The Prosecutor’s Office has summoned coffee picker Germán Francisco Rivera Suescun to trial for his alleged responsibility in the murder of Luz Dari España Rojas, in her home in the municipality of Acevedo. The woman’s body had machete and stone wounds. “The yellow-haired man had samples of human blood that matched the blood of Luz Dari España,” said the prosecutor in the case.
Rafael Rodríguez C.
rafael.rodriguez@lanacion.com.co
A blanket with blood stains from the victim is the main evidence of the Prosecutor’s Office against the coffee picker Germán Francisco Rivera Suescun, investigated for his alleged responsibility in the murder of Luz Dari España Rojas, in the municipality of Acevedo. The woman was attacked with a machete and a stone in her house.
The revelation was made yesterday morning by the 24th Sectional Prosecutor attached to the Life Unit at the hearing of the accusation against the man, before the Second Criminal Court of the Pitalito Circuit with Knowledge Functions.
The judicial officer accused Rivera Suescun of the crime of aggravated femicide “for the way in which he carried out the crime, subjecting his former employer to unnecessary suffering, taking advantage of the knowledge he had about the customs of the family for which he worked…”, explained the prosecutor.
Luz Dari, 54 years old and sister of the representative of the Departmental Committee of Coffee Growers of Huila, Gerardo España Rojas, was attacked with a machete and a stone, when she was alone in her home on the ‘La Selva’ farm, in the Las Delicias village, in the municipality of Acevedo, on November 12, 2023.
The technical and testimonial evidence collected by investigators established that Rivera Suescun arrived at the victim’s house taking advantage of the fact that she was alone after her husband José Herney Vásquez, like every day, went to the town to sell milk and her daughter, Derly Tatiana Vásquez, 19, had been on a charismatic retreat for three days.
18 wounds with machete and rock
Light Dari Spain Rojas.
Rivera Suescun worked for a year on the victim’s farm and was fired a week before the fatal attack on the woman.
The prosecutor’s representative said that Rivera Suescun went to work at the Los Naranjos farm owned by Didier Alberto Pulecio, next to the woman’s, and was assigned a room 200 meters from the house where Luz Dari was found dead, “while the main house where the aggressor took food is located about 70 meters from Luz Dari’s house,” explained the judicial official.
On the day of the events, the man secretly entered the home of his former employers, reached the room where Luz Dari was and attacked her with a machete and a rock, causing multiple wounds to her neck caused by the machete, cutting her carotid artery and the jugular vein on the left side.
In addition to blunt and abrasive injuries to the head, face, neck, upper limbs, chest, breasts, back, wounds that, according to investigators, indicate that the victim tried to defend herself from the attacker. “The sharp, stab wounds to the left hand with partial amputation of the phalanges, on the shoulders are defensive injuries… “They are compatible with injuries produced during a struggle or fight with the attacker and indicate that the victim was defending herself against the attacks with a knife and blows with a blunt object before the two fatal wounds to the neck,” said the prosecutor at the hearing of the accusation.
Authorities found that Luz Dari’s lifeless body had 18 “deep penetrating” wounds that ended up causing her death on the floor of her room and next to the bed. “At the door of the room, a machete with blood was found, a stone with blood under a blanket, and blood stains on the floor with footprints from a bare foot,” the report states.
“I argued with the boss”
Rivera Suescun, in his testimony to investigators, stated that the day after Luz Dari was murdered, he approached the police in Acevedo and gave a sworn statement because his name was on the lips of acquaintances who pointed to him as the perpetrator of the crime. “The community says that I am a suspect in the death of Mrs. Luz Dari España, who was my employer until about 10 days ago and who was killed yesterday on her farm,” the man told the investigator.
Rivera Suescun, who told the court official that he had been in the region for two years, recalled that he came to the woman’s farm to work, since his father worked there. “I came to this area because my father worked on Ferney Vázquez’s farm, where his wife was found dead yesterday… I worked for about a year and a half.”
He said that he had not worked at Luz Dari’s farm for two weeks, from where he left, apparently bored by complaints from the victim’s husband. “I argued with Mr. Ferney Vásquez on Friday, 15 days ago, because Mr. Ferney asked me why I went down to the town and I did not like that he made those kinds of complaints, also because before he told me that I was addicted and I told him not to get involved in my life because I did not get involved with anyone, the only vice I have is slot machine games, card games, beer and women… I worked until the day we argued with the boss and I went to work with Mr. Didier who has a farm next door…”
‘The clothes had blood on them’
Although Rivera Suescun told investigators that he left his new boss’s house via the street, the security camera videos do not show him leaving the house, only his entry.
“I was in that house until about 11:30 and then I went up to where I sleep along the same road I had come down two and a half hours before. I got to my room, took off my clothes and changed because I was going to go down again to do some work in the house below, but it started to rain and I was too lazy to go down, so I lay down to sleep and got up a while later,” the coffee picker told the officers.
He said that I went back down the main road to the farm where the owner lives, since I had left my cell phone charging. “When I went down I had changed my clothes, I put on a round neck, long sleeved blue sweatshirt and dark blue jeans and black swamp boots.”
She said that she washed the clothes she was wearing in the morning twice because they were very dirty. “After I arrived, I washed the yellow shirt she was wearing in the morning and the jeans, as well as the black swamp boots, since they were dirty. I washed the jeans twice because they were dirty.”
He said that he handed the clothes over to the authorities because they were stained with the blood of a cow. “These clothes were voluntarily handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office so that they could perform the necessary tests to determine if the stains were human blood. Likewise, I voluntarily handed over the khaki boots, which have blood stains, but I informed them that they were the blood of a cow that died and I was helping to save it.”
Rivera Suescun said in the statement that he found out about the death of his former boss Luz Dari because his boss’s father told him. “Didier’s father asked me if I knew anything about what had happened and I told him no, then he told me that it seemed that they had killed Mr. Ferney’s wife, Mrs. Luz Dary España…”
The man went to the victim’s house where he was accompanying his ex-boss, who was with other people. “When I was going down, a neighbor picked me up on his motorcycle and we got off to see what had happened. We were talking to all the neighbors from the farms around here and then I went back to the house. After a while I went back to Ferney’s to see how I could help. I stayed there until about 7 at night and then I went up to Didier’s farm to talk.”
“The dead woman’s husband said it was ‘Chuky’”
Didier, Rivera Suescun’s new boss, said that he learned of Luz Dari’s death after a phone call he received in Pitalito, where he was with his family.
He said that the person who called him told him that ‘Chuky’, as Rivera Suescun was known, was the alleged person responsible for the woman’s murder. “My brother-in-law called me and told me that Mr. Herney’s wife had been killed…”
When the man returned to his farm, he went to his neighbor Herney’s house, where the gossips said that it was ‘Chuky’ “who had killed Mrs. Luz Dary, they said that because as soon as Mr. Herney found his dead wife, he said it had been ‘Chuky’…”
He recalled that he also thought that Rivera Suescun might be responsible. “When my brother-in-law called me to tell me, it also occurred to me that it could be him, because when I left my house he was not here. I left at 12:18 and he was no longer there.”
The rumors of people pointing at the coffee picker led his boss to confront him about what had happened, receiving the answer that he had nothing to do with the death. “The community was increasingly rumoring that the one who had killed Mrs. Luz Dary was ‘Chuky’… So I called him to the side of the processing plant and said, ‘Man, the first suspect is you.’ I told him that he was the main one, that he should tell me. He answered that he who owes nothing fears nothing,” Didier told investigators.
According to the security camera videos, Rivera Suescun never traveled on the main road as he had stated to the authorities. “He never left where he said he had left, on the highway, where he had left there was a recording, so when we verified that what he was saying was a lie, we became more suspicious, he told me clearly that he had left on the highway and I checked and he did not leave there,” said the man.
He also stated that when the worker arrived for the first time in the morning, he was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, rubber boots and blue jeans and hours later he was dressed in different clothes. “Yes, it was captured on my father-in-law’s camera, then he was seen coming in again at 1:07 p.m. with different clothes, so on those two occasions it was recorded that he came in, but he didn’t leave through there, just as he said he didn’t leave, he must have left through the coffee plantations.”
The coffee grower pointed out that the woman’s husband had told him that Rivera Suescun had been scolded, that he had been seen with doses of drugs. “Don Herney told me that he had scolded him, that he had told him that the woman, that is, Luz Dari, had seen him in the town with some bags that looked like drugs. Don Herney said that he had suddenly screwed her for telling her that the woman had seen him with that drug.”
