Verónica Dessio’s life—at age 49—came to a sudden halt just one day before Christmas Eve in 2020. Yet the anguish that tore through her family only continued to grow: they later learned that a cruel criminal plot lay behind her death—a revelation followed by requests for the defendants’ release and a trial that took six years to finally materialize.
Finally, this Wednesday, June 3, a physical education teacher—who, at the time of the murder, was the partner of the victim’s ex—and a former police officer will take their seats in the dock.
Verónica—the eldest of three siblings—was an attorney working for the Supreme Court of Justice of the Province of Buenos Aires. She was also the first person—alongside Carolina Pérez—to enter into a same-sex marriage in the province of Buenos Aires, doing so on June 25, 2010.
Ten and a half years later, Verónica’s body was discovered bearing multiple stab wounds and a deep gash across her neck that caused irreversible hypovolemic shock. She had been—literally—slit from ear to ear.
The victim had celebrated her 49th birthday just the night before, surrounded by friends, family, and her then-ex-partner, Carolina Pérez. Hours after the gathering ended, she was killed.
From the very outset, the police investigation pointed toward a contract killing. There were no signs of robbery or forced entry—nor any disarray within the home in the Parque Sicardi neighborhood—to suggest any other motive. The apartment—a renovated annex located on the same property as the main house where Pérez resided—had served as the primary scene of the attack.
As if Verónica’s murder within her own home in La Plata hadn’t been brutal enough, the days that followed would reveal a web of horror and violence that made the ordeal even more agonizing: investigators discovered that Ivana Verónica Mapis (48) had hired Jorge Antonio Alvez (63)—a former police officer deep in debt—to kill Verónica, thereby bringing to fruition a plot she had been hatching for far too long. The two were arrested six days after the murder, and over the course of these six years, they attempted to regain their freedom—something that kept the Dessio family worried and on constant alert.
