LIMA, Oct 4 — A Peruvian judge yesterday ordered that the suspected mastermind of the gruesome murder of two young women and a girl in Argentina be held in jail, pending extradition proceedings.
The judge declared 20-year-old Tony Valverde, nicknamed “Little J,” to be a flight risk, and remanded him in custody for nine months while awaiting possible extradition on charges of aggravated murder.
During the hearing, which was broadcast by the Peruvian judiciary, Judge Cristhian Chumpitaz ordered Valverde be detained in a jail in the city of Canete, south of the capital Lima.
He added that the Argentine government “will have to obtain, through diplomatic channels, all the documents related to the extradition.”
Dressed in a white T-shirt and monitored by two police guards, Valverde attended the hearing remotely from a police station in the southern part of Lima.
The bodies of Morena Verdi and Brenda del Castillo, cousins aged 20, and 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez were found buried in the yard of a house in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires last week, five days after they went missing.
The three were tortured and killed in a live broadcast on a closed social media group in what Argentine authorities believe was punishment for an alleged drug theft.
Investigators said the young women were lured by drug traffickers into getting into a van on September 19, thinking they were going to a party.
According to several Argentine media outlets, the women had been asked to attend a party as sex workers.
A cousin of Brenda and Morena told AFP the pair had sometimes engaged in sex work “to survive,” without their families’ knowledge.
The killings shocked Argentina, where thousands of people demonstrated last weekend to demand justice.
Valverde is suspected of running a drug gang in the Zavaleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
His lawyer, Marcos Sandoval, has maintained his innocence and claimed his work in Argentina involved harvesting blueberries and selling socks.
Valverde was arrested on Tuesday with a suspected Argentine accomplice, 28-year-old Matias Ozorio, in the southern Lima district of Pucusana.
On Thursday, Ozorio was deported to his homeland.
In Argentina, seven people have been arrested over the murders. — AFP
