This Crime At An Exclusive Gated Community Puzzled Investigators for Years—Until The Truth Came to Light

This year marks 24 years since María Marta García Belsunce was found lifeless in a bathtub at her home inside an exclusive gated community in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The eerie case, which saw several of the victim's family members arrested, baffled investigators for decades and divided public opinion. It has even inspired two series, one on Netflix and another on HBO. From a marital dispute that ended in tragedy to a crime tied to a powerful cartel and a robbery, investigators explored multiple theories before reaching a conclusion two decades later. Image credits: Netflix It all began on a cloudy afternoon on October 27, 2002. Belsunce, a 50-year-old sociologist, followed her usual Sunday routine: a tennis match scheduled for 4 p.m., with a massage planned afterward at her home in Carmel Country Club, an upper-class gated community in Pilar, Buenos Aires But something unexpected happened: it began to rain. Belsunce cut her tennis match short and went to the home of her sister and brother-in-law to watch a football game. There, she met her husband, the former stockbroker Carlos Carrascosa. Image credits: Netflix After the game, she cycled back to her home, located a few blocks away, to wait for her masseuse. Because of the heavy rain, whoever was inside could not hear the sound of the bike approaching the home, and therefore did not notice her arrival. Carrascosa insisted that the next time he saw his wife, she was lying in the bathtub of their home, fully clothed, with half of her body submerged in water and surrounded by blood. Image credits: Netflix Keeping a calm tone, the widower called for an ambulance, saying his wife had suffered a domestic accident. Belsunce had slipped, hit her head, and drowned, he told the operator. After arriving at the chalet and examining Belsunce’s body, a doctor at the scene ruled it an accident. The family signed a d*ath certificate, later proven to be inaccurate, stating that the tragedy had been caused by a “non-traumatic cardiorespiratory arrest.” However, the victim’s half-brother, Juan Carlos Hurtig, was never convinced that his sister had suffered an accident. When he insisted on an autopsy a month later, the truth finally came to light: Belsunce had suffered five firearm wounds to the head. Image credits: Netflix Forensic experts had initially observed a single wound, consistent with impact against the faucet, but upon analyzing the victim’s skull, they discovered five bullets inside. The revelations immediately put the family, including Belsunce’s husband, at the top of the suspect list. Belsunce’s case dominated front covers across Argentine newspapers. Word on the street was that the family had coordinated the attack and covered it up, sealing the bullet wounds with superglue. The case attracted so much attention that it received more front-page coverage than the trial against the military junta responsible for the forced disappearance of 30,000 people in the country during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. In January 2003, prosecutor Diego Molina Pico requested the arrests of Carrascosa; the victim’s brother, Horacio García Belsunce; her half-brother Juan Hurtig; her brother-in-law, Guillermo Bártoli; and her mother’s husband, Constantino “Dino” Hurtig. Two family friends and neighbors from the gated community where they lived, Nora Burgues de Taylor and Sergio Binello, were also arrested. The prosecutor accused the victim’s friends and family of tampering with the crime scene and destroying key evidence, including emptying the bathtub and flushing down the toilet a bullet casting—known as the “sixth bullet”—they had found in the bathroom. All of them insisted on their innocence. The case went to trial only against Carrascosa, who was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to five years and six months of jail for “aggravated cover-up.” However, the same court later acquitted the widower, who spent a month in jail. In 2009, the case took another turn. Image credits: Netflix The Criminal Cassation Court of the Province of Buenos Aires, a higher court than the one that had convicted Carrascosa two years earlier, overturned the original ruling and sentenced him to life in prison. This time, the widower was sent back to prison not on accusations of cover-up, but for a far more disturbing crime: the homicide of his wife. In 2011, a second trial began, and more family members were convicted for their alleged role in covering up the crime. This included the victim’s brother, half-brother, brother-in-law, a family friend, and Juan Ramón Gauvry Gordon, the doctor who admitted to asking the masseuse to empty the bathtub. Image credits: Netflix All family members, the doctor, and friends posted bail and were released within hours. Belsunce’s masseuse was acquitted. The only suspect who was not allowed to regain his freedom was Carrascosa. But the widower never gave up on proving his innocence. After several years of appeals, Carrascosa’s defense team managed to get the National Supreme Court to order a comprehensive review of the case. In 2016, the Buenos Aires Court of Cassation identified serious irregularities in prosecutor Molina Pico’s investigation, overturned the life sentence against Carrascosa, and acquitted the former stockbroker. Fernando Díaz Cantón, Carrascosa’s lawyer at the time, said, “I believe justice was finally served, which is what matters. He is innocent. He never k*lled his