He went to throw out the garbage and never came back: the mysterious disappearance of Mónica Berti
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This content is exclusively for our subscribers.While he was chasing the car, Martín Berti repeated to himself that it was an absurd idea. He had to be sensible and assume that after so long her sister could not look as he remembered her, that this woman who was traveling in the back seat of an Uber, with half of her face covered by a mask, could not be Monica. But what if it was? Once again, he was invaded by the hope of the first months of searching, when he went after any indication in order to find her. Martin sped up. He looked back at the passenger. The hair, the structure of the face, the shape of the eyes were similar, he thought, and continued driving. Until the Uber driver stopped, asked him what was happening and Martín replied that he was looking for his older sister, who has been absent for three years, that they have no clue and that this time it could be one of those. Who knows? He had to remove the doubt. The passenger heard him. He got out of the car, took off his mask and showed him his documents.
It wasn't Mónica Berti.
After three years of waiting for some sign from her or a decisive breakthrough in the investigation carried out by the Absent Persons department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mónica's family and best friend, Adriana Ocampo, organized a mobilization last Friday so that the case is not forgotten. It was at the corner of her house, in Belvedere, near the place where she was last seen, at noon on December 6, 2018.
About a hundred people are grouped around a sign with their face printed on it and hand out flyers among the cars that pass by Garzón street. The mother holds a photograph of her with both hands resting on her chest. Silence reigns.
Here is the last person who saw her, a neighbor who still remembers that Mónica was wearing light-coloured pants and “didn't even have a bag”. She was heading through the Canary Islands towards Garzón, possibly after leaving the garbage in the container on the corner. He greeted her as he passed, as he did every morning when he repeated the same routine: he accompanied his son (who is 15 years old today) to the bus stop, then took out the trash. And he went back to his house.
A few meters from where they claim her absence, in a house that smells of lime and jasmine, Mónica Berti grew up. Her neighbors, who have known her "for a lifetime", describe her as a "quiet", "sweet", "of few words" woman. They used to see her accompanied by her brothers, her neighbor and friend Adriana, and her son. “On this street we learned to walk and ride a bicycle. When they wouldn't let us out, we communicated in the background. It was enough for her to shout my name from inside her house, and I would listen to her. She told me everything. I still seem to hear her, 'Adri, Adri', she called me, and I came," says her friend.
Her parents live on the ground floor of the house, Mónica lives on the upper floor; she had returned there after her separation with her husband about five years ago. Where the garage is now, there used to be a warehouse. In adolescence Monica helped take care of him.
She then studied psychology and economics, but ended up graduating as a piano and English teacher, although she did not practice often. Her longest job was at the reception of an imposing apartment tower in Buceo. Around that time he married and had a son. She was separated, but her relatives say that she was still confident in rebuilding the relationship.
Finding out that her ex had a new partner, added to some other situation that is not described in depth, would have led her to go through a depressive period that according to her family was already over at the time of her disappearance. She was still taking the medication, they say.
On that date, the only important event that could have affected her was the death of her grandmother, whom Monica cared for assiduously. She was like her mother, they say in the family. The grandmother died on December 4, 2018. The next day, Mónica was at her parents' house, she saw her two brothers and, later, she even talked with Adriana. She was upset, "but nothing out of the ordinary," says the friend. That night, the son slept in the father's house.
Mónica rarely went out, so her family was surprised not to find her at home the next day: December 6. The door was without the lock. On the dining room table they found his wallet with the documents, his cell phone, and the bills he had to pay later. Nothing was missing, not even her clothes: not a single item of clothing.
They filed a complaint.
Chronicle of a search.
Monica's house is preserved exactly as she left it. In her living room are her diplomas, a craft from her son for some Mother's Day, photos of the child and a niece. “Whoever knew my sister the way I knew her cannot continue to think that she decided to disappear. I repeated that argument to myself for a while, but not anymore. It's impossible," says his brother Martín. Monica's close environment also rules out the hypothesis that she was able to devise a plan to leave without a trace.
