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Cupertino He was a “goat” who spent a large part of his life in prison. Until the crime of child Victor Zamorano Jones, He had not murdered anyone, he was a house robber – known in the underworld as “domestic”, “monrreros” or “cats” – at age 9 he was arrested for the first time.
He was one of the many criminals who come and go from jail, until that night of December 30, 1992, when he raped and murdered a 9-year-old boy during the robbery of a “chalet” in the Lo Curro sector of Vitacura, taking advantage of the fact that he was with the benefit of Sunday freedom.
Before fleeing the house, he stole a radio and some slippers that Dr. Zamorano had brought to his son from a trip abroad, as well as pants to change clothes.
The grisly case made an impact, especially after the Judge Lucia Vaganay order the arrest of Victor’s older brother, who was the first to find the boy’s body.
After spending three days in detention, DNA expert reports carried out by the Investigative Police managed to rule out that any of the family members had been related to the homicide.
And when it seemed that the case entered a dead end, a piece of information emerged from Copiapo, where his own partner in crime, supposedly knowing that Andaur was “bragging” of his wrongdoing, reported him to the police, possibly because a crime of these characteristics is highly rejected in the prison codes.
The police then mounted surveillance on the suspect, obtaining his arrest. But in addition, the police carried out raids and found the radio and slippers stolen from the house in Lo Curro in his son’s room.
In the first instance the judge of the 23rd Crime Court In 1996, Lucía Vaganay sentenced Andaur to life imprisonment for the theft of species committed with the murder of the minor, and to 20 years of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, for the crime of qualified sodomy.
But the family appealed to the Court of Appeals, which decided to sentence him to the firing squad in May of that year, a resolution that was ratified by the Supreme Court. He was one of the last sentenced to death in Chile.
The situation raised a harsh controversy around the punishment, which had been applied for the last time in the case of the police Jorge Sagredo Pizarro and Carlos Topp Collins, who were baptized as the “Viña psychopaths”, after committing 10 murders and four rapes .
Human Rights Organizations, such as International Amnesty, they made fervent calls for his drastic sanction to be commuted, as revealed in a document of July 16, 1996.
Finally, President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle decided to spare his life.
“In my capacity as head of state, it corresponds to me to exercise an inescapable constitutional duty, I must decide on the life or death of a man convicted of having committed a heinous murder,” said the president at that time.
“It is a complex and difficult decision for a single man. To fulfill this duty, I have conscientiously considered the antecedents and assuming the responsibility that the constitution imposes on me, I have decided to commute the death sentence of the convicted person to that of perpetual imprisonment. The consequences of his terrible action will accompany him for life in his confinement, ”added Frei.
“In this act, I assume and take charge of the pain of the Zamorano Jones family. I cannot believe that in order to defend life and punish the one who kills, the State must in turn kill. The death penalty is as inhumane as the crime that motivates it. Only God gives life, only God can take it away ”, concluded the Head of State.
The father of the little victim, Victor Zamorano, he harshly questioned President Frei’s decision.
“I think that’s why a president has to have the courage to enforce the law. Obviously he did not enforce the law and our law indicates that in very serious situations such as the murder of a child with rape, it implies that a penalty is worth it, the penalty that 8 out of 9 judges who studied the case for a long time saw ”, lashed out.
From the Judicial Power, meanwhile, the then President of the Supreme Court, Servando Jordán, He argued that pardon was not a matter for discussion, since the President by law had that power. However, he reiterated that in this case the death penalty was well applied.
“The President resolved according to his powers, we resolved in accordance with what the law authorizes us, so each one has made their positions,” he said.
There is no death penalty in Chile
Currently in our country the death penalty no longer applies. The maximum penalty that our Penal Code indicates is qualified perpetual imprisonment, that is, once they have completed 40 years in prison, only then the convicted person can opt for conditional release.
This does not mean that after fulfilling that time the “perpetual” will be released, but rather that the option is open to apply for the benefit.
From then on, the case will remain in the hands of the Gendarmerie or the Court of Appeals, institutions that define who to give conditional release, and that necessarily goes through studies and reports that point to reintegration, support networks and awareness of the crime task.
But in addition, Chile signed in 1969 the American Convention on Human Rights -or called the Pact of San José-, under whose clauses capital punishment cannot be reinstated once it has been abolished, as happened in 2001 during the government of Ricardo Lagos Escobar.
What happened to Andaur?
Cupertino’s life in prison was not easy at first in the former Penitentiary, where he became a regular reader of books. To avoid being attacked, he washed clothes for drug traffickers.
After being transferred to Colina I, he even became the librarian of the penal compound. However, he eventually turned to the business of laundry managing to set up a small business inside the jail.
At least three times he requested the benefit of Sunday freedom, one in 2013 and two in 2014, but due to the psychosocial report prepared by the Technical Council of the Gendarmerie, his request was denied. He had no social roots, his only bond with his family was with his sister, insufficient for the prison standards that require a family circle that allows him to reintegrate into society.
In a report by journalist Fernando Reyes for the program En la mira de Chilevisión, Cupertino confessed his crime, which he attributed to cocaine use.
“I consider that the sentence was excessive, because it was not to sentence me to death. There are much more serious cases, and people are not sentenced to death, “he said.
“I did not do it out of evil, I did not do it because I am a psychopath as I was painted. I did it simply because I lost control of my actions, “he added.
“Sometimes I say better that they had killed me, when I was sentenced to death I agreed. Thus intimately, I wanted to be shot, I did not want to live, I did not want to, I even told my lawyer Julio Disi not to appeal, I did not want to appeal, because the weight I had was so great, the pain I felt so great, for the people, for the parents, for my family, my children, who caused pain to so many people … so the truth is that I wanted to die, ”said Andaur.
“It is a fact that I will never be able to repair it, I think that the jail that I have to do is little because taking the life of a child is priceless,” he concluded.
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