east of Asuncion

On one of my many blogging forays into Paraguay, a story about a Belgian couple murdered in May.

Belgian Couple Murdered in Paraguay

ASUNCION – A Belgian couple was shot to death at their farm in Piribebuy, located 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Asuncion, when they resisted a robbery attempt by four men, Paraguayan police said on Thursday.

Jacques Pierre F.G. Graulle and his wife, Thoelen Marcelle Roberte Henriette, who owned the Don Juan farm, were killed Wednesday night.

The farm is located on one of the roads that leads to Piribebuy, a town in Central province.

A foreign citizen, who was not identified by police, told investigators she was dining with the couple when four armed men wearing ski masks entered the farmhouse.

This week, another similar story:

German Couple Murdered in Paraguay

ASUNCION – A German couple was killed and their bodies thrown into a well at the ranch house they lived at in Ypacarai, a town located 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Asuncion, Paraguayan police said.

The bodies of Eckhard Kurt Otto Aparofsky, 69, and his wife, Meike Wendsel, 53, were found Monday by police at their luxurious country house in Cordillera province.

The steel cover over the well had been secured with a padlock, police said, adding that the cause of death has not been determined.

A woman who worked for the couple, Liz Gauto, and a friend of the murder victims, Klaus Goetsh, called police. Gauto went to the house Monday and found no sign of the couple, who she had not seen since Friday.

Goetsh told officers he called authorities after numerous calls to the couple went unanswered over the weekend.

Investigators found a safe inside the house open and empty, but they said it was impossible to know what had been stolen from the house.

No evidence has been found indicating who may have carried out the killings, police said.

...Ypacarai and other towns in Cordillera, such as San Bernardino, Altos, Atyra, Caacupe and Loma Grande, are home to large numbers of European immigrants who moved to the area because of its natural beauty, especially the mountains and rivers.

natural beauty of San Bernadino, Paraguay

(imageshack)

More information:

Ypacaraí (Gilberto Baez, our regional language). The victims were identified as Eckhard Aparofsky Kurt Otto (69) and their partners Meike Wenzel (40). The Germans were found in the well of the house where they lived. Eckhard Aparofsky Kurt Otto had two bullet wounds in the head and his wife, one in the same area. Sources from the police station Ypacaraí 5th noted that an employee who works for the Germans, identified as Liz Gauto Veron Carolina (24), was presented at 10:00 at the police headquarters to report the disappearance of their employers.

The officers went to the house, located on Avenida El Triunfo about El Salvador, and in identifying the disappearance of the couple requested the presence of the pair of Criminalistics Central Police to raise some evidence.  The soldiers carefully inspected the property, which is completely walled, until they decided to revise the artesian well is in the yard of the property. As they approached the well they saw the bodies of the disappeared, in the background. Following the discovery, the agents requested the presence of volunteer firefighters to bring out Ypacaraí bodies.

The local residents told police they failed to realize the moment that materialized the murder of Europeans because the place has very high walls.

The employee Liz Carolina Gauto turn Veron said working at home from Monday to Friday from 7:00 to 12:00, and arrive yesterday at the place did not notice the fact. As the two-story house has started work on the ground floor.

The Germans have no relatives in Paraguay, although friends. One, whose other data are unknown, often come to visit on Sundays, but that day never came.  However, the friend came after the morning and began his testimony from the investigation.  The attorney Humberto Houdin did not comment on whether violence is a chest that the Germans had in their room. It is believed that the crime was for the purpose of robbery.

Similar cases

March 3, 2010: Jacques Pierre Frederic Grauls (66) and his wife Marcelle Henriette Roberte Thoelen (78), both Belgian nationals, were killed in a shootout with a gang that attacked his fifth in the company of Piribebuy Tejuguy. One of the thugs, Eliseo da Silva Gimenez (36), also fell downcast.

April 11, 2010: The German Rafael Platz (35), who suffers from mental disorders, and beheaded with a knife to her parents and Marion Manfred Platz, both also Germans in the company of Piribebuy Ruguá Yakarey.

The place has very high walls. Were the bodies in the well or not? Is the wife 53 or 40? Note the beheading in an earlier murder. German targets. Very strange.

A neighbor of Europeans, identified as Estanislao Adorno, hinted that Aparofsky was engaged in vehicle sales.  "I do not know if they engaged in real estate work, we think it engaged in vehicle sales, because each shot changed much. We knew they were in selling vehicles, "said Adorno.

At the time of discovery, the officers found two Mercedes-Benz trucks in the residence.

Adorno also reported that the couple frequently received foreign visitors in the house, which has very high walls. He added that he never heard gun shots.  The bodies of the Germans were found in the well of the house.

