Crítica
- El Pibe Albarellos Is Under Arrest
- Our Report of Yesterday Is Accurate
- POLICE DETAINED TWO RUSSIAN PEDDLERS WITH THE VICENTE LÓPEZ CAR, PLATE 765, SEEN BY THE SAN MIGUEL BOYS
Crítica's page of 7 October 1926 was dominated by the murder of Dr. Carlos Ray in his Vicente López chalet. The paper reported that the Buenos Aires provincial police believed a gang led by Francisco Alvarez, alias 'El Pibe Albarellos', had committed the crime, and announced Albarellos's arrest and the finding of caps. It insisted its previous day's scoop was accurate, describing a gang of four whose holdups had been tolerated by Comisario Rodríguez, with two men robbing and killing inside the chalet while two kept watch outside. A separate report told how a mounted officer in Ciudadela chased down a Ford with Vicente López plate 765, the car boys in San Miguel had described, and detained two Russian peddlers.
Translation
El Pibe Albarellos Is Under Arrest
Subjected — As CRÍTICA reported in advance yesterday, the Province police had reached the absolute conviction that the perpetrators of the Vicente López crime were the members of a gang captained by Francisco Alvarez, alias "El Apache" or "El Pibe Alvarellos." Numerous investigators were on the trail of the presumed perpetrators of the crime, and last night, carrying out the orders of Deputy Commissioner De la Cuesta, Deputy Commissioner Cano and…
Our Report of Yesterday Is Accurate
…of Yesterday Is Accurate. The arrest of El Pibe Albarellos and the finding of the caps, which are light-colored, confirm the news reported in advance yesterday. The provincial police — as we said in our 5th edition yesterday — believe they have cleared up the Vicente López affair with the identification of the perpetrators of the death of Dr. Ray. It is already known, even though it has not been officially made public, that this is a band of shady characters who have taken part in all the holdups in Vicente López, tolerated by Comisario Rodríguez and under the orders of a man with a very bad record named Francisco Alvarez, alias El Pibe Albarellos. The number of the assailants is also known: four in all, [?] of whom carried out the plan of assault, robbery and homicide inside the chalet, while the other two kept watch in the street and received the stolen goods from the hands of the former.
POLICE DETAINED TWO RUSSIAN PEDDLERS WITH THE VICENTE LÓPEZ CAR, PLATE 765, SEEN BY THE SAN MIGUEL BOYS
…and that of the chauffeur who was driving it. It turns up this morning in Ciudadela. This morning at 10:30, the officer of the Ciudadela sub-station, Pedro R. González, on duty on Rivadavia Street at the 22,999 block, noticed that a Ford automobile, plate 765 of Vicente López, was traveling along the Liniers curve, on the road from Ramos Mejía to San Martín. The officer had received no express orders to stop it, but having read a morning newspaper that referred to what the boys had stated, he judged it opportune to approach the car and detain its occupants. Two Russian peddlers. The officer mounted his horse and rode after the automobile until he caught up with it. The two occupants declared themselves…
Context
How the Ray investigation actually ended
Crítica's front page presented the case as solved: the provincial police, it said, had identified a gang under Francisco Alvarez, 'El Pibe Albarellos', and had him in custody. The later record of the investigation followed a different course. In December 1926 a criminal named Víctor Antía, badly wounded during a holdup attempt in Buenos Aires, confessed in hospital that he had taken part in Ray's murder together with Rosendo Antía and José Llacoy. The accounts of the case consulted here name Antía and Llacoy, not Albarellos, as the men accused at that stage. Their confessions did not hold: Antía and Llacoy retracted them, saying the police had tortured them into confessing, and the investigating judge found irregularities in the police records of seized evidence. A 2019 retrospective in Infobae concluded that Ray's death was never solved. The arrest Crítica headlined on 7 October was therefore one of several police leads in a case that ended without a firm verdict on who killed Ray.
Who was in custody while Crítica pressed the robbery theory
When this page appeared, Ray's companion María Poey de Canelo and fellow councilman José Pereyra were in jail. Judge Julio M. Facio, sitting in La Plata, had ordered their detention after a first autopsy reported cyanide in Ray's viscera, which made a poisoning by Poey and an accomplice the leading hypothesis. Later analyses disputed that finding, and a commission of university experts delivered its report to the judge on 29 September with the conclusion that there were no traces of cyanide. Crítica, for its part, backed the thesis of Comisario Eduardo Santiago, head of Investigations of the Federal Police, that the killing was a robbery attempt. A gang of professional thieves of the kind described in these columns fitted that thesis and implicitly weakened the case against Poey and Pereyra. The two were nonetheless released only on 30 December, after 90 days in custody.
