Second Police Station of Carabineros in Concepción, located at 1636 Ongolmo Street, the last place where he was seen, his trail was lost.

The ruling determined that Mauricio Edmundo Vera Cortesi and Jaime Fernando Pedro Barría Sánchez altered documentation and made the disappearance of José Randolph Segovia from the station appear as an escape.

His body, thrown onto the rocky outcrops of Rocoto and found by a fisherman in the current commune of Hualpén, showed fatal blows attributable to third parties, according to the investigation by the Legal Medical Service (SML). The former Carabineros are to be transferred by Aldana shortly to Punta Peuco.

Source: resumen.cl, August 13, 2020

Randolph Case: Sentence increased for former Carabineros who killed the student

The Concepción Court of Appeals rejected this Tuesday the appeals filed by the defense of Mauricio Vera Cortesi and Jaime Barría Sánchez against the sentence that had convicted them as co-perpetrators of the crime of homicide of José Randolph Segovia. The event occurred in May 1985, in Talcahuano.

The Fifth Chamber of the Court determined unanimously to ratify the challenged resolution, issued by visiting judge Carlos Aldana, but with the declaration that the former police officers must serve five years and one day of effective prison time as authors of a crime against humanity.

“(…) It is evident that the injuries reported in these four expert reports were not caused by a fall or voluntary jump from the cliff or rocky outcrops of the Puntilla de Rocoto sector; it is a high precipice of 42.30 meters that overlooks the sea, according to page 366.

Therefore, it is logical to maintain that no one can fall without suffering any bone fracture when crashing into the ground, which was precisely a compact rock. However, it is proven that both the skull and the bone structure of the upper and lower extremities of the deceased were unharmed,” the ruling states.

Furthermore, it concludes that “in no case did the victim walk to get there, the nine kilometers that separate the Rocoto sector at the mouth of the Bío Bío River from where public transport effectively circulates. Therefore, his body was transported in some vehicle, just as the appealed sentence outlines in the third consideration.”

The ruling details that both convicted men initiated a pursuit to find the whereabouts of Randolph Segovia, who escaped from the police station after his arrest for a traffic accident; a search in which they visited several homes of the victim’s acquaintances and friends.

Upon finding his whereabouts, the uniformed officers, who saw their pride wounded, “unleashed all their rage on him, giving him inhuman punishment, being cruel in the beating and torture they inflicted on him, ultimately causing his death.”

The ruling specifies that “they did not hesitate to violate the dignity of José Randolph Segovia by stripping him, applying illegitimate duress by beating him in a brutal and repeated manner, reaching the extreme of gouging an eye from its orbit while torturing him vilely, subjecting him in a cowardly manner by keeping his hands tied, even reaching the point of psychological abuse of the victim by compelling him to write a suicide note in his own handwriting addressed to his close relatives.

A technique of subjugation and intimidation widely known for being used in torture centers.”

In the civil aspect, the court confirmed the ruling that ordered the payment of compensation of $120,000,000 (one hundred and twenty million pesos) to each of the victim’s two sisters.

Source: diarioconcepcion.cl, December 18, 2018

Former Carabineros convicted for the crime of José Randolph during the dictatorship enter Punta Peuco

Both former Carabineros must serve the 5-year and 1-day prison sentence that the Supreme Court confirmed a few weeks ago.

Former Carabineros members Mauricio Vera Cortesi and Jaime Barría Sánchez, convicted for the homicide of University of Concepción student José Randolph Segovia, which occurred in 1985 in the midst of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990), were notified.

At three in the morning on Monday, a Gendarmerie unit arrived from Santiago to transfer both convicted men to the Punta Peuco Prison, where they must serve the 5 years and 1 day of prison that the Supreme Court confirmed a few weeks ago, reported Bío Bío Chile.

At the Concepción Court of Appeals, the judge for human rights violation cases, Carlos Aldana, personally communicated the judicial resolution to Vera Cortesi and Barría Sánchez, who appeared voluntarily, accompanied by family members and lawyers.

The former uniformed officers were identified from the beginning of the case as responsible for the crime against José Randolph, a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Concepción.

The young man had been detained for an alleged traffic violation. His body was found later on the rocky outcrops of Rocoto in the port of Talcahuano, now the commune of Hualpén.

The crime was investigated more than 30 years ago by the judge with exclusive dedication, José Martínez, who prosecuted the two policemen. The decision was subsequently revoked and archived until 2012, when the Court of Appeals reopened the investigation and appointed special judge Carlos Aldana to the case.

Upon the death of the victim’s parents, only his sister Catina Randolph Segovia remained, who insisted on knowing the truth of what happened that Sunday, May 26, 1985, the day a fisherman found the body on the rocky outcrops of Rocoto beach.

A precise blow to the back shattered the young student’s liver, and according to his sister’s account, while he was dying, they made him write a letter to simulate a suicide and placed him on a rock so that the sea’s tide would do the rest.

During the reconstruction of the scene, 25 years later, she approached Mauricio Vera Cortesi, one of the two former Carabineros sub-lieutenants prosecuted as authors of illicit association and homicide, and told him: “In my family, we have never hated anyone; my father taught us not to hate, I don’t hate you, but I want to know what happened to my brother...”. There was no answer.

The Carabineros made the crime appear as a “suicide,” altered a police report, and put a letter addressed to the family in his wallet to account for his tragic determination, which he signed as “Rigo,” a nickname he only used until he was 15.

That detail was the first indication for the Randolphs that something did not add up and that, as Catina always maintained, it was a sign.

She wanted to vindicate her brother’s name. “So many things were said, that they killed him over a love affair, that he had gotten involved with an officer’s wife, and the truth is that—what happened—was an excess of police violence following a traffic violation,” she recalled.

In his ruling, the Supreme Court also maintained the payment of compensation of 240 million pesos (about 303,797 dollars) that the State must pay to the victim’s sisters.

Source: elciudadano.cl, September 22, 2020