Judge Alexis Henriquez Nunez, who is conducting the preliminary questioning in the investigation of the 3 May murder of 12-year-old Jose Rafael Llenas Aybar, interviewed the director of the Puerto Plata newspaper “El Vocero”, Gabriel de Jesus. The newspaper Hoy reports that the nature of the interview had to do with an article in El Vocero about Satanic rituals being practiced in the northern province, and its possible connection to the murder, as the boy was brutally stabbed 34 times. In the article, Mr. de Jesus said that between Santo Domingo and Villa Altagracia there was a house where the rituals were performed. The boy’s body was found near the Rio Lebron, between Santo Domingo and Villa Altagracia.
Shortly after the murder, some speculated that the boy could have been killed as part of a Satanic ritual, but the theory was quickly ruled out by police investigators.
The case, which has occupied front pages in the newspapers since the murder, has dragged on with speculation that the two confessed killers, Mario Jose Redondo Llenas and Juan Manuel Moline Rodriguez, did not act alone as they claimed upon being arrested. Luis Palma and Martin Luis Palma Meccia, the husband and son of the ex-Argentine ambassador to the D.R., have been implicated in the case, but they have now left the country and their extradition would seem unlikely according to terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention.