Charges upgraded for four of the five detainees
Four of the five people held in the case of Nanci Godoy, a 52-year-old teacher who disappeared in Corrientes, had their legal status worsened on Friday morning, according to investigative sources consulted by Clarín. Irineo Zarza, Felipe Sandoval and Nahuel Rojas were charged as co-perpetrators of femicide, while Rosa Leguizamón was charged as a co-perpetrator of simple homicide, a classification applied because she is a woman and cannot be accused of femicide under Argentine law. The fifth detainee, Ezequiel Bordón, remains charged with false testimony.[S1][S2]
The same Friday, authorities were inspecting three disused water wells on the El Curupí estate, close to the rural school where Godoy worked. The prosecution places Zarza, the estate's foreman, at that location; he has so far declined to testify. A hearing on coercive measures was also scheduled for that day. All those detained worked on the estate, and investigators said no other laborers were employed there, so no further arrests were expected for the time being.[S1]
A sexual attack suspected, but no body found
The leading hypothesis among investigators is that the killing was a femicide driven by a possible sexual assault. According to a source cited by Clarín, proving that motive will be difficult if the victim's body is never recovered. Phone-antenna records show that Godoy's cellphone was last active on Wednesday the 7th at 20:45, though investigators acknowledge that someone else could have sent a message from the device and that Leguizamón may have lied when she said she saw the teacher on Friday the 9th.[S1]
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Bordón was formally charged on Thursday and ordered held in pretrial detention until trial, a decision read as a signal to the other suspects. An investigator said Bordón gave three different accounts and was the first to mention sexual abuse followed by death, describing him as visibly frightened of whoever carried out the crime. Godoy's family, meanwhile, argues that a complaint she filed about the poor condition of the school should not be ruled out as a line of inquiry.[S1]
A long journey to a neglected rural school
Godoy had taken a temporary post as director of rural school 626 in El Malezal while studying special education, after a decade without steady work. In voice messages to a classmate she described a long trip to reach the school, leaving home at six in the morning and still facing two and a half hours on horseback. She said she was working through November and was unsure whether she could continue her studies.[S1]
On August 15 she opened a case before the provincial General Council of Education, describing a building that had been abandoned, overrun with insects and with toilets full of dirt; she said a mother had to help clean and that it took two days to make the place roughly habitable. She also said parents and neighbors reported that the previous teacher had been absent for two or three years, while she was told on receiving the key that he had left a month earlier. Unable to sleep at the school, she stayed at the home of Leguizamón, now charged in the case.[S1]
