Diego Sebastián Rosen Ferlini, a 51-year-old Argentine businessman, is the man Mexico's security apparatus has put in a van. He is not yet the man a judge has charged. An elevator camera at the Grand Viure complex in Atizapán de Zaragoza recorded him arriving at 5:24 p.m. Tuesday. He was arrested at 9:25 a.m. Wednesday in La Marquesa. El País, writing Friday, says he is being held "in transit" at a State of Mexico Attorney General's facility in Toluca: not before a judge, not formally charged, not transferred to prison. [1]
The dead are named. Jonathan Meléndez, 38, keyboardist and founder of the Mexico City band Camilo Séptimo. Ana Paula Barragán, 35, four months pregnant. Their daughter Sofía, 3. Aleyda Romero, 21, who worked in the household. A six-year-old son survived. The family dog was killed. Police arrived shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday. Billboard, updating Thursday, filed the story as a Latin-rock obituary and two arrests. [2] Friday's investigation is thinner than that headline. The arrest explains how a partner walked in. It does not prove why four people are dead.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico's security chief, wrote that Meléndez and Rosen Ferlini were business partners and that the Argentine "allegedly took advantage of that relationship of trust to gain entry to the home." [1] On W Radio Thursday he went further. "The initial investigation indicates that it was entirely a matter of money, of debts between them," he said. [1] President Claudia Sheinbaum, asked at her morning conference, called it "a very sad and tragic situation" and said "the reasons behind a dispute between one family and another are now known." [1] Billboard quoted her calling the killings "truly deplorable" and saying arrests had been made. [2] Known is not charged. A debt theory spoken on radio is not a filing.
Rosen Ferlini founded five Mexican companies, the first in 2001 and the most recent in 2018, according to the Public Registry of Commerce. [1] Argentine papers Clarín and La Nación, cited by El País, found no criminal record in Argentina, no pension contributions, no registered profession, a tax address in Buenos Aires's Saavedra neighborhood, and a last trip home in February 2020. [1] The other detainee, identified as Gerardo N., is the driver who took him to the apartment. [1] That is the biographical haul. It is not a motive.
The country that is shocked is also the country that is counting. Before August's figures are out, 10,309 people have been killed in Mexico this year, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System. Six percent of those victims, 618 people, were murdered in the State of Mexico, where Meléndez's household was killed. [1] A gated massacre in Atizapán is treated as exceptional in a state that already logs those deaths. Officers involved in the arrest, Harfuch told W Radio, were themselves shaken by what they found. [1] The celebrity frame makes the exception. The count does not. Jonathan and Ana Paula had been tied up. Sofía was shot from the front, Aleyda from the back. [1] Brutality is not a closed debt.
Camilo Séptimo, in a statement to Billboard Español, called Meléndez "Honas" and thanked State of Mexico authorities. The band offered condolences to Aleyda's family. [2] Meléndez had been one of three official members since 2013, a keyboardist and producer on Navegantes and Ecos under Universal Music México. [2] That catalog is the English entertainment file. It is not the Friday file.
Nearly 66 miles from the apartment, a wake was held Thursday in San Martín Cuautlalpan, in Chalco. Flowers, incense, banda music. Aleyda Romero's mother, Conchita, wept over the coffin. "Why you?" she cried. [1] Billboard named Aleyda as a domestic worker in a presidential update. El País went to the wake. The labor the celebrity frame drops is the woman who cleaned the house and was shot in the back.
English copy will keep the synth-pop obituary. Official accounts will keep the closed debt story. The man in Toluca has not appeared before a judge. Until he does, access is the fact. Motive is the claim. Four names, a surviving child, and a wake in Chalco are the rest.
-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo