Overview
- Prosecutors have begun summoning women for buccal swabs to match an unidentified female DNA trace from the crime scene, including Beatriz Elizabeth Yapura, the wife of ex‑defendant Santos Clemente Vera, and San Lorenzo resident María Graña.
- The original swabs taken from the victims in 2011 were recently located at the University of Buenos Aires lab, found to be viable, and transferred to Salta under French Embassy oversight for fresh comparisons by the provincial forensic unit.
- The case’s DNA record is contested, with an early UBA report using Y‑chromosome markers that suggest paternal lineage but cannot single out a person, a later Favaloro analysis that excluded Vera and detected female patterns, and French labs that reported complete male profiles from at least two or three unknown individuals plus a separate female trace.
- The defense for Vera criticized the abrupt summons for Yapura, said the notice failed to spell out her status, and demanded the right to place a defense expert, citing the family’s decade of harm from what they call past mishandling.
- The broader review now underway by a special Salta unit follows the Supreme Court’s annulment of Vera’s conviction in 2023 and renewed French–Argentine cooperation, with investigators betting that modern genetic tools can finally identify every person involved.