The Mountain That Kept Five Boys for Eleven Years - Episode 75

The Woman Who Came Home Too Early: The Murder of Maria Marta Garcia Belsunce

A woman's body was found at the bottom of her bathtub in a locked gated community outside Buenos Aires, and the doctors who examined her called it an accident — until a forensic pathologist counted five bullet wounds in her skull. The official version held for weeks. The investigation that followed took twenty years, destroyed two families, and exposed a prosecutor who may have been working against his own case. How does a murder get buried inside a country club?

In this episode, we explore how a rained-out tennis match placed Maria Marta at home during a window when her house was supposed to be empty, why a composite sketch of an unknown woman at the scene was deliberately kept out of the investigative file, and how a neighbor nicknamed "Voldemort" by local children asked about the murder weapon before anyone had publicly confirmed a murder even occurred. Was this a burglary that went wrong, or something calculated by someone who had watched this house for months?

Case Details

Victim: Maria Marta Garcia Belsunce, 50, homemaker and community figure.

Date: October 27, 2002.

Location: Carmel Country Club, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.

Case Status: Nicholas Pachello was convicted of Maria Marta's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment; the conviction was confirmed on appeal. Carlos Carrascosa, her husband, was fully acquitted in December 2016 after a prior life sentence was vacated by the Supreme Court of Justice.

Episode Key Points

- Five bullet wounds were found in Maria Marta's skull, yet the first doctors on scene ruled the death an accidental fall — without removing her from the bathtub or conducting a field examination.

- A composite sketch of an unscheduled woman at the scene bore a strong resemblance to Nicholas Pachello's wife Ines, and the lead prosecutor refused to include the sketch in his investigative file.

- Nicholas asked a friend of his father's what would happen if the murder weapon was never found — at a time when the official ruling was still accidental death, not homicide.

- The day after the murder, Nicholas contacted five separate real estate agencies to sell his house in the same gated community below market value.

Maria Marta Garcia Belsunce, Buenos Aires homicide 2002, Carmel Country Club murder, Argentina cold case, gated community crime, true crime, murder, homicide, investigation, forensic science, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.