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The lawyer screamed for help TEN TIMES before her husband, a 29-year-old police officer, strangled her to death in the dormitory of Ecuador’s police academy, before burying her body in a ditch and fleeing to Colombia.
- Lieutenant Germán Cáceres strangled his wife María Bernal in Ecuador
- The couple argued in the dormitory of the police school in Cáceres on September 11, 2022.
- Bernal’s body was found 10 days after the murder; Cáceres was arrested on December 30 at a bar where he worked in Palomino, Colombia.
A cellphone audio recording revealed the desperate cries of a lawyer for help during a fight with her husband’s policeman before he strangled her to death in his police academy bedroom and then buried her body in a ditch.
María Bernal, 34, used her cell phone to record the meeting with Lieutenant Germán Cáceres, 29, at a police school in Quito, Ecuador, in the early hours of September 11, 2022.
According to an excerpt from the recording obtained by the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo, the two-hour audio revealed that Bernal screamed for help ten times as Cáceres choked her before the recording went silent.
A lawyer for the family told the newspaper that the incident was sparked by an argument the couple had after Bernal arrived at the police academy and confronted Cáceres for allegedly being under the influence of alcohol and not taking care of his job as an instructor. at school.
María Bernal (left) was strangled to death by police lieutenant and husband of five years, Germán Cáceres, inside the dormitories of the police academy in Quito, Ecuador, on September 11, 2022. Last Wednesday, Bernal’s mother shared an audio with the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo that revealed how Bernal screamed for help 10 times before she was killed
An agent (right) from the Colombian Attorney General’s Office questions Germán Cáceres (left) moments after arresting him in the Caribbean coast city of Palomino, where the disgraced former police lieutenant was hiding and working as a waiter.
Ecuadorian police remove a blanket from the ditch where the body of María Bernal was buried by her husband, former police lieutenant Germán Cáceres
The confrontation escalated when Bernal discovered a bruise near her husband’s neck and shoulder area. Cáceres later admitted to having been involved in an affair with Josselyn Sánchez, a cadet at the academy, and said that he cheated on her during the five years they were married.
At one point, Bernal punched Cáceres and pushed him against a wall inside his bedroom. Cáceres responded by pushing her onto her bed and then strangled her.
After noticing that Bernal was no longer breathing, Cáceres took his body and hid it in the room.
He then transported the body to a mountainous area 10 minutes from the police academy, dug a ditch, and buried it. Authorities found Bernal’s body on September 21.
María Bernal (pictured) was strangled to death after confronting her husband, police officer Germán Cáceres, for drinking and not taking his job seriously as an instructor at a police academy in Quito, Ecuador. The 34-year-old was able to record the argument she had with Cáceres when she discovered that she had a bruise near the neck area of her shoulder and he responded by telling her that he had been cheating on her. She slapped him and pushed him against a wall of hers before he pushed her onto her bed in her bedroom and strangled her.
Germán Cáceres (right) was hiding in Palomino, a town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast where he also worked as a bartender.
Germán Cáceres (left) with his wife of five years, María Bernal
María Bernal (left) and Germán Cáceres (right) were married for five years
Cáceres fled to Palomino, a town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and on December 30 he was arrested in a bar where he worked as a bartender.
The disgraced policeman, who was fired from the police force in October, was extradited to Ecuador on January 3. He confessed to killing Bernal and said he received no help to bury her.
A policeman in Colombia adjusts the handcuffs of Germán Cáceres
Elizabeth Otavalo (right) cries over the coffin of her daughter, María Bernal, on September 22.
Access to the audio was made possible after Bernal’s 13-year-old son remembered his late mother’s phone password and shared it with his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Otavalo.
The appearance of the audio also prompted Sánchez’s release last Wednesday from a local jail, where she was being held in connection with Bernal’s disappearance and murder.
“This audio can free Joselyn Sánchez, but nothing of her conscience,” Otavalo told El Universo.