Recently, Mónica had worked in a group of school children with the eldest of the brothers, but she did not have the income or savings to travel, nor to stay financially away from her family for so long. She “She was always a simple, transparent person, extremely familiar. She lived for her son and for others, she would never have done something like this of her own free will”, Martín insists.
At age 46, Monica had few friends and no active social life that would allow her to make other kinds of contacts. No one knows who to suspect and at the same time they suspect everyone and everything. Treats? A sect? Any friends abroad? asks the family.
According to El País, the records of the people who were interrogated by the Absent Persons department add up to 40 pages: there are dozens. Even a neighbor gave a statement this year to provide a theory, but no concrete clue was reached.
There was a man who was suspicious, which arose from the expertise performed on his computer. A Facebook friend with whom he would have written at some point and he would have sent him an "out of place" communication. Sources of the investigation report that "the car and the house were turned around." Even the garbage was checked. Even the food in the fridge.
More raids were made. Everyone around him, including his family, was investigated, looking for violent profiles. Their social networks and the comments that arose in different Internet publications related to the case were reviewed. The DNA of their parents was taken to compare it with that of unidentified bodies.
But nothing. Still.
“This is a very rare case, because of the person's age, because of the person's profile, because everything was left at home,” acknowledges Miguel Pereira, the person in charge of Absent Persons > since last January. The department is dealing with a record of complaints, with 4,200 so far in 2021, an average of 12 per day that now, at the end of the year, is climbing to 20 or 30 per day. Of the total absences, more than 98% are resolved, and soon. 1% or less have a fatal end, like that of the young Lucas Zanolli.
The Berti case is one of the 340 that remain open, out of a total of 26,900 complaints received since 2004. Berti's is one of those in which "the circle could not yet be closed," says Pereira. He explains that every day "a filter" is made of the people who have not yet appeared and "routines are followed in search of new elements." In turn, periodically the data of Mónica Berti and that of the other 300 absentees are searched on social networks, sent to health centers throughout the country and checked among police news —car accidents, transits, bodies found—in case any data emerges. Pereira says that in this way in 2021 several cases from previous years were closed.
Internationally a yellow notice was issued. With this measure, as long as everything works as it should, if Mónica Berti presents her documents or registers fingerprints somewhere in the world, Interpol will receive the notice.
claimFamilies dissatisfied, and growth of the crime of extortion against relatives of absent people
The repeated absence of young women, many of them minors, and the despair of their families in the face of access to Justice with which they are not satisfied, motivated the formation five years ago of the collective “Where are our gurisas?”. The first step was to create a guide for filing a complaint, before the protocol created by the Ministry of the Interior existed and published last June. María Zino, one of the members of the group, explains that during this time they have made complaints to both the National Human Rights Institution and the Prosecutor's Office >, claiming lack of sharpness in the search. In his view, cases associated with drug use are losing strength and sometimes the family is charged with the responsibility of obtaining the test, "which ends with mothers and fathers getting into dangerous places." Among other things, they live closely another crime associated with the disappearance of people. High exposure on social networks is generating increasingly frequent extortion crimes. They simulate a false kidnapping, or claim to be with the absentee and offer to buy him a ticket. The Absent People department identified calls from Mexico, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay.
“The Berti case is always being investigated,” summarizes Pereira and shows a bulky blue plastic folder, with a printed photo of Mónica on the cover: the elastics barely close. The Prosecutor's Office confirms that flagrante delicto prosecutor Ana Vallverdú is currently in charge of the investigation. Other tasks would have prevented him from participating in this report, but as he transmitted the investigation continues to be carried out.
Although the investigations of the missing persons are not archived, Berti's family and friends fear that this has actually happened. They claim to have lost contact with the investigators of the case -who changed both in the police department and in the Prosecutor's Office- and not access the information they handle under the argument that it is reserved. They insist that their perception is that during the first days "the investigation was not as sharp as it should be."
For example, says Martín, when the family suggested requesting the recording of a camera located on Garzón street, belonging to the Transit department of the Municipality of Montevideo, more than 15 days had already passed and the commune had deleted the material . "We have gone through several stages, now we are demanding that the authorities really dedicate themselves to looking for her," says Adriana.
After the dissemination of the meeting last Friday, Mónica's photo returned to the press, to social networks and to the unofficial pages of people who disappear in Uruguay. Thus, in their environment they feel that everything started again. The hypotheses of commentators on the networks returned, the messages from strangers with photos taken of people who could be her. The calls from the seers returned.
Three years ago, Monica's siblings visited all the places important to her and followed the clues that were brought to them. They carried out raking with dogs trained to search for people who were alive, consulted a psychic and were about to hire a private detective. For months they left their jobs to search for her, going every other day toInterpol, until time diluted hope. The mystery continues. Now they wonder what else they could do.
The help of civilians.
“I'm like Clark Kent, because neither my children nor my husband know what I do,” says María José Romano, administrator together with to Pedro Gustavo Ponce of the Facebook group Persons who have disappeared in Uruguay, which has more than 30,000 members. It is not the only one: in social networks you can also find other similar pages.
This group was created five years ago as a result of the disappearance of the adolescent Milagros Cuello, who was later found out to be a victim of sexual exploitation. This case is also at the origin of the creation of the collective “Where are our gurisas?”, which focuses on the incidence of trafficking networks in the disappearance of young women.
“What we do is to spread the photo and the information of the absent person”, explains Romano. “When we received it, we called the families because it happened to us that there were women who had left because they were victims of violence and the one who was looking for them was the violent partner. We have two moderators who read all the comments and, when we get a clue that seems pretty solid to us, we pass it on to the families,” she says.
Linked to this community are psychics and also the K-SAR unit, which offers trained dogs to search for people who are alive on an honorary basis. The trainer Eduardo Silva has three dogs prepared and one of them, the pit bull Huma, collaborated in the case of Mónica Berti. As the next step, Silva sets out to train a pup to search for human remains. The project wants to become professional and is in the process of being incorporated into the action plans of the Red Cross of Uruguay.
The person in charge of Absent Persons, Pereira, is aware of these actions carried out by civilians. He permanently receives on his cell phone the photographs that the groups of disseminated persons upload. This is how he checks if these complaints were made at a police station or headquarters, at Interpol or at the Prosecutor's Office. Sometimes it doesn't happen, because there are people who get confused and think that the Facebook group is the official website of the department, he says.
Updating the website and presenting the missing persons are among the many plans that Pereira has for the department. He defines its importance by describing it as "the heart" in which various types of crimes converge. He, who comes from investigating cases of human trafficking, trafficking and drug trafficking, assures that resolving a complex absence like that of Mónica Berti “is much more difficult” than other cases: it's like looking for a needle in a haystack
The shadow of the movies.
In Pereira's office, there are dozens of folders, libraries and boxes. Each one has a name and a photograph of people who at this point are familiar to the rest of Uruguayans. At least 12 contain the investigation of Ignacio Susaeta (disappeared in 2015), as many as that of Milagros Cuello (who achieved three convictions, but still has not clarified the disappearance), there are a box from the Mónica Rivero case (the accountant who was on the run and serving a sentence for fraud) and another from Cristina Jones (already solved).
Two floors above, the 10 investigators of the department work: half men and half women, all young; specially chosen by Pereira prioritizing "their quality as people", "their ability to empathize with the families of the absent" and for their "intelligence". In that office, there are more files inside furniture and more furniture.
