Francisco Antonio Laureana

By Marta Morales Urcola

Summary

Francisco Antonio Laureana was a rapist and a serial killer who in 1975, during a six month period, raped and murdered, possibly, 15 women. He used to kill his victims on Wednesday and Thursday close to 6pm.

He was shot down by police when he was being arrested, he offered resistance and pulled out a
gun he had hidden in his bag, starting a shooting with police that lasted some city blocks, until
police found him hiding in a henhouse. A second gunfight started, this time ending with his life.

He is one of Argentina's more prolific serial killers. His case wasn't very remembered in the history of Argentina. And little is known about the murders because they occurred in Juan Domingo Perón's period. Besides that, the assassin was never able to give a declaration about the reasons he had to murder.

Crimes

Police reconstructed the events of what they believed could have been the series of murders and the psychological profile of the assassin.

35 year old Francisco Laureana was a seminarian at Corrientes, it is believed that he committed his first crime there, in a religious school. He would have raped and hanged a religious girl in the stairs of the place. He later moved to San Isidro, Buenos Aires where he worked as a craftsman, selling earrings, bracelets and necklaces. He married a woman and had three kids. Before he left to commit one of the crimes, he said to his wife: "Don't let the children out 'cause there are way too many degenerates outside."

Almost every Wednesday and Thursday close to 6pm a woman or a girl disappeared in the city and their dead bodies were found a while after with signs of violation and and cruel death, sometimes even strangled and shot by a .32 caliber handgun. He picked his victims, usually women who sunbathed in shawls or that were waiting in stations for city buses. He always stole something from his victims, like rings, bracelets, chains, etc, (though he never sold them) and saved them in a boot in his house to have them as souvenirs. In some occasions he returned to the place to relive the moment of the crime. Police and forensic expert, Osvaldo Raffo, thought hat deaths could be actions of a same person because of the modus operandi and that they wouldn't stop until the assassin would be in jail or dead.

After committing one of the homicides, Laureana shot a man who saw him running away from a house, he turned out to be uninjured. The witness was deciding to make an identikit of the suspect. It started to circulate everywhere in the city.

Death

In February 27, 1975, Laureana couldn't realize his last crime, a girl saw him and recognized the assassin thanks to an identikit that was hung in a freezer and told her mother, the woman pretended to call his husband but called the authorities instead. Laurena saw her and smiled, walking away.

Police found him a couple of blocks away and saw the characteristics were similar to the identikit they had. Police got closer to ask him to go with them for a questioning. Laurena took a gun out of his bag and started shooting to police officers. It seemed that he wasn't willing to pay for his crimes, starting a gunfight, where Laureana received a shot in his shoulder and escaped afterwards, seriously injured.

He hid from the police in a henhouse. A dog that looked after the place bit him and while he screamed in pain he got police's attention. Not ready to give up, he shot again and officers, lacking of options, shot him down.

They said it was a pity they had to kill him since a declaration from the murderer was wanted. Two slaughtered hens were found at the chicken coop, the assassin and his homicidal instinct couldn't resist not to kill them.

When his wife was informed of the crimes, she manifested: "There has to be a mistake, my husband couldn't have done that. He was a good father, a good husband, an artisan that loved
what he did."

Since Laureana was a fetish, many crimes were solved when the boots with the objects that belonged to the victims and some other firearms were found in his house. Nothing was learned
about the case until Laureana died, because authorities didn't want to break the peaceful social atmosphere imposed by the government of Isabel Martínez Perón.

Source:
Wikipedia en Español

Marta Morales Urcola - gd4ever.80@gmail.com