Why Crítica insisted its report was 'exact'
The self-congratulating headline 'Our Report of Yesterday Is Accurate' followed a pattern Crítica had already set in the Ray case. Its police reporter Gustavo Germán González had watched a later autopsy disguised as a morgue plumber, and the paper's resulting headline 'No hay cianuro' (There is no cyanide) made such an impression on readers that it became an everyday expression among porteños. Reporting that coup, the paper boasted that, as it had shown on countless occasions, Crítica always got as far as it set out to go. The paper also had a partisan stake: according to Infobae, Horacio Oyhanarte, the defense lawyer for Poey and Pereyra, was a personal friend of Crítica's director Natalio Botana, who put the 24-year-old González on the case. Each robbery lead, including the Albarellos arrest, thus reinforced a line the paper had already chosen, and its claims of accuracy were part of that campaign.
What kind of newspaper Crítica was in 1926
Crítica was the creation of Natalio Botana, a Uruguayan journalist and entrepreneur who founded it in 1913 and is regarded as a pioneer of sensationalist media in Argentina. The paper gave wide coverage to crime news, emphasizing information over opinion, which is visible in the minute detail of this page, down to the officer's street block and the car's plate number. The reference to 'our 5th edition of yesterday' reflects the rhythm of a paper that printed edition after edition through the day and competed for scoops with rivals. In the Ray case those rivals, La Razón and Última Hora, adhered to the hypothesis of Poey's guilt, so Crítica's robbery-gang stories were also a way of setting itself apart in a crowded market.
Original
El Pibe Albarellos Está Detenido
Sometido Como CRITICA anticipó ayer, la policía de la Provincia había llegalo al convencimiento absoluto de que os autores del crimen de Vicente López eran los componentes de una gavilla capitancada por Francisco Alvarez (a) El apache o El pibe Alvarellos. Numerosos pesquisantes estaban sobre la pista de los supuestos autores del crimen y anoche, cumpliendo órdenes del subcomisario De a Cuesta, el subcomisario Cano y
Nuestra Información de Ayer es Exacta
de Ayer es Exacta Confirma la noticia adelantada ayer, la detención del Pib Albarellos y el hallazgo de las gorras que son claras La policía de la provincia, - tal como lo dijimos en nuestra 5. ª edición de ayer, - cree haber esclarecido el suceso de Vicente López, con la identificación de los autores de la muerte del Dr. Ray. Ya se sabe, aun cuando oficialmente no se haya dado a -.. publicidad, que se trata de una banda de tenebrosos, que han intervenido en todos los asaltos de Vicente López, tolerados por el comisario Rodríguez y bajo las órdenes de un sujeto de pésimos antecedentes llamado Francisco Alvarez (a) El Pibe Albarellos. Se conoce, asimismo, el número de los asaltantes: cuatro, en total, [?] de los cuales ejecutaron el plan del asalto, robo y homicidio en el interior del chalet, y los otros dos vigilaron en la calle y recibieron de manos de aquéllos los efectos robados.
LA POLICIA DETUVO A DOS MERCACHIFLES RUSOS, CON EL AUTOMOVIL CHAPA 765 DE VICENTE LOPEZ, VISTO POR LOS MENORES DE SAN MIGUEL
y la del chauffeur que lo guiaba. Esta mañana aparece en CiudadelaEsta mañana, a las 10. 30, el agente de la subcomisaría de Ciudadela, Pedro R. González, de facción en la calle Rivadavia al 22. 999, advirtió que por la curva de Liniers, en el camino de Ramos Mejía a San Martín, marchaba un automóvil Ford, chapa 765 de Vicente López. El agente no había recibido órdenes expresas de detenerlo, pero habiendo leído un diario de la mañana que se refería a lo declarado por los menores juzgó oportuno acercarse al auto y detener a sus ocupantes. Dos mercacrifles rusosEl agente montó en su caballo y corrió tras el automóvil hasta darle alcance. Los dos ocupantes manifestáronse
Source: Source: Internet Archive / Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina