Fernando Báez Sosa started his vacation with a group of friends in January 2020, a trip from which he will not return. The young man was 18 years old when he was beaten to death by a group of rugby players in front of Le Brique, a bowling alley located in the seaside resort of Villa Gesell. His death became one of the most resounding cases at the social, media and judicial level.which was once again in the spotlight since this Thursday, November 13, with the premiere of 50 seconds: the case of Fernando Báez Sosathe docuseries with which Netflix seeks to tell the story of this fateful night.
“It was a crime that lasted 50 seconds, but it was murder in loop. After those 50 seconds, the video would start again and again. So Fernando never finished dying“, said Facundo Pedrini, news director of Crónica TV, in the production directed by Martín Rocca. These seconds were reproduced for hours from January 2, 2023 to February 6 of the same year, days in which the trial took place in Criminal Court No. 1 of Dolores, for which five of the accused –Máximo Thomsen, Ciro Pertossi, Enzo Comelli, Matías Benicelli and Luciano Pertossi– was sentenced to life imprisonment for double qualification of homicide, premeditation and treason; and the other three –Blas Cinalli, Lucas Pertossi and Ayrton Viollaz– were sentenced to 15 years in prison, as secondary participants.
One of the aspects that most captured public interest was when five of the eight inmates spoke in the docuseries. Serious looks, tears and signs of repentance were the gestures that sparked the debate on the sincerity of his words and his repentance. These testimonies did not go unnoticed and, by breaking the pact of silence, they marked differences in the positions of the accused.
“I felt like I was in a movie, I said ‘no, you’re experiencing it first hand’. “Everywhere you look there’s police, everywhere you look there’s a camera, everywhere you look they’re screaming at you: ‘Murderer, son of a bitch,'” he said. Enzo Comelli, who witnesses identified as the one who hit Fernando and knocked him to his knees.
For his part, Blas Cinalli – whose DNA was found under Fernando’s fingernail – reflects media exposure what he and the rest of the convicts felt at the time of the trial. “On the first day, 50,000 cameras came in. You felt like you were in a zoo, like everyone was pointing at you.“, said.
In the same sense, Luciano Pertossi added: “I understood that I was in a trial, that a person died, I understand that she was judged, but my feeling is that she was judged, on the other hand.” While his brother, Ciro Pertossi – the author of one of the attacks – stressed: “We were already condemned before, it was impossible for us to come out of there with anything in our favor.”.
However, Ciro’s weak point was when he referred to his father, who broke his silence during the trial. “I’m very grateful because he didn’t care who was watching and he still stood up to defend me.”he commented. Like his brother, Luciano emphasized his father’s role: “It gives you a lot of anxiety that because of something that happened in your life, your father ends up in court to speak on your behalf. »
Unlike his friends, Máximo Thomsen – author of the fatal kick – He spoke in a broken voice and expressed his desire for the trial to begin “as soon as possible.” Likewise, he made a self-criticism: “Bad things don’t happen, the problem is when we do things without thinking, that’s when tragedies happen”.
Regarding the question from his mother, who believed her son was innocent, Thomsen was sincere: “I told her, ‘Mom, I was there. I don’t want you to have any surprises at all.’. From the first moment, I told him everything that had happened because I understood that if I had done something, I had to say it.
And visibly moved, he concluded: “You do things because you want to be socially accepted, to assert yourself, and in reality we are all wrong, because asserting yourself means being respectful, not finding conflict and leaving because you never know where it might end.“.
One of the most shocking elements exposed during the trial – which we saw again in the docuseries – was the video recorded by the security cameras of a supermarket, which shows three of the defendants intercepted by the police and one of them, precisely Ciro Pertossi, licking his knuckles to clean the traces of what was Fernando’s blood.
But that wasn’t the only revealing information that further complicated the young man. Tests on their cell phones showed that He was the one who Googled the terms “Villa Gesell Pelea”. approximately seven times between 6:21 a.m. and 10:16 a.m.
The documentary series exposes not only the brutality of the attack, but also the immense pain of loss through the testimony of Graciela Sosa. Fernando’s mother remembers the last conversation with her son.
“He told me he wanted to go on vacation with friends, that it would be the last [viaje] what was he doing. And I said to him ‘and why anyway?’, and he replied ‘because each of us has already chosen a career, each of us already has a girlfriend and each of us is going to follow our path, our journey, even if we will always be friends.’ It was also the decision to give my son the opportunity to go on vacation.“, he revealed about the reflection of his only son, which ended up becoming his worst premonition.
