Argentina reels as 3 women tortured, murdered live on Instagram
A minister said the killings appeared designed to ‘punish the girls’ for a purported violation of a drug gang’s code
The brutal torture and murder of two young women and a girl, broadcast live on Instagram, rocked Argentina on Thursday, where investigators suspect punishment killings by narco bosses.
On Wednesday, the bodies of Morena Verdi, 20, Brenda Del Castillo, 20, and Lara Morena Gutierrez, 15, were found at a property in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires.
They were tortured and murdered live on Instagram, in a broadcast watched by 45 members of a private account, the security minister for Buenos Aires province, Javier Alonso, told a press conference on Wednesday evening.
Alonso said that four people were arrested over the murders, but local media reported Thursday that the number had risen to 12.
The victims had been missing for five days.
Alonso said that they were lured into a van on Friday night in the La Tablada neighbourhood, about 20km (12 miles) south of Buenos Aires, under false pretences.
“They were falling into a trap created by a transnational drug trafficking organisation that had concocted a strategy to murder them,” he stated.