wife.” Image credits: Netflix The court’s ruling meant that an innocent man had spent more than five years behind bars while mourning the loss of his wife. It also reopened the question: who took María Marta García Belsunce’s life? Another hypothesis investigators considered was that Belsunce had been slain to cover up money-laundering operations allegedly carried out by Carrascosa and his relatives with the powerful Mexican narcotics trafficking organization Juárez Cartel. The prosecutor discovered that the couple had transferred money to a bank in New York City, allegedly through intermediary banks and individuals who had been investigated in other cases involving the laundering of Juárez Cartel funds. In a nearly 250-page filing, prosecutor Molina Pico detailed the roles allegedly played by Belsunce's relatives and friends in what he considered a mafia-style crime aimed at keeping those operations secret. Another possible lead was that Nora Taylor, a country club neighbor who was accused of covering up the crime, had a sister who was questioned in the case investigating the Mexican cartel’s operations in Argentina. "Enormous amounts of illegitimate money stemming from the operations carried out in Argentina by the Juárez Cartel are what impose silence on those connected to this crime, rendering trivial the theories of petty theft, robbery, and gender-based crimes suggested by the suspects,” said prosecutor Molina Pico. Image credits: Netflix The prosecutor sought to prove that Belsunce had been assassinated “as a result of the shady dealings that some members of her circle maintained with the Juárez Cartel.” However, the theory seemed better suited to a Hollywood film than reality and was eventually discarded due to lack of evidence. Long before his arrest and subsequent acquittal, Carrascosa maintained that the crime against the 50-year-old sociologist had occurred during a robbery. After all, Carrascosa told investigators that a small safe was missing from his home, one in which his wife kept money belonging to the Asociación Damas del Pilar, a charity where Belsunce served as treasurer. Image credits: Netflix He pointed the finger at someone who was known for his criminal activity in Carmel Country Club, yet who had never been accused of homicide: Nicolás Pachelo. Pachelo, a neighbor of Carrascosa and the victim, had stolen 44 golf clubs in the gated community months before the tragedy. What began as mere suspicion was later confirmed by CCTV footage, which showed Pachelo entering a store to sell the clubs and leaving without them. According to Carrascosa, Pachelo had entered the chalet on October 27, 2002, intending to rob the couple while believing they were both away. When he saw Belsunce, whom he thought would still be playing tennis, he panicked and fired at her several times. Image credits: Netflix Indeed, the victim knew Pachelo very well and was terrified of him. In addition to knowing about the multiple thefts attributed to her neighbor in Carmel, she had also heard stories about him carrying out similar robberies in neighboring communities. The victim also suspected Pachelo of stealing her black Labrador, Tom, and calling her home to demand ransom for the dog, which she never saw again. “María Marta was one of the people most involved in and vocal about security issues at the community, and they ended up k*lling her. She persistently demanded explanations about incidents that had taken place at Carmel,” said Alejandro Araoz Castex, a member of Carmel’s board. “She had devoted a great deal of effort to investigating the disappearance of her dog, and receiving those phone calls at her house deeply unsettled her.” Shortly after the homicide, a local dog caretaker, Florindo Cometto, stated during the investigation that Pachelo had brought him a black Labrador with a healed wound on one of its legs. The description of the dog was striking. Carrascosa confirmed that his gardener had once injured Tom with a grass trimmer after failing to notice that the canine had run behind a plant. Image credits: Netflix “Pachelo showed up at my house with a black Labrador and told me it was his, and that he was going to take it to his brother’s home in the United States,” Cometto noted in the case file. “Three or four months went by, he never came back for the dog, and he never paid me anything. I ended up giving it away. Later, a person who also worked as a caretaker told me the dog belonged to Mr. Carrascosa.” Local reports state that Belsunce and other Carmel residents were so terrified of their neighbor that they held homeowners association meetings without him and even instructed a guard from the security company Cazadores to keep him under close surveillance. Image credits: Netflix As the suspicions grew, so did the number of thefts reported in Carmel, including one incident in which a country club resident had his laptop stolen from his desk. During the investigation, Pachelo claimed he had an alibi: at the time of the Belsunce crime, he said, he was shopping at a mall in the City of Buenos Aires with his mother, Silvia Ryan—who later took her own life—buying Spider-Man gloves for his son. Cell tower data quickly exposed cracks in his explanation. The data, collected through his phone, showed that he was actually in Pilar, near Carmel. When security camera footage was reviewed, Pachelo was seen entering the country club at 5:34 p.m. in his Ford Ranger and leaving at 6:59 p.m. through the non-members’ exit in a Fiat Siena, making it possible that he had committed the crime. Image credits: Netflix