Five-year-old Lucio Dupuy’s killers were sentenced to life imprisonment today in the Santa Rosa Court by Judges Alejandra Ongaro, Andrés Olié and Daniel Sáez Zamora. 

Magdalena Espósito Valenti, 25, and Abigail Páez, 28, were found guilty of the murder on February 2. 

Valenti, his mother, was charged with aggravated homicide. Paez was charged with the same crime as well as sexual abuse. 

The trial started in Santa Rosa, La Pampa, in December 2022 and lasted for more than a month. After the hearings, the three judges agreed that the violence that ended Lucio’s life had increased over the months before his murder. They referred to chats between the couple back in October 2021, showing “the irritation that the boy was causing them, which [according to them] risked damaging their relationship”. On October 18, Espósito messaged Páez saying that she wouldn’t allow Lucio to challenge the “flow of their relationship”. They both killed him on the evening of November 26, 2021. 

“They criticize me, but not Lucio’s father,” said Espósito Valenti during her final statements in court. Pérez apologized to her family, and said that she had gaps in her memory and was highly traumatized by the events.