There are 10 for the whole country, in addition to Pereira (a call was opened to incorporate two more psychologists), but on a case-by-case basis they work in coordination with police stations and headquarters, or they move to other departments, and when crimes are identified more complex associates add other specialized departments, explains Pereira. This is done under the supervision of the Prosecutor's Office, which activates the action protocol that was published last June.
However, they appear to be too few to investigate 4,000 complaints per year. Why do absence complaints increase? Sources from the ministry indicate that, on the one hand, the myth that you had to wait 24 or 48 hours was broken, and on the other, that the visibility of the phenomenon in the media would be causing it to be reported immediately. This behavior, while good, is also problematic. In this sense, the protocol is intended to refine when an absence is an absence.
Among the people who disappear, 40% are minors; half men and half women. "In general, we locate them quickly," says Pereira. In 2021, of the 4,200 complaints received, 174 are still open, of which 90 are minors who had an unauthorized exit from an INAU center. Is there any trait that is repeated among those wanted? “The addiction to base paste. Many times we find them and then they disappear again”, says Pereira. Another source says that, if before they ended up finding them "with a little boyfriend", "now they seem mutilated in a mouth."
Ximena Hernández, one of the researchers who is also a psychologist, believes that the main tool for unlocking these cases is trust. “Families and relatives have to be honest in the information they give us,” she says. "They have to know that any detail, even if it seems insignificant, is often the fundamental piece to find the person," insists the agent.
When they are found, there are people who did not know they were being sought or who do not want to reconnect with their family; In this case, they must appear before a police station to identify themselves. Other times —many— the absences are related to other crimes such as domestic violence, abuse or trafficking , which are referred to a specialized prosecutor's office.
And the ones that still don't show up? “The problem is that we have very easy borders to cross,” says Pereira. Researchers consulted warned that in Uruguay it is “easy” to obtain false documents, which could be behind several voluntary absences and especially forced ones. "It is very complex. This is not how the movies show it,” insists the manager.
But it's not quite like that.
Like the characters we see on detective shows, his team works after hours and regardless of what day it is their turn. Cell phones ring at dawn. “We know that one more minute could change the fate of the absentee,” says Hernández.
Some dream. They dream of the bodies that they dig up, they dream of cases that they were unable to close, they dream of disappeared people who ask them for help, they dream that they are going to disappear. This is how the psychologist explains it: “What happens is that from one day to the next you get a name and a photo. Until that moment you did not know that person, but in a few hours you know what was happening to him, what he was hiding, why he was suffering. You get into his life and if he doesn't show up, it's hard to get out."
Mónica Berti, they say, is one of those names that haunts them.
the other helpThe role of private detectives and psychics
From the research company EyF, they estimate that they receive between seven and eight queries per quarter for missing persons. "They are looking for relatives or friends who are absent, some recently, others for years," says a researcher. "If the case is current it is simpler, by cards, fingerprints or cell phone antenna it can be located." Meanwhile, from the firm Detective Jack they point out that their work is complementary to that of the Police. "We can do intelligence from open sources," he says, referring to the fact that they collect new testimonies or revisit some possible witnesses. "Many times there is resistance to speaking with the police but not with us." The big difference, he argues, is that the agents "need to gather evidence" and the private detective "needs to gather information." Then, in parallel, there is the work of the seers, which is usually honorary. A source says that she uses the letters and that the cases come to her from the families or she herself searches on her own initiative. Marcelo Acquistapace, meanwhile, is also usually tracked down by police officers: they've been calling him for 31 years, he says. "What I visualize has to have a substitution from the scientific point of view to be able to corroborate it," he warns. Choose the cases. Ask for the absentee's full name, date of birth, a printed photo, a piece of clothing that has only been worn by the person, circumstances, and the place where they were last seen. “When I come into contact with these elements, I generate a work methodology that allows me to send a signal and, if the person is alive, it returns to me. If we are alive, we emit information through the senses”, he says. This is how he perceives what the searched person sees, hears, smells. “If the person is deceased, I realize because I feel that this signal bounces. No one".
