The last days of Yiya Murano: enigmatic death, dementia and the particular reason why she was not buried with her name

The last that was heard of Yiya Murano is that he had forgotten his name was Yiya Murano. And that forgetfulness was not only reduced to his identity: he, too, did not remember faces, images and not even dates. Especially what happened between February 11 and March 24, 1979: she poisoned her friends Nilda Gamba, Lelia Formisano de Ayala and her cousin Carmen Zulema del Giorgio Venturini.

If part of her life and her murders, which brought her to the dark fame of national crime history, was shrouded in mystery, her death followed that strange coherence, like an inevitable device. Unlike the sinister kidnapper Arquímedes Rafael Puccio , leader of the clan that kidnapped and killed businessmen, the death of María de las Mercedes Bernardina Bolla Aponte de Murano never appeared in the newspapers.

Her ostracism was not intentional. What she most enjoyed about her in her last years was appearing in newsrooms and television studios to give notes. Sometimes in exchange for money or simply for a gargantuan dinner or lunch. The last notes she gave were in 2012 . In a nursing home in Caballito. Over time, she was transferred to one in Belgrano. Infobae tried to visit her or chat like her on other occasions, but a relative of the strangely famous poisoner appeared to warn that Murano was not in a position to give interviews.

“She has senile dementia, she doesn't remember anything . It raves and we have decided that no one else has access to it, ”said a niece, who requested confidentiality of identity.

At the same time they sought that her death did not transcend. The few remaining family members opposed Yiya's fascination with fame and her media coverage. Not even her son, Martín Murano , was informed of the death of her mother.

"The only thing I know is that she died on April 26, 2014, a month before her 84th birthday and that she was buried in Chacarita with her name shortened from her so that no one would identify that it is her," Murano told Infobae .

"I am about to reconcile with Martincito, they filled his head, he is a risk double and an actor, a person's love," Yiya had told the author of this note in 2010. But that meeting never existed. She also talked about her death. She said that she did not want to be forgotten and that on her grave, in addition to her full name, it would say that it was Yiya Murano. "That's how everyone knows me and they bring me flowers, I love jasmine and red roses," she said.

“She is buried as Mercedes Bolla”, reveals her son. Her family tried to keep her away from the cursed legend that she Yiya fed in her last years. That of going to Duro de tame and telling a joke or signing autographs to young people or posing for photos with those who had bought a doll with her image.

Puccio, on the other hand, is still buried in the municipal cemetery of General Pico, La Pampa, where he died a year before Yiya, at the age of 82. Her name is on it and the grave was never visited by a relative. Just for the curious, motivated by the year in which Historia de un clan and El clan were broadcast, the series and the film that narrated the dark world of the former diplomat who became a horror businessman, pushing even his family into the abyss of the basement where he kidnapped the victims who he then ordered to be executed as the Sicilian mafia.

By contrast, Yiya's tomb is almost anonymous. Her relatives, those who were with her in her last days, sought that no curious person visit her grave or find out about her death.

“Yiya Murano is a tall, outgoing 47-year-old woman who preferred to spend a good part of the day away from home: visiting friends, to whom she brought the desserts she prepared, or having tea in Richmond, going to the theater or to the movies, or out shopping. Even though her husband was retired, she rarely went out with him. Her neighbors used to see her dressed elegantly, well made up, with designer clothes and jewelry”, reports Gente magazine on May 31, 1979. poisonings.

In her last years, Yiya was a regular at Las Violetas, where she liked to stroll with the air of a queen through the traditional Buenos Aires cafe that combines curved glass doors and windows, French stained glass windows and Italian marble floors.

Yiya's hands were big. She had two rings: the one that stood out from the three brilliant stones was given to her by Julio, her last husband, and the other one was bought by her . “With Julito's money, poor old man… he's blind but he loves me madly. He was a corrector for the columns that Jacobo Timerman wrote for La Opinion”, she once recounted.

After finishing tea, she liked to fan herself but without taking off the jackets or coats that she used, in addition to blouses, pullovers, skirts, can-can socks and brown shoes . She also liked to be perfumed.

“I say it by intuition. The killer has a reputation as a good liar and he always denies what he did. It's not my case. Where there is power, sex and money, there is always a murderer ready to kill. This country is a factory of murderers, ”she confessed Yiya. She then hissed at three whispering retirees as she got up and asked the waiter not to tell them she was Yiya Murano. "I don't like the circus or the rabble," she clarified in a low voice and hurried away.

Once, the author of this note suggested that she return to Monserrat, a neighborhood that made her famous. She accepted without problems. When she arrived at Mexico 1177, she spoke to the garage attendant . “Kid, here I kept my Mercedes Benz. What do you know, if you're a kid and you don't know me! ”, She told him. “The Pimpinela lived on the corner and in the middle of the block there was Guillermo Patricio Kelly 's house,” Yiya recalled. “I used to live in the sixth C. I have no idea who occupies it now,” she commented. She knew that tourist circuits were organized for foreigners that included that place in her tour. "The Monserrat poisoner lived here," said the criminal tour guides. "They do business at the cost of my innocence," she complained.

The black lady of crime

Yiya Murano was born in Corrientes on May 20, 1930. Her mother, Candela, was a housewife, and her father, Camilo Bolla Aponte, was a lieutenant colonel who repressed opponents of José Félix Uriburu's coup . Yiya never flinched. Although her family melted away, she always liked being part of the bourgeoisie. She was received as a teacher but she never practiced.

When her parents settled in Buenos Aires, she was fascinated by the tall buildings, the hectic pace of the city, the endless night on Corrientes Avenue, the elegant and wealthy men. She dedicated herself to walking and swimming. Her swimming gave an even wider back to her stocky body. When she married the lawyer Antonio Murano he asked her to stay at her house instead of working; and she gladly accepted. She was wearing expensive jewelry and designer clothes, but she lived in a seedy apartment.

Between February and March 1979, the deaths of Nilda Gamba, Lelia Formisano de Ayala and Carmen Zulema del Giorgio Venturini shocked the country. They all had two things in common: they were Yiya's friends and they died of poison. But that was discovered from the suspicions of the relatives of those old women. Coincidentally, the day before their mysterious deaths they had had pastry tea with Yiya Murano. The hounds came full circle when they confirmed that the loan shark Yiya owed them money for a deal she had proposed to them, but that it was ultimately a scam.

She killed them with cyanide, that poison whose smell and taste they compare to bitter almonds. They arrested her on April 27, 1979. She denied all the charges and her lawyers managed to get her acquitted three years later due to lack of evidence, although on June 18, 1985 the Third Chamber of the Crime Chamber annulled the previous ruling and the sentenced to life imprisonment. She was released on November 20, 1995 for a reduced sentence and for the “two for one”. A year later she was the fashion columnist for the program La hoguera.

In 1998, she went to lunch on Mirtha Legrand 's program and revealed that she had remarried, but the next day her husband appeared. “I will annul the marriage, I did not know that she was the poisoner. I only spent one night with her, the wedding night. Last night she threatened me not to tell this, ”confessed the poor man.

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Years later, Yiya returned to Mirtha's table, to whom she gave fine pastries. "I don't eat because they get fat," the lunch diva excused herself, although in the end she ate one. She had played the game that Yiya likes the most: the comedy step. The one that turned her into a funny grandmother, capable of signing autographs in the street. But beyond being a character who had become grotesque, indoors, in the privacy of her house, Yiya hid another personality. One more similar to the nickname she earned because of the cyanide droplets: "The poisoner of Monserrat."

Yiya was married four times. Her last conquest was Julio Banín, whom she met in 2000 during a bus trip. The two were going to a concert at the Cervantes Theater. Since he was blind, she led him by the arm. The next day she accompanied him to the doctor. They were married within a few months. “I needed someone to buy my medicine,” Julio once said. He spent his time shut up in her house, where she listened to Radio 10. Yiya went for a walk along the Florida pedestrian street or went shopping. Yiya ended up alone. Banín died before her, but he had kicked her out of her house. There were four episodes that marked the abrupt end of that relationship.

The first: Yiya paid, in 2010, 100 pesos to a taxi driver to call and tell her stepdaughter that her boyfriend was cheating on her. The driver himself confessed the truth. Yiya denied it.

The second, the most serious. Her stepdaughter and her husband suspected that Yiya tried to poison them. “Since my stepmother started cooking again I spent a week with dizziness, stomach pain, vomiting and fainting. Usually when she cooked noodles and gave us tea. My dad got pneumonia , ”said the stepdaughter.

The third. The theft of the gold headband that belonged to her mother. Yiya accused the gatekeeper. A week later, during Children's Day, she gave her stepdaughter an envelope of hers with a thousand pesos, as if to lessen her guilt. “My dear, this is for you, my daughter. Last night I went to dinner and saw Moria Casán with one of my lovers and the guy gave me this gift. At the time, she said that she had had sex with more than 200 men, "including a former president, a witch and a spy."

Her room: she was accused of stealing 30 thousand dollars that were in a box and were the life savings of her blind husband . When her stepdaughter opened the box, she got an unpleasant surprise: there were newspapers in the shape of bills.

Yiya cried tearlessly and said that she was innocent. They kicked her out of her house, which was in La Boca de Ella. And she began to live in a nursing home .

Her stepdaughter, over time, learned that she had done worse things to Martín Murano, Yiya's son. As a catharsis, Martín -an action movie stunt double- recounted the hardships he experienced next to his mother in the book My mother, Yiya Murano , in which he reveals that one day Yiya confessed to him that he had put the poison in the tea bags

When he was a boy, she took him to her meetings with her lovers. Her father was the civil lawyer Antonio Murano. "Martincito, behave yourself, now we're going to see a distant uncle," he told him, but after a while he was kissing that distant uncle, who caressed his hands, whispered things in his ear and even gave him jewelry and money. . “Martincito, treat your uncle well so he can give me nice gifts”, the cretin told him, and the poor boy cried inside, he remained silent because Yiya managed that: immobilize him. When Martín graduated from high school, his father, Antonio, was not at the graduation party. He was surprised when on the dance floor he saw his mother shaking with a man he didn't know. "He's a friend, your dad got sick," he told her. But he was another lover. When he came back to his house, his father was watching TV. "My son, I did not go to your party because your mother told me that she could hurt my heart because I was going to experience an immense emotion," Antonio told him and Martín felt like crying. Of anger and sadness. When his mother returned home, she told him: "Martincito, you have to be more alive." "Even she tried to kill me ," Martin Murano said, but he did not give details.

In the nursing home he used to do other evil things. He told his companions that no one was going to see them because they were old and had no fame . She spent her time clutching her brown purse and wearing a mothball-scented trench coat.

In one of her last public appearances, he recounted:

I have three lovers at the same time. And I don't know which one to stay with . What hurts me -she said with a melodramatic tone- is that one of them is my brother-in-law. And I'm so sorry to hurt my poor little sister, who's underground. Yesterday I went and spoke to the grave. Poor dear! I hope she understands me.

She was talking about her past as if she was talking about the day before.

-Very cute. My mother taught me to weave, to comb my dolls and to wait for my military father at night . She also taught me to draw.

And she drew a little clown.

Yiya never confessed to her murders. He said that he was innocent, that those women, her friends, had died naturally because, he said, and I remember this well, old people can only die from one day to the next. And there is nothing to do. Just bury them and mourn them. But after denying the crimes, he said a kind of criminal axiom: "My dear, you have to understand one thing: murderers never tell the truth." In addition to his phrases, he was always adept at attracting the attention of journalists. As much as he repeated old statements in interviews, he knew how to play with the mystery. He was enough with few words. "Now I'm going to tell you who killed those poor ladies," he said, but then his promise dissolved like the dumplings he dipped in tea.

Until she lost her memory, she continued with her habit of complimenting men. To pretty and ugly, to fat and skinny. He would say to the ugly ones “how beautiful you are” , but when the guy turned and walked away, he would say cynically: “This one is going to be beautiful, he is fiercer than a one-eyed monkey”. And he accompanied his wickedness with a laugh.

One day he posed in a nightgown for a photographer and warned him, without letting go of his purse: "Photographer, I'm without underwear."

She also said that she would like to be remembered as an adorable creature , with a joke or a smile.

But in her legend there is no love or smiles.

Her final was in Chacarita, where the three women he killed are also buried. The murderer and her three victims, in the same cemetery . Close again, even in death. So many secrets kept under four tombs.

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