The judge shows him the receipt. De Bellis claims that the form “is not the one usually used as a receipt for prisoners’ personal items” and that “he cannot explain who the undersigned autographs belong to.” When questioned about the executions, he replies: “the person who was chief of the District Police Department at the time, Mister Rodríguez Moreno, will be in a better position to report to the court on the matter.”
Upon leaving the judge’s office, de Bellis comes across someone who is in the best possible position to confirm or deny Livraga’s formal accusation. It is Miguel Ángel Giunta, the second survivor, who finally decides to talk.
Giunta’s story is even more precise than Livraga’s. He explains both the circumstances that led him to Horacio di Chiano’s apartment, as well as the raid, which he says took place at 11:15 p.m. or 11:30 p.m. on June 9. Without naming him, he describes Fernández Suárez: “a large man, that is to say strong, with a mustache and a good amount of hair, who was wearing sand-colored pants and a short, olive green, military jacket; this person was carrying a .45 caliber pistol in his hand and, having told everyone to put their hands up, placed the barrel of the gun on the declarant’s throat, saying to him again: ‘Put your hands up, don’t be smart with me.’” First there are blows to his stomach and to his hip, then there’s the transfer to the Department, where the officer who interrogates him is “under thirty years old, chubby, curly-haired, with a handlebar mustache.” The one overseeing the interrogations is the second-in-command, last name Cuello, “a person of short stature who walks with a stoop and with his hands behind his back.” Giunta also identifies Rodríguez Moreno, and among the prisoners he naturally remembers Mr. Horacio, Vicente Rodríguez, Livraga, and “a person with the last name Brión or Drión.” He recounts the story of the trip all the way to the garbage dump, getting off the truck in the night, the preparations for execution:
. . . they walked like that for twenty or thirty meters and then the guards stayed back and ordered them to keep on in the same direction . . . that was when everyone knew for sure that they would be killed . . . once the truck’s headlights were shining on them . . . they realized what was happening and everyone panicked, some getting on their knees and begging for mercy not to be killed . . .
He gives an account of his getaway amidst the bullets, of the way he saved himself, and of how they arrested him again. Then he describes in detail the places he had been: the precinct in Munro, the District Police Department and San Martín’s First Precinct, the cell where they locked him up, even the dog that they were training in the prison block.
On page 42, Navy Lieutenant Jorge R. Dillon who, until very recently had run the policemen’s health and welfare program, shows up voluntarily to make a statement. Here is his account:
That at daybreak on June 10, at approximately 0045 hours, the declarant was in his home, which is located opposite the police department; that upon hearing the shooting which sparked the assault on said department, the declarant, armed, entered the Department and, from there, aided in its defense . . .; that thus he was present during the assault he has made reference to and participated in its suppression; that when the movement had already been stifled with respect to the attack on Headquarters, some time after four o’clock in the morning, the Chief of Police arrived together with the Vucetich Academy cadets and other personnel; that those who had been defending the building came down the stairs where they were met with those who had recently arrived; that they shared impressions and accounts of the events that had transpired . . . and that in that instance the declarant heard Chief of Police Lieutenant Colonel Desiderio Fernández Suárez say, addressing either Mr. Gesteira or another officer, the declarant does not recall which, the following words verbatim: “Send the order to the San Martín District Police Department to execute the group of individuals that I arrested immediately”; the order was sent via radio.
Lieutenant Dillon then adds:
Hours later, at the main office of Headquarters, the declarant heard someone say that the order had been carried out, but that it had been done inadequately because a group of prisoners had been taken out to an open field where some had managed to escape, and the police had felt obligated to shoot at them as they ran away, having failed to make them stand in line in front of the firing squad, as is protocol; according to the same source, that’s how it had all turned into a “bloodbath” and, upon gaining knowledge of said event, the Chief of Police expressed indignation regarding the incompetence displayed and, a few days later, the then-chief of the department, Rodríguez Moreno, was suspended.