Over the years, despite remaining under suspicion in the homicide, Pachelo continued committing burglaries outside Carmel. Even after being caught on security cameras carrying out the thefts, he insisted on his innocence. The truth eventually caught up with him, and he was arrested in 2018, two years after Carrascosa’s acquittal, for a string of burglaries. When police searched his apartment, they found a crowbar, a camouflage T-shirt, a cap, and sneakers identical to the ones he wore on the footage of the robbery, as well as cash, jewelry, and watches. The public interest in the Belsunce case spiked again when Netflix released the docuseries Carmel: Who Killed María Marta? in 2020, in which Carrascosa participated. Two years later, HBO released the scripted series María Marta: The Country Club Crime. Image credits: Netflix Ever since Carrascosa was acquitted, prosecutors Patricio Ferrari, Andrés Quintana, and Federico González had been gathering evidence to prove that Pachelo had taken Belsunce’s life, ultimately seeking a life sentence for him in 2022. Two of the three judges at the San Isidro court voted against the charges, and Pachelo was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. During the same trial, he was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for committing more than 20 burglaries, some at the homes of his friends when he knew they would be away. Two years later, the case took its final twist. In March 2024, more than two decades after the homicide of Belsunce, the Buenos Aires Cassation Court sentenced Pachelo to life in prison for aggravated robbery and homicidio criminis causae. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, represented by prosecutor María Laura D’Gregorio, stated, “Pachelo attacked María Marta García Belsunce with a loaded firearm, aimed at close range, and ultimately fired six shots at a vital area. “He acted in response to the resistance put up by the victim — evidenced by the blows she received while alive — in order to secure his impunity and avoid being recognized, given that he was a neighbor.” The 310-page conviction ruling includes the perspective of Gustavo Hechem, the attorney for Carrascosa and Belsunce’s family. He describes a scheme within the judicial system, involving judges and prosecutors, aimed at covering up the mistakes made by the original prosecutor, Molina Pico, and at pinning the homicide on the widower. Image credits: Netflix The attorney lists evidence that was disregarded by Molina Pico, including dismissed expert reports and forensic testimony. According to Hechem, employees connected to the Pachelo family testified that he bought a .32-caliber weapon, the same caliber used in the crime, and said, “That old woman cost me 800,000 dollars,” referring to the amount he paid his lawyer to divert suspicion away from him before he had been formally accused. The testimony of Pachelo’s brother, Francisco, who stated that Nicolás was guilty, was also overlooked. Image credits: Netflix Another piece of evidence against Pachelo was a telling comment he allegedly made to two workers at a gas station shortly after the homicide. The victim’s neighbor reportedly asked the workers whether they knew anything “about the woman who was slain in the country club” before the case had been officially investigated as a homicide. Pachelo is serving his life sentence in Unit 9 of the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service in La Plata. Last month, the Criminal Court No. 4 of San Isidro rejected the request for parole filed by the 49-year-old’s defense. The conclusion of the case addressed a question that fueled heated public debate: why did Carrascosa and his family not immediately realize that Belsunce had five bullet wounds in her skull? Judges transcribed the testimony of the forensic experts who performed the autopsy, who admitted that determining the cause of passing was “extremely difficult.” The experts said the wounds did not appear deep, as would be expected in cases involving projectile injuries. When Belsunce’s family found the 50-year-old in the bathtub, it would have been impossible for them to conclude she had been fired at. Even the doctors at the scene were unable to identify the true cause of the wounds, resulting in a misleading d*ath certificate. Image credits: Netflix The judges stated, “It is clear that the failure to notice that the victim had suffered multiple g*nshot wounds was shared by family members, friends, doctors, medical assistants, funeral attendants, police officers, and prosecutor Molina Pico.” The ruling also debunked claims that Carrascosa and his relatives had used superglue to seal the bullet wounds. Last year, Carrascosa, now 81 years old, announced that he had filed a complaint before the Inter-American Human Rights System to seek compensation from the Argentine state and the province of Buenos Aires for his wrongful conviction. With the filing, the widower aims to definitively clear his name and expose the judicial system that, for years, pointed to him as the culprit in the homicide of his wife. Image credits: Netflix Regarding the suspicions against him and the Belsunce family, he told Página 12, “There was no cover-up for 14 years. If it had been a cover-up, someone would have broken.” He also said following the ruling against Pachelo, “All this evidence that has surfaced now was there from day one. There’s nothing new about it. The thing is, prosecutor Molina Pico never followed the Pachelo lead and instead sided with the family. “Now I can d*e in peace,” he concluded.