Video of Venezuelan National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello, on his VTV show, Con el Mazo Dando (“Giving it to them with a club”), promising that soon, the Colombian paramilitary thug who murdered PSUV deputy Robert Serra and his girlfriend, María Herrera, last October in their Caracas home, will be extradited to face justice in Venezuela. That extradition took place yesterday, as Venezuelan federal officials arrived at Simón Bolívar Airport in Maiquetía to pick up the trash:
Meanwhile, it appears that the assassin’s gruesome work was a family affair. From Últimas Noticias, via Contrainjerencia, we learn that the ringleader’s wife and son were in the bloody tapioca up to their eyeballs, too:
The criminal named Padilla Leiva, known as “El Colombia”, who planned and directed the crime against Venezuelan parliamentary deputy Robert Serra and María Herrera, has the distinction of being a bloodthirsty man and also, of having taken the lives of two men in La Yaguara two weeks before the assassination, according to sources linked to the investigation.
According to the source, “El Colombia” and his son, known as “El Eme” (“M”), were the ones who proceeded to kill Serra and Herrera with an icepick and a knife, since the idea was not to make any noise. They stabbed him 20 times in the chest and four in the back. One of the final stab wounds, which penetrated from the side, is considered to be the mortal one, since it affected several vital organs. President Nicolás Maduro said, on Wednesday at a press conference, that first they took the life of the parliamentarian and then, as they were on their way downstairs and out of the house, they killed María Herrera.
The wife of “El Colombia” and mother of “El Eme”, a woman named Neila Palomino, had also taken part, as she was in charge of acquiring the cell phones used in the criminal operation, which were returned once the deed was done.
The source indicated that “El Colombia” was contracted for a large sum of money by another Colombian, linked to Colombian paramilitary gangs. His capture is considered key by the authorities.
According to the source, the group had been contracted to commit the crime against the deputy and the planning of the assassination took place in Caracas more than two months before. There arose the need to buy off one of Serra’s bodyguards and that is when they managed to contact Edwin Torres Camacho, known as “El Poli”, who facilitated for them all movements within the home, the parliamentarian’s routines, the exact location of the rooms, and how to enter. As well as furnishing them with all the information, the day of the crime, Torres was the person in charge of opening the door to the house and letting in the rest of the five criminals.
Torres Camacho, who at the time of the crime was an active functionary of the Caracas police, was at Serra’s wake, attended the entire funeral and even participated in the murdered politician’s honor guard at the National Assembly. He was interrogated on a Saturday night at the CICPC [criminal-investigative federal police] headquarters, after Serra’s burial, along with all the persons who comprised the inner circle of the deceased (bodyguards, assistants and some family members), and later was detained by the SEBIN [Bolivarian Intelligence Service] in the residences of the Housing Mission beside the Los Leones bridge, in the La Paz suburb.
They committed the crime. Six days before the double murder, several of the criminals were on site to corroborate and verify the entire zone, the escape routes, and the means of entering the home.
The day of the crime, Serra was in a political meeting, and that night, when he returned home, he called his brother and invited him to dinner, since María Herrera was cooking.
Almost immediately, the criminals arrived at the deputy’s residence in La Pastora, in a red Ford pickup truck and on a motorcycle.
When the criminals entered the home, they overpowered, bound and gagged the victims before killing them. All of this took place between five and six minutes. “They went directly to kill him,” said president Nicolás Maduro, after showing a video in which one could see the entry and exit of the criminals.
The assassins stole a watch from the deputy, and carried off a computer, maybe thinking that all the closed-circuit TV recordings [from the security cameras] were stored in it. There were other objects of value in the house, such as cellphones, laptops, an iPad, and tablets, which were not removed by the criminals.
When they left, there was a problem, because the keys to the motorbike were not there. Torres Camacho related, in a video shown by the president, that they went three blocks with the motorbike turned off, and later abandoned it and exited the area in a taxi.
Translation mine.
Jesus H. Christ. Imagine being so cold-blooded a contract killer that you’d even take your own young son along to help you overpower, tie up, gag and then stab two good, innocent people to death. Even the Mafia could take lessons in sheer gruesomeness from the Colombian paracos.
And the sheer amount of planning and premeditation needed to commit so grisly a crime in so short a time span is remarkable, too. Two months, or more, just to buy off a police bodyguard, and familiarize themselves with the house and the neighborhood. Little wonder that it only took them five or six minutes, from entry to exit. That’s the mark of professional killers, hired by somebody with an awful lot of motive and means. This was not a botched armed robbery, in other words.
Who hired them? Robert Serra knew who the likely culprits were; he even called them out by name not long before he was murdered. The Venezuelan federal authorities undoubtedly know who they are, too. Several of them are in custody; others are on the run. And they are running scared.
And the fact that they have ties to Colombia can only mean one thing: that El Narco Uribe himself was, and still is, a key player in the plot to balkanize and subdue Venezuela, starting with its westernmost states, which border on Colombia and see a lot of spillover of military and paramilitary anti-guerrilla crime from there. After all, paramilitarism flourished on his watch, as part of his scheme to destroy the FARC. How it must gall him to know that he is out of office, for good, while they are still alive and operating without missing a beat!
