NOVA joins scientists in Argentina as they help locate kidnapped children and identify thousands of dead in the aftermath of a military reign of terror.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00In Argentina, science is helping to find thousands of people who have disappeared in the aftermath
00:10of political mass murder. Forensic techniques can identify the dead, while genetic testing
00:16is helping to reveal the true identity of the children who were kidnapped when their
00:21parents were assassinated. The story of this unique scientific effort to investigate the
00:26crimes of a tragic era unfolds in The Search for the Disappeared, next on NOVA.
00:39Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station and other public television stations
00:43nationwide. Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies,
00:50supplying health care products worldwide. And by Allied Signal, a technology leader
00:58in aerospace, electronics, automotive products, and engineered materials.
01:20On the 20th of August, 1976, 30 bodies were dumped in a field 50 miles outside Buenos
01:43Aires, Argentina. The last time most of them had been seen alive was at the central police
01:49headquarters. The victims of this massacre were buried anonymously in individual graves
01:57in the local cemetery in Derqui. Ten years later, the crime is finally being investigated.
02:13In the cemetery records, each no-name grave is marked by two Ns, N-A-N-A in Spanish.
02:20These are all the cases that were recorded at the time, N-A-N-A.
02:31How many cases do we have here? Thirty cases.
02:35Do we know the sex of the individuals? Probably. We're not sure, but probably we've got 20 male and 10 female.
02:46All of them with a bullet in the head. Single gunshot wound to the head.
02:50Yeah. This is part of a new scientific endeavor to document the dark days of military rule
02:56in Argentina and bring the guilty to justice. Here, forensic science is being used to investigate
03:03not just one crime, but thousands committed against an entire nation. For a country where
03:10the importance of paying homage to the dead is deeply felt, the anonymity of these deaths
03:16is a torment. Their grandest cemetery, La Recoleta, is a monumental necropolis dominated
03:23by the great names of the land. Among these crypts, the origins of Argentina's troubled
03:29political history can be traced. Past dictators, assassinated presidents, ambitious generals,
03:37and a national legend, Evita Perón. The country did not rest until her stolen remains were
03:45returned to Argentina 20 years after her death in 1952. The empty tomb left by Perón's enemies
03:53was a macabre foreshadowing of the recent military regime's deliberately cruel policy
03:58of not only murdering its people, but making them vanish without trace.
04:10Shortly after the military coup in 1976, the governor of Buenos Aires made the new policy clear.
04:18First, we will kill all the subversives. Then, we will kill their collaborators. Then, their
04:24sympathizers. Then, those who remain indifferent. And finally, we will kill the timid. Under
04:32the guise of combating terrorism, the military dictatorship had evolved into a kind of state
04:38terrorism that threatened the entire population. One of those who later initiated the scientific
04:47work, Eric Stover, happened to be in the country at the time.
04:51When I first came to Argentina, it was at the time of the military coup. And I traveled quite extensively
04:58through the country. And as I stopped in various towns, I would hear stories of arrests. I hadn't
05:06really been aware of the extent in which the repression was taking place there. Some 360
05:14secret detention centers existed where there were actually men who got up every day and
05:21went into these centers and acted as torturers. And that was their job.
05:25Empty buildings, old garages, and police stations were all adapted to the torturer's needs.
05:32Perhaps the most infamous was the Naval Mechanics School, ESMA, where pregnant
05:37women were tortured and babies kidnapped after their mothers had given birth.
05:44The horror of those years has since been chronicled in an official government report
05:49called Nunca Más, which means Never Again.
05:57With the advent of democracy in 1983, the commission investigating the disappearances
06:03collected thousands of testimonies from survivors. Up to 30,000 may have disappeared.
06:11Much of the old police and military establishment remains intact.
06:15Some relatives are still afraid to report what happened.
06:18Others demand that all those responsible be brought to trial.
06:28The first serious forensic investigations of the disappearances were organized by Eric Stover in
06:341984. He works for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Originally hired to
06:40monitor human rights abuses against scientists, he began to interest the AAAS in applying its
06:46expertise to the problem of all the disappeared. The commission investigating the disappearances
06:55in Argentina learned of our interest and invited the AAAS to send a delegation of forensic scientists
07:06down to Argentina to assist them. At that point, I contacted a number of forensic scientists around
07:13the country, and in pulling this team together, the first person we contacted was Clyde Snow.
