“The Man of a Thousand Faces”, the sinister story of a serial killer who underwent cosmetic surgery to avoid arrest

Nightlife regulars in Posadas, Misiones, in the 1980s, had no problem identifying Luis Raúl Menocchio as Isidoro Cannon made of flesh and blood. Tall, handsome and always well dressed, he played the role of a playboy and He wasn’t bad at it. He never lacked money in his pockets, even if he didn’t earn it, because it came from the yerba mate crops of his father, a prosperous merchant with political connections who always had she opened his wallet. This allowed him to be the soul of the night buying drinks, drugs and other pleasures in the city’s clubs. He was not yet 30 at the time and felt that he had this life secured without having to reduce himself to work.

Born in 1959, he carefully educated himself, perhaps hoping to one day take over the family business, a 500-hectare business in the missionary town of General Urquiza. He was also expected to enter politics following in the footsteps of his father, who was a provincial legislator and briefly served as president of the Bank of Misiones. However, Luis Raúl was not interested in one thing or the other and When the winds of prosperity turned to gusts of adversity he did not hesitate to become a murderer who, in order to obtain money, It left a trail of dead on both sides of the border between Argentina and Paraguay.

The cause of this turning point in his life is not well known as it is a dark story. Some say that in the late 1980s, Father Luis Raúl was accused of selling tons of his production that had already been purchased by the Yerba Mate Production and Marketing Regulatory Commission and had to face fraud charges that They destroyed the family economy. But others say that the man simply got tired of supporting his son and radically cut off his supplies.

The point is that the prodigal son was penniless and had to find ways to continue living to the fullest. So, for one reason or another, Isidoro Cañones became flesh and blood “The Worm” or “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. The second nickname came from the cosmetic surgeries he underwent to change his appearance and fake his identity.

His first known steps in the world of crime were taken in Paraguay. In the early 1990s, he crossed Paraná and settled in Encarnación, where he already had contacts and money of uncertain origin start some businesses with the facade of legitimate companies.

First, he teamed up with a few local businessmen and started a cable television company, which was a novelty at a time when only open TV channels could be seen on the screens. The business was doing well and the money was pouring in, but not all the partners were benefiting. He took advantage of being in charge of the finances, Menocchio diverted the money into his own pockets and those of some shady collaborators – not the legal ones – that they put in dirty capital that needed to be washed.

He was accused of fraud, had to leave the company and face lawsuits in court, but none of this deterred him. While going through court proceedings with good lawyers, he started a new company, this time a flow conveyorwhose trucks loaded with money soon suffered a wave of attacks on the route between Encarnación and Asunción. In this case, Menocchio did not take into account that it is not advisable to play with the bank’s money: They investigated him and found that he was the mastermind behind the robberies. He ended up getting four years in prison for asphalt piracy.

With the new millennium he regained his freedom and settled in Asunción, where he soon resumed his old habits as Isidoro Cañones in the most prominent clubs of the Paraguayan capital. He was known in the environment as “El Gusano” and organized lavish parties whose VIP guests included judges, prosecutors, politicians and businessmen, but this almost banal image hid his true calling. that of a big time drug dealer and bill collector for drug distribution in the city at night.

On the night of August 15, 2004, “El Gusano” went to collect a debt from Eduardo Fidel Maciel, the owner of “Puerto Madero”, one of the most famous nightclubs of the time. The businessman asked for a new date because he lacked funds, an excuse he repeated for a long time. Witnesses later said that both men They chatted amicably for a while, without any tension being noted between them, and that “El Gusano” was drinking some whiskey on the house.

It was well into the early hours of the 16th when Menocchio, Maciel and his girlfriend Graciela Méndez, 19, left the compound and got into “Gusanova’s” Ford Explorer truck. It was the last time the couple was seen alive, which disappeared from the places he visited. The police interviewed “Gusan” who claimed to have taken them directly to Maciel’s house.

Eleven days later, some residents of Laguna Grande, near the town of Fernando de Mora, found two 200 liter barrels half submerged near the edge of a reflecting pool. They were sealed with cement and gave off a strong rotten smell. Opening the first of the tanks, the police found the naked body of a man with five wounds, three in the chest and two in the head; The other contained a woman with two bullets lodged in her chest. The crime had an unmistakable mafia stamp.

When the victims were identified as Eduardo Maciel and Graciela Méndez, an arrest warrant was issued for Menocchio, but “El Gusano” crossed the border into Argentina days ago, even though he was prevented from leaving the country as a suspect. It was later learned that he had traveled by plane to the Argentine capital impossible without the help of power.

In Buenos Aires, the refugee underwent a series of cosmetic surgeries to change his face and partly erased his fingerprints with acid. With this new look, he obtained a fake document in the name of Hugo Jara. Thus was born the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Faces”.

Posing as a high school cook, he was introduced to the film producer Claudio Nozzi, with whom he became fast friends and came to spend a long time at his house, an exclusive country house in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires. They also took frequent trips on Nozzi’s yacht.

At the same time, fake Jára pretended to other people as a partner of Nozzi, with whom they were said to be working on the production of a film with a budget of ten million dollars. This is what he said, for example, to a woman whom he invited to sail around Paraná for a few days on a film producer’s yacht.

In early March 2005, Nozzi’s family reported to the police that they had not heard from him for several days. Since the man was nowhere to be found, the police sent a patrol to the yacht, which was docked in Corrientes. When the police arrived, there were still signs of the party on the boat, bottles scattered everywhere. They were attended to by Hugo Jara, who introduced himself as a cook and told them that he knew nothing about Claudio, who had gone ashore the night before.

The alleged Jara was still testifying at the Corrientes police station when information arrived about a corpse eaten by a fish that had been found on a sandbar. The body had chains and two anchors in its legs, but was exposed by the impact of the water. That’s what the autopsy revealed they murdered him he hit him in the head with an object, and a DNA study later identified the dead man as Claudio Nozzi.

Jara became a suspect in the murder, especially when it was discovered that his prints had been partially destroyed. Several days passed before he could finally be identified for who he really was, Luis Raúl Menocchio, a fugitive from Paraguayan justice and wanted by Interpol. The news resonated in Paraguay, where Judge Alcides Corbeta issued an extradition request to try him for the murders of Maciel and Méndez, but the Argentine justice system denied it because he had to prosecute him for Nozzi’s murder.

Menocchio assured that the body found in the river did not belong to Nozzi, questioned the whereabouts of the victim and claimed that he could have escaped ten million dollars that belonged to him. With the trial pending, “El Gusano” spent four years in prison but was granted parole after his defense argued that although Nozzi’s relatives had identified the body, DNA tests were inconclusive.

After leaving prison, Menocchio settled in Misiones while the extradition process to Paraguay remained suspended. He presented himself as a real estate agent, and with this facade he met Manuel Rose, 76 years old, in 2010, the owner of “La Fidelidad”, a ranch of thousands of hectares located between the Chaco and Formosa.

The rancher lived with his sister-in-law Nelly Bartolomé, 73 years old. Menocchio told him that he worked as a middleman and made him an offer to buy the fields. They agreed to visit him in the countryside to continue their discussion on the subject.

On the morning of January 13, 2011, at 7:30 a.m., Menocchio arrived at the Roseo field. He didn’t come alone: ​​he was accompanied by two hitmen who beat Rose and his sister-in-law and suffocated them with plastic bags over their heads. They left the bodies there and They ran away, not realizing that one of the ranchers saw everything. Thanks to his testimony, “El Gusano” and his two accomplices were arrested the next day.

“When he was caught, he already had a purchase and sale ticket for thousands of hectares. He said he paid $40 million, although it was proven that this operation never existed,” Carlos del Corro, the lawyer for Rose’s heirs, later explained. For a lawyer, Menocchio also acted on behalf of high-ranking people in power when committing crimes. “There were indications that this was a contract crime. Menocchio set his machine in motion to kill Rose in exchange for a share of the spoils, but without political and judicial protection he could not keep the lands. We asked for an investigation into this hypothesis, but there was never any progress,” the lawyer said.

In 2012, Menocchio was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of film producer Claudio Nozzi, and a year later he received another life sentence for the crimes of Manuel Rose and Nélida Bartolomé.

In 2014, while detained in a VIP cell at Sáenz Peña Prison, Chaco, he tried to escape with outside help and was transferred to Rawson Prison. He still remains there, and if he ever comes out, “The Man of a Thousand Faces” will have to face extradition to Paraguay. where his first two murders still go unpunished.