Buenos Aires Police have identified the main suspect in the triple femicide case that shook Argentina last week as Tony Janzen Valverde Victoriano, a 23-year-old alleged drug trafficker from Peru. Interpol issued a red notice on Saturday, alerting police forces around the world to the search.

Valverde Victoriano reportedly ran his operation in Villa 21-24, a slum in Buenos Aires city. Also known as “Julito” or “Pequeño J,” he remains at large at the time of writing. 

Last week, the bodies of Brenda del Castillo (20), Morena Verdi (20), and Lara Gutiérrez (15)  were found buried and dismembered at a house in Florencio Varela, in the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires.

A prosecution unit in La Matanza district determined that people linked to Valverde promised them US$300 each, supposedly to attend a party. When they arrived at the house, they were tortured and murdered, in a brutal assault that authorities say was live streamed online to a group of around 45 of Valverde’s gang members. Investigators believe the video was intended to terrify his subordinates into obedience after one of the victims allegedly stole drugs from him.

The case, which has horrified Argentina, has driven protests against femicide and sparked debate about class, poverty, and the problem of treating murdered women as “good and bad victims”.

Gutiérrez’s mother has said that public opinion is “blaming the girls.” 

“Enough of talking about the girls,” she said in an interview with the A24 TV channel. “Start focusing on the goal of catching the people who were responsible.”

Seven people, both Peruvians and Argentines, have been arrested in connection with the case so far, including two who were cleaning the crime scene and other alleged members of Valverde’s gang.

Buenos Aires Province Security Minister Javier Alonso said in a press conference on Sunday that Valverde “wanted to gain a foothold in the sale of tusi with links to Peru.” Although it is named after the designer drug 2CB, the tusi sold across most of Latin America is not a specific substance, but rather a variable mixture of powder drugs dyed pink.

Wire taps on several of Valverde’s phones showed that he had a network of houses in Buenos Aires.

A car and a letter

The girls were last seen getting into a white Chevrolet Tracker SUV, which took them to the house where they were killed. On Tuesday, the Buenos Aires Police seized a Volkswagen Fox car in Quilmes, which they say was used as a support vehicle. The car was found after an informant in the case provided information on its location, and will now undergo forensic analysis.

The man who drove the Volkswagen Fox fled to Bolivia and was found in Villazón, the town on the Bolivian side of the border. His niece was also arrested after authorities recognized her when she gave an interview on the A24 TV channel. She reportedly appeared in security camera footage in the vehicle next to her uncle.

An anonymous individual also left a handwritten note in a police station that allegedly indicated Valverde’s whereabouts, local media reported. The police station is about 30 blocks from the Zavaleta neighborhood, where raids were carried out in search of the drug trafficker.

Prosecutor Adrián Arribas, from the La Matanza Homicide Investigation Unit, ordered that the letter be handed over to the courthouse and called for the station security camera footage to be reviewed in order to identify the person who left the letter.