07:23As one of the world's foremost forensic anthropologists, Dr. Clyde Snow is often
07:28called upon to investigate skeletal remains in murder cases and aircraft disasters. Recently,
07:34he went to Brazil to help identify the skeleton of Josef Mengele, the Nazi concentration camp doctor.
07:40His work in Argentina keeps drawing him back to Buenos Aires, but his base is Oklahoma.
07:47We deal with murders up in this country, but we're usually dealing with the
07:52individual murderer, and we can't condone what they do, but we can at least understand that
08:00we're dealing with an aberration of an individual mind. These murders were planned and executed
08:11by a bunch of rational men sitting around conference tables in their fancy uniforms and
08:20$500 suits, and they were done, they were planned and executed very cold-bloodedly,
08:27and to me that is a very frightening, those are the kind of people I'm afraid of.
08:39Like a lot of other people, I'd heard that things were going on in Argentina over the years, but I
08:44hadn't paid an awful lot of attention to it, and when I got down there and found out that
08:51instead of perhaps a few dozen, many thousands of people that disappeared, you know, this came
08:58as a sort of a shock, but the evidence is still there in terms of the bones themselves, the
09:07injuries that the bones display, the bullets, the other things that we find when we excavate these
09:15graves can still be put together to serve as scientific evidence in a murder trial.
09:23Clyde Snow works closely with a small group of Argentinian scientists and sympathetic
09:28government officials.
09:45There's one cemetery here in La Plata, where over a period of 15 years, from 1970 to 1984,
10:04there were 664 John Doe and Annie burials.
10:09Looking at the statistics that we've gathered, for example, here is the cause of death.
10:15In normal years, prior to the repression, there were, deaths by gunshot wounds were very rare.
10:22For example, there was one in 1970, then suddenly it jumped up to 96, following year 107.
10:34So this tells us that many of these bodies are those of people who are desaparecidos.
10:54During the years of military rule, Buenos Aires appeared to be a cosmopolitan city,
11:00much like Paris or Rome. Yet unspoken fear permeated the night. Armed men could rush
11:07into a cafe and abduct whomever they pleased, and people would carry on as if nothing had happened.
11:20The abduction squads usually drove Ford Falcons with no license plates.
11:26These cars became a symbol of the repression.
11:30They usually struck in the middle of the night.
11:34One such incident took place on August 4th, 1976. At 4.30 a.m., armed men burst into the
11:42orphanage. Their target was a 21-year-old student called Guillermo Orfano. That night,
11:49they were in for a disappointment. Only his parents were at home.
11:53When these individuals came in, they got us out of bed and put us facing a wall like this,
12:02in this position, both of us. After, they tore the sheets from my bed, cut them,
12:12and covered our heads. Then they took us out towards the street.
12:17They were forced onto the floor of the awaiting Ford Falcon,
12:20They were forced onto the floor of the awaiting Ford Falcons and taken to the nearby central
12:25police headquarters. Their sons had become politically active, like many young Argentinians.
12:32Pantalon, the eldest, had already disappeared and was being held in the same police headquarters.
12:40There's something that was etched in my memory, and that made me think my son was in that place,
12:47because one of the persons who asked us our name said,
12:51the family is reunited. Well, days went by in that place where there were several cells
12:58with a lot of people, all young people, hooded, standing, laying down, tortured.
13:07Our terror was that as soon as we were there, we heard screams, terrible screams,
13:14that I'll hear forever. During their detention, they never saw their son.
13:19In fact, they would never see him again. In those ten days with total helplessness,
13:31we had to bear witness to rapes,
13:33tortures of the most brutal type, and above all, what you consider the most brutal,
13:44to know that on the other side of the wall, your own son was being tortured with the electric prod.
13:54You couldn't do anything about it. We had to suffer through that situation all the time.
14:04Aside from seeing the arrival and passing through of so many young people, and of so much,
14:13so much impunity. It's terrible, I can't tell you what we witnessed and suffered through in that
14:19place. Both sons are still missing, presumed dead, but the orphanos think they know what happened to
14:26Pantelon. They believe he was one of 30 people massacred at the central police headquarters.
14:32The bodies were discovered dumped in a field near a small town called Durki.
14:38This is one of the cases Clyde Snow is investigating.
14:44Body number 26 coincided exactly with the way my son was dressed at the moment of his disappearance.
14:52It should be relatively easy to trace missing persons in Argentina.
14:57Mrs. Orphano set out to do so. In this bureaucratic nation,
15:01each citizen is registered with the Ministry of Interior and issued an identity card.
15:08When someone was abducted, this card was automatically repossessed by the authorities.
15:14Still, there was another way a body could be identified. Argentina was the first country in
15:19the world to introduce universal fingerprinting. If an unidentified corpse turned up,
15:25it could be fingerprinted. In practice, this was almost never done. An exception was made in the
15:31case of the Durki massacre, though. So, Mrs. Orphano obtained her son's prints from the
15:36central files and asked the authorities to compare them with the 30 sets of prints
15:41taken after the massacre. But the provincial police had some bad news.
15:46All the fingerprints had been incinerated. That is, they disappeared. The fingerprints never appeared again.
15:56Even so, we continue with our investigation. And we've come to the moment when our son's
16:05exhumation is going to take place. The alleged. The body alleged to be my son.
16:23May 24, 1986. In a remote corner of Durki Cemetery, one of the anonymous graves is staked out.
16:32The small group of Argentinian archaeologists and medical students is now among the most
16:38experienced in the world in the techniques of forensic exhumation. Trained by Clyde Snow,
16:44the team follows a well-rehearsed routine. A number of families, like the Orphanos,
16:51have reason to believe their children are buried here. First, the local grave diggers begin a test
16:57hole inside a roped off area, which the archaeologists believe to be the foot of the grave.
17:03A shovel through the skull can shatter the most crucial piece of evidence.
17:19With the police, forensic and ballistic experts looking on,
17:23Snow waits for the first foot bones to be uncovered.
17:46Inside the remains of the plastic-lined coffin, the first bone is uncovered.
17:52Before the exhumation can proceed, the exact depth of the bones must be calculated.
17:58Then they will know how far down it is safe to use shovels on the rest of the grave.
18:09Eventually, Dr. Snow hopes to set up a data bank that will match the details of each skeleton
18:14with the medical and dental records of each victim.
18:21The condition of the soil at the surface, superficially, you know, muddy, dry, etc.,
18:28and at the level of the bones, okay? And we get down in here, we have orientation of the grave,
18:35north, south, east, west, etc., etc., and orientation of the body within the grave in terms of
18:45which end is at the head.
18:51Every skeleton consists of around 200 bones, 32 teeth in an adult, and each of those bones
19:01and teeth has its own little story to tell. So it's imperative that each and every one of them
19:07be recovered. This is why we use an archaeological approach, use the same approach that archaeologists
19:15have used for many years in recovering prehistoric skeletons. And we find that if we
19:22apply these methods to forensic cases, we wind up by being able to recover much of the evidence.
19:33Now, in addition to the bones and teeth, we find evidence such as hair, and even more importantly,
19:41in the cases of the disabodied sedos here, we find ballistic evidence, bullet fragments,
19:51which can tell us something about the cause of death and, of course, are naturally of great
19:58interest to the people who study problems of identifying bullets and identifying firearms.
20:10Let me look at the front teeth. I mean, yeah, well, okay.
20:18The teeth are by far the most important means of identifying a body.
20:23If a desaparecidos dental charts and x-rays are available,
20:26then it's much easier to make a positive identification.
20:30Okay. Well, the damage we see to the skull here consists of massive fractures of the facial
20:41portion and a clear-cut exit wound from a bullet exiting in the back of the skull. Now, the reason
20:52we can diagnose this as an exit wound is because a bullet passing through bone always leaves a
21:02larger hole as it leaves the bone than it does as it enters. In other words, this crater-formed
21:08lesion we see here in the back of the skull, its diameter is greater on the external surface than
21:18is greater on the external surface than it is in the internal surface of the bone.
21:24From the shape of the skeleton, they know this is a male.
21:34These people are murder victims. Their bones are their only witnesses and they deserve to be heard.
21:47The skeletons are taken to the Buenos Aires morgue. Identifying them is a process of
21:57elimination. The height of each person can be estimated by measuring the tibia, the femur,
22:03and other bones. The final stature here is 5'8", almost 5'9", around 175 centimeters.
22:17Somewhat taller than an average stature for Argentinian males.
22:25This narrows down the identification. It could be Pantelon Orphano. Next, the age is determined
22:32by examining the pubic symphysis, where the two halves of the hip bones meet in the groin area.
22:53Using a series of 15 plastic casts, first developed during the Korean War to help identify
22:59dead GIs, they compare the shape and pattern with that of their skeleton.
23:04They use a scoring system to estimate the age.
23:07I've got a total score here of around four, three and a half, two and a half.
23:16So I'll give you a total symphysial score of about 10, which corresponds to an age of around 25.
23:24The age is consistent with Pantelon Orphano,
23:27but all 30 skeletons must be examined before they can make any identifications.
23:32Every Thursday afternoon since 1977, the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have marched
23:38around this square, demanding the return of their disappeared children.
23:46Many of the families have waited and wandered for years as the exact fate of their loved ones.
23:55And when this happens, you have an interruption of the normal grief process. People cannot
24:01put the fact of death behind them and go on with their lives. They're sort of suspended,
24:12and the process itself is suspended. And it's almost a form of prolongation of the torture
24:19that was applied to the original victims out to members of their families.
24:31During that black night our nation lived through,
24:37there were inhuman attitudes, attitudes that were completely irrational.
24:44And no doubt there were murders, there was genocide.
24:54So obviously some or all, I don't know, God will reveal someday, and justice above all,
25:03the names of the dead ones. And if today I appeal for my disappeared son,
25:11tomorrow I will appeal for my murdered son.
25:19In 1985, the nine former military rulers were put on trial.
25:25Incontrovertible evidence was required before the judges would consider a homicide verdict.
25:31Mr. Clyde Collins-Snowy has been called upon to act as a witness in the proceedings against
25:39the three first juntas of the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional as a witness for the
25:45prosecution. One of Clyde Snow's cases was a 21-year-old girl who was pregnant at the time
25:52she was abducted. The bones of the skull, as we found them, were very fragmented form.
26:01Here you see a few of those fragments. Along with the fragments we also found seven
26:12pellets from a shotgun, badly deformed, but of a size consistent with the load of
26:23double-aught buckshot used in shotguns such as the pitaca, which is used as a standard
26:31police and army security weapon in Argentina. Because of the very fragmentary condition of
26:41the skull, we had to reconstruct it in order to study the patterns of injuries.
26:47We concluded that the range at which this shot was fired was in the general range of
26:55around one meter or perhaps a little less than a meter. When we exhumed the skeleton,
27:03we did not encounter the small bones of a human fetus.
27:17We did not encounter the small bones of a human infant inside the pelvic bones of the mother.
27:25On the other hand, we did see in the pelvis bones a groove known as the preauricular sulcus,
27:34which indicates that the individual has given birth to a term or near-term infant.
27:44Putting all this information together, we were able to identify the individual as Liliana
27:53Carmen Pereya, who disappeared on her way home from work on the 5th of October in 1977.
28:03This is the bedroom of Liliana Carmen Pereya,
28:15with the same furniture that I bought for her when we moved into this house.
28:21The poster, the bookcase, everything belongs to her, and nothing of what she had has changed
28:31in any way. She was an extremely happy girl, very warm. She loved her family and her home.
28:52So much, my friend. We were very close.
28:55Liliana's short life ended in the hands of Navy torturers. While studying law,
29:06she had become involved in student politics. She was abducted and taken to the Navy Mechanics School.
29:16Her ordeal was recorded in the testimony of two fellow prisoners who knew Liliana.
29:21She was tortured in front of her husband. We also state that she had to remain in a very small cell
29:33with no ventilation, forced to sit on a chair facing the wall
29:41from 6 in the morning until 10 at night.
29:46We further state that she remained in that room for pregnant women
29:51where she often talked to us about her mother, to whom she wanted the baby given after he was born.
30:03At the time of the trial, even though I knew I would go through a dreadful time,
30:12I wanted to be present
30:14because I wanted to be at all times aware and informed about all that had happened to my daughter Liliana.
30:30Even though I positively knew that it would destroy me little by little,
30:39I knew it was the ultimate thing I could do for her.
30:43Even if I felt very badly, I had the need to be with her in her great pain,
30:56her great suffering, and after so many years waiting for her every day,
31:03dreaming about her every night,
31:09I couldn't let that moment slip by where I could know in depth perfectly well all they did to her
31:22and expecting today a concrete answer, hoping that there will be justice in this country.
31:33So I couldn't leave her. I had the absolute need to be present.
31:45I live to find the children. I'm not only looking for my grandson,
31:53but I'm also looking for the grandchildren of all grandmothers
31:58and the children of all the disappeared parents.
32:03Koki's grandson was last seen being taken away from Liliana by two naval petty officers.
32:10Such leads are vital to this organization, which is dedicated to finding these children
32:15and reuniting them with their families. Maria Isabel Di Mariani founded this group,
32:21the Abuelas or Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. With Estela de Carlotto, they mastermind
32:26the covert operations needed to deal with military families who pretend the children are their own.
32:33We used everything. Sometimes we have been called 007 detectives
32:40because we have conducted investigations with disguises.
32:44We have taken pictures with telephoto lenses.
32:49I can't tell you too much because we are still using those tactics.
32:53Some grandmothers got jobs cleaning houses,
33:00to observe how many children were there, or surveyed a house, pretending to live in the
33:06neighborhood. And even more now that we have a constitutional government, we check entire
33:12civil registries, days and days reading enormous books with birth certificates where we can check
33:19whether they are false or not. The Abuelas are still searching for more than 200 children.
33:29The majority are believed to have been abducted at birth, like Liliana's son,
33:33and either sold on the black market or given to childless military couples.
33:41Most of the 39 resolved cases are children who were taken during military raids.
33:47Maria Eugenia Gatica was kidnapped in 1977 when she was one and a half.
33:53Her family lost both their children. A month later, in a second military operation,
33:58her baby brother Felipe disappeared and was not seen again for eight years.
34:05Their father, an agricultural union organizer, came home from work one lunchtime expecting to
34:10pick up his daughter from his neighbors, the Abdalas.
34:15On March 16th, I arrived like every day and left my bicycle over here.
34:20I was about to go to the Abdalas' home because I'd left the kids there.
34:25At that point, the neighbor from behind signaled not to do it, not to go.
34:32So I went to the neighbor to see what he wanted.
34:35He was told that his daughter and the entire Abdala family had been taken away by the police,
34:41knowing he was the real target, he went into hiding.
34:44A month later, the police came again. This time, they got his wife and infant son.
34:49Later, she was released and the couple fled to Brazil.
34:53For seven years, the fate of their children was unknown.
34:58Today, the family is reunited. The Abuelas found Maria Eugenia
35:02living with a police chief's family under a false name.
35:05Felipe was in the care of an innocent woman who thought his parents were dead.
35:11She received a terrible blow upon being told the truth,
35:17which was that the boy was being looked for by his parents.
35:22Of course, the first reaction is the human one, to defend what one wants.
35:27But then she began to consider the fact that the parents' rights came first,
35:31and the rights of the child also.
35:35We always imagined the day we would find him.
35:38We always had faith that someday we'd find him,
35:40and we'd always imagined how that day would be.
35:45That fantasy was with us the entire time.
35:50Then the moment of the reunion was in the afternoon, on March 11.
35:58We were very tense, the family, the kids, and so was he, because already before we had arrived,
36:05he'd been informed about what was going to take place on that day.
36:09So then our reunion was rather simple, without any grand happening,
36:17simply a hug.
36:19I'm dad, she's mom, this is your brother and sister.
36:24The Gatica case is unusual, not only because both children were found,
36:28but also because the parents were alive to search for them.
36:32Virtually all the parents of the kidnapped children are presumed dead,
36:36and it is their grandparents who must find them.
36:43At a certain point we realized that it wasn't enough to locate the children,
36:48that we had to prove they were our grandchildren.
36:51And that is when we turned to science for help.
36:55We covered the world looking for an answer to be able to locate
37:00and to prove that the children were ours, even though the parents were absent.
37:05One morning a delegation from the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo were here in Washington,
37:11and they came to my office, and they had one question, and the question was,
37:16did I know if genetic testing could be applied to determine grand paternity?
37:23And I was aware that paternity testing could be undertaken genetically,
37:28but I was unsure about grand paternity testing.
37:32And the AAAS asked us if we would help out.
37:35First of all, we worked out the theory that was involved.
37:38The theory that was involved turned out to be quite straightforward,
37:41just as the grandmothers had suspected themselves.
37:44Extending paternity testing to grandparents, in fact,
37:47is a perfectly natural and rigorous procedure to undertake.
37:53The practical problems, though, seem to be a much greater impediment to the success of the project.
37:59Dr. Mary Claire King came to Argentina in 1984.
38:06She had doubts about finding a laboratory sophisticated enough to carry out this testing.
38:12The Abuelos had a suggestion.
38:13They suggested a public hospital near downtown Buenos Aires,
38:17and that I visit the immunology laboratory of this hospital.
38:22That first day, I was really in despair.
38:25This was a public hospital.
38:26The military had only been out of power for a few months.
38:29The place was dilapidated, falling apart.
38:31No restoration had begun.
38:33I went on in and came to a door marked immunology laboratory.
38:39It was like arriving at an oasis in the middle of a desert.
38:43It was modern.
38:44It was well equipped.
38:45It was well staffed.
38:47It's difficult to imagine how tricky it is to do this sort of testing in an environment
38:52in which currency is very limited,
38:55in which it's extremely difficult to get all the little bits and pieces
38:59that you need to do every test.
39:01Grand paternity testing begins with a blood sample from the grandparents
39:06and the possible grandchild.
39:08Each sample is analyzed to determine a variety of gene types.
39:13Everyone inherits these gene types from their parents and grandparents.
39:18The most important genetic comparisons can be made using highly specific proteins
39:23found on white blood cells.
39:25They are called HLA types.
39:28These are the proteins responsible for rejecting foreign tissue in organ transplants.
39:34Using these HLA types, an organ donor can be tissue matched with a recipient.
39:39Because many combinations of different protein markers exist,
39:43they can also be used to determine whether one person is related to another.
39:48There are four genes responsible for making these key proteins,
39:52and they sit closely together on the same chromosome.
39:55They are named A, C, B, and DR.
40:01Everyone inherits one copy of each gene from their mother and one from their father.
40:07When each pair of genes is typed, they are assigned a pair of numbers
40:11according to which forms of the gene the person has.
40:14At this stage, the maternal and paternal gene types cannot be distinguished.
40:19From person to person, there is a tremendous variety within these four genes.
40:24Thousands of combinations are possible,
40:26although some combinations are much rarer than others.
40:30These differences are important because they must calculate the probability
40:34that the child inherited the shared set of genes from the grandparents
40:38rather than by chance from the population.
40:42Dr. Mary Claire King helped the Durand Hospital team
40:45to develop this index of grand paternity.
40:48For each case, Dr. DiLeonardo, the chief of the lab,
40:52presents this evidence to the court.
40:54After that, it's up to the judges to decide.
40:57This is often the culmination of years of hard work searching for the child.
41:08One of the most remarkable stories is that of Señora Artez Compañi.
41:13Her daughter, Graciela, was Argentinian but lived in Bolivia most of her life.
41:19She gave birth to Carla in Peru in June 1975.
41:24A year later, back in Bolivia, Carla and her parents were abducted.
41:30Another detainee told of Graciela's plight.
41:40She tells, she narrates in a manner that is very painful to me.
41:45It's like a permanent image that often keeps me awake.
41:54But when she, this lady, gets in the cell where my daughter had been,
42:00she finds out that on all the walls,
42:02the name of Carlita had been written with my daughter's blood.
42:06I think that in those moments of despair,
42:09my daughter wanted to confirm and affirm her daughter's name.
42:14Since she had been torn from her arms.
42:17While this was happening to my daughter,
42:20Carlita was going through her own ordeal at the orphanage.
42:24They beat up the children a lot.
42:26She was a girl who lived in fear.
42:30At that time, she was registered under the name of
42:39That is a conventional name.
42:41The initials are N.
42:44That in Latin America means with no name.
42:48The Bolivian police transported Graciela to Argentina.
42:52She was never seen again.
42:56The grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo thought it was possible
42:59that Carla might have been brought to Argentina too.
43:02They published her photograph in newspapers,
43:04but it seemed a hopeless case.
43:07The response to the appeal was completely unexpected.
43:10In this case, several families spoke up immediately,
43:17and people even came here.
43:19Others gave information anonymously over the phone,
43:22indicating that this little girl whose photo we had published
43:25was in the hands of a criminal called Rufo,
43:29and that the child went by the name of Gina Rufo
43:31and was registered as his daughter.
43:34The man claiming to be Carla's father was Eduardo Alfredo Rufo,
43:38a member of a right-wing death squad.
43:40This photograph shows Carla with Amanda Rufo, his wife,
43:44and Anibal Gordón, the chief of the group.
43:47The abuelas were dealing with extremely dangerous people.
43:52We got a substantial amount of information together,
43:54and we added to the file until we were almost certain
43:57that we were dealing here with Carla.
44:00At this point, we called her grandmother Sacha in Spain
44:03and gave her the news that perhaps
44:04we had found her granddaughter.
44:07That call really revived me.
44:10Brought me back to life.
44:13Sacha immediately came to Buenos Aires
44:16to continue the investigation.
44:18It was the beginning of a frustrating and perilous search.
44:24This is Carlita's original birth certificate
44:28that indicates she was born in the Republic of Peru
44:31on June 28, 1975.
44:35And here we have the false certificate
44:38written by Eduardo Alfredo Rufo,
44:42where it is indicated that Carla's birth took place
44:44with a two-day difference on June 26, 1975.
44:51Later, Sacha obtained further proof
44:53that Amanda Rufo could not be the mother of the child
44:56she called Gina Rufo.
44:58When we got the clinical history,
45:00we could see that this woman, Armanda Codero Rufo,
45:05had had her uterus almost completely removed.
45:08As a result, she couldn't bear children.
45:11This operation took place in 1973,
45:15so she couldn't very well have given birth
45:17to my granddaughter in 1975.
45:20Sacha asked Dr. Clyde Snow to help provide further evidence.
45:24She sent him Carla's pre-kidnapping photograph
45:27to compare with ones the abuelas recovered from schools.
45:30This child has very long and curled
45:34and distinct eyebrows here.
45:38Which we also see in this later photograph.
45:43There's a very wide interocular distance,
45:47the distance between the eyes,
45:48and allowing for growth changes.
45:51We also see that in the later photographs.
45:56And then, most importantly,
45:58there's a little asymmetry in the form of the lips here.
46:04Slightly higher on the right,
46:06slightly lower on the left.
46:08Looking at traits such as these and others we see here,
46:13we can at least say that these later photographs
46:17are consistent with this child being the same
46:23as this photograph of this earlier child here.
46:28As the Rufos became aware of the abuelas' investigations,
46:32they started to take evasive action,
46:34moving Carla from one place to another.
46:38They even developed a secret code
46:40for telephone conversations
46:42to keep her whereabouts unknown.
46:49Sasha persuaded the police to tap eight phones
46:52connected with the Rufo family.
46:55Every night, she read and re-read
46:57the transcripts of their conversations,
47:00trying to work out where Carla was.
47:02Eventually, with the help of a computer expert,
47:05she broke the code.
47:06As a result, the police carried out several raids,
47:09and Carla was found.
47:11But legally, her real identity
47:13had still to be proved by genetic testing.
47:16Her family tree had to be reconstructed.
47:20She inherits one copy of each gene type
47:22from the maternal side
47:24and one gene type from the paternal side.
47:27Because Carla's parents are missing,
47:29presumed dead,
47:31her gene types must be matched against her grandparents.
47:34Carla's paternal grandfather was also dead,
47:37but they were able to track down her uncle
47:39and type him.
47:42The A and B HLA gene types
47:44would prove particularly important in this case.
47:48Carla's uncle inherited gene types
47:50called A24 and B57 from his mother.
47:55And it was these gene types
47:57that Carla inherited from her paternal side.
48:01This is a relatively common combination.
48:04But her other set was far from common.
48:07She shared with Sasha, her grandmother,
48:09an extremely rare A-B combination,
48:12A26-B57.
48:16It's only seen in one in 10,000 of the population.
48:21The genetics work in the DiLeonardo lab
48:25finally quenched the case.
48:27With that proof,
48:29there was no question at all
48:31that Carla Graciela was exactly the child
48:33that Sasha said she was.
48:35The evidence was presented to the court
48:37and the judge accepted it.
48:41Carla now lives with her grandmother in Buenos Aires.
48:45They have received death threats,
48:47presumably from Rufo's associates.
48:49So everywhere they go,
48:50they are escorted by two heavily armed bodyguards
48:54in a police Ford Falcon.
49:01Every case the abuelas investigate is different.
49:18When a child has been adopted in good faith,
49:20it poses a terrible dilemma
49:21for the real relatives of the child.
49:27There are many circumstances
49:28under which the child may have a family.
49:31With only an uncle and poor health,
49:34or a very elderly grandfather,
49:38or grandparents who, for reasons of fragile health,
49:42decide to leave the youngster where he is
49:45because they have found he is indeed in good hands,
49:48that he is happy,
49:49and that this is the best solution.
49:52We view this as a true test of love.
49:57Such cases are rare.
49:59The experience of the abuelas so far
50:01is that most of the missing children
50:02are living with people who were linked
50:04with the former military regime.
50:08The attitude of the abuelas toward cases like this
50:11is that kidnapping is a crime.
50:14One of them said to me,
50:17in California,
50:18would you leave a child in the hands of kidnappers
50:21if you hadn't discovered the kidnapping
50:23for seven or eight years?
50:24To me as well,
50:27there's another point that needs to be considered,
50:29and that is that in this country,
50:32over the next 10, 20 years,
50:33these children are not going to grow up
50:35in carefree innocence.
50:37This crime against children as a group
50:40is very well known here.
50:42And if a child learns, as a young adult,
50:45that they've been living all this time
50:47with people who were involved indirectly,
50:49or in some cases, directly,
50:51in the murders of their parents,
50:52in the murders of their parents,
50:55and furthermore, that they had grandparents
50:58who knew that had happened
50:59and didn't look for them,
51:02to the minds of the abuelas,
51:04that will be far more traumatic for that child
51:06than learning the truth.
51:08One by one, all the grandparents and families
51:11of the missing children are being gene-typed.
51:14An official of the court is always present
51:16to enable the results of the blood test
51:18to be used as evidence.
51:20With the backing of President AlfonsÃn,
51:22a national genetic data bank
51:24is being established at the Durand Hospital.
51:26It will enable grand paternity testing
51:28to be done even after the grandparents have died.
51:32Nearly a thousand samples will be stored,
51:35frozen messages to grandchildren
51:37they may never meet.
51:41With this data bank,
51:43it will be possible,
51:44any time in the future,
51:45for an adolescent or a young adult
51:48to be typed themselves
51:49and to be put in contact
51:51with the relatives who've been looking for them
51:53all these years.
51:54Because, you see, when the children were kidnapped
51:57or when they were taken from their mothers
51:58and their mothers murdered,
52:00many things could be done to them.
52:02They could be taken to another city,
52:04they could be taken to another country,
52:07their education could be changed,
52:08even their hair color could be changed sometimes.
52:11But one thing that could never be changed
52:13was their genes.
52:22In Argentina,
52:28science not only has helped trace missing children,
52:31but also has helped bring those responsible
52:33for the murder of their parents to justice.
52:36These techniques can be used anywhere in the world
52:39to help solve crimes against humanity.
52:43Argentina is taking a very courageous step here
52:49in investigating these cases.
52:52Most cases of human rights abuses
52:55or instances of human rights abuses
52:57that have occurred in many other countries
53:01have not been investigated
53:03and gone through the normal process of justice
53:12at the instigation of the people themselves.
53:15The trial of the Junta leaders made history.
53:18Unlike the trials in Nuremberg,
53:20where the victors sat in judgment over the vanquished,
53:24here was a government judged by its own people,
53:26according to its own laws.
53:29709 cases were heard
53:31against the nine ruling military commanders.
53:34The climax of the trial
53:36was the court prosecutor's final words.
54:14Today, the question is,
54:37how far down the ranks
54:39the responsibility for these crimes should extend.
54:42Hanging from each balloon
54:43are the names of those they believe gave the orders
54:46and those who carried them out.
54:49To prevent it happening again,
54:51the people of Argentina want all the guilty brought to justice.
55:42For a transcript of this program,
56:04send $4 to NOVA, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
56:10Please be sure to include the show title.
56:14To purchase film or video copies of this program for educational use,
56:17call toll-free 1-800-621-2131.
56:21In Illinois or Alaska, call COLLECT, 312-940-1260.
56:28This program was produced by WGBH Boston,
56:31which is solely responsible for its content.
56:34Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station
56:40and other public television stations nationwide.
56:44And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace,
56:48electronics, automotive products, and engineered materials.
56:56And the Johnson & Johnson family of companies,
56:58supplying health care products worldwide.
57:04Next on NOVA, Voyager 2 lifted off in 1977,
57:16destined for an unprecedented encounter with the planet Uranus.
57:20Sometime in its ancient past,
57:21this mysterious planet was tilted by unknown forces
57:25so that Uranus spins sideways to the sun.
57:28Join us as the Voyager mission uncovers the mysteries of Uranus,
57:31the planet that got knocked on its side.
57:34That's next time on NOVA.