Some more information:

Ypacaraí: After the murder of Kurt Eckhard Otto Aparofsky and Meike Wenzel, the German couple from Ypacaraí found in a well, is now also the environment of the deceased investigated. Police said the officers are after a pair of friends of the victims, all with the intent to expose investigations concerning the movement of the murdered man. "We are behind one of its German partner, and her need to know with whom he did business," said the detective. The clarification is a little complicated, because the German businessman who was engaged in the sale of land to European residents, a very selective with whom he negotiated the segment was over land.  But there is a presumption to the police that a person who has been betrayed by the Germans took revenge himself, said the official. On the other now a member of the family of the couple to Paraguay will come to the event to observe. The daughters of German Eckhard gave the Attorney Claudia Böhmer the authority to take care of the funeral. (Última Hora) 

NOTE: Eckhard Kurt Otto Aparofsky and Meike Wenzel acted in Paraguay with real estate. We do not share the view of the Paraguayan prosecutor Eckhard Kurt Otto Aparofsky his own countrymen in Paraguay has cheated in real estate transactions. On the contrary, Eckhard Kurt Otto Aparofsky was a decent restaurant owner retired from Germany, it is also a presumption that the criminal real estate agents and immigration workers in Paraguay Franz Kramberger (Austrians with his "mafia" behind this murder lies)! As a hired killer from Argentina or / Fast Cheap and Brazil is found and quickly disappeared back across the border. Then the Paraguayan authorities are in the dark, and the case is never solved! The course strengthens the criminal gang in and around Franz Kramberger!  Why Franz Kramberger? Franz Kramberger a refugee about 20 years ago of criminal Austrians (former Fiend, pimps, Puffbetreiber, end gap, fences, traffickers from the Liesingtal / District Leoben, Styria)...


...Beware of the moment before the area Ypacaraí / San Bernadino in Paraguay - here are some criminal European immigrants settled!

San Bernadino is just east of the capital, Asuncion

The murders happened just east of Asuncion. A highway connects Asuncion to the Tri-Border Area, notorious hub of organized criminals from around the world.

See: the point B list.

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July 21, 2009: Canadian writer Crad Kilodney writes about Filadelfia, Paraguay. Click map to enlarge -- it's in northwest Paraguay. Worth Reading In Full.

I was having lunch with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi at Opera Plaza Sushi in San Francisco about six months ago, and she said to me, “Every so often, I need to get away from it all.  I want to go where nobody knows me, where I can relax and have a change of scenery.  So I go to Filadelfia, Paraguay.  It’s a wonderful place!  You should go.”  So I did.

    Filadelfia is still very much off the beaten track.  Almost all Paraguay tourism is concentrated in the capital, Asuncion, and I certainly won’t knock it.  It’s a great place to buy luxury goods cheap (because they are smuggled in), and the hookers are hot.  But Asuncion is not the exotic Paraguay.  To see that, you have to go to Filadelfia.

    There’s only one bus a day between Asuncion and Filadelfia.  It’s an all-day trip, departing in the morning and arriving in the evening, so pack your lunch.  And keep your eyes peeled for celebs in disguise, because more of them are following Nancy Pelosi’s example.

...The Westin Filadelfia is not a bad place.  Quite cheap — only $35 a night.  There’s no TV or air-conditioning, but there are flush toilets, and the maid service is diligent.  (For a few dollars, the maid will tuck you in at night, if you get my meaning.)  The furniture is of high quality.  It’s made locally by the large German Mennonite community that dominates life in Filadelfia.

...Werner’s is cheerfully decorated with Nazi war memorabilia, including a half-size replica of a Stuka dive bomber.  This is where the old Germans gather every night to sing those good old patriotic songs of the Third Reich — although they all insist they were never members of the Nazi party or involved in any atrocities.

Etc. Obviously a vacation wonderland.

As I mentioned earlier, celebrities have occasionally been seen in Filadelfia.  They pretend to be ordinary tourists and usually go unrecognized since there’s no TV.  Jack Black, Teri Hatcher, Cindy Crawford, Bono, Peter Tork, and Pete Wentz have all been spotted in the past year, according to Michael Czarcinski.  But they all register under false names, so there’s no proof on paper.

So what do they do there in Filadelfia? Good question. Evidently they fly all the way down there to hang out with the local Germans and drink beer, eat schnitzel, and ride horses. Rent a gun and go hunting. Sure thing. The hotel owner would like to run a concentration camp theme park where people could be tied up in their underwear and whipped, gently of course, but the Mennonites won't go for it.

The Westin has some mysterious permanent residents, who occupy the top floor.  I was told they were ex-Mennonites who left the community and fell in with the old Krauts.  They have laptops and wireless Internet in their rooms, and they do things with money, but they won’t say exactly what or for whom.  So I suspect there is some sort of deep, dark secret in Filadelfia the world doesn’t know about.

Hahaha, no way.

Reminds me of Goa. Read about organized crime in Goa.

October 2006: source

Think you had a good weekend? Think again. Brad, Angelina and the kids, currently in Pune, India, hopped a private charter flight to Goa, India for a little R&R. Reports are rolling in that the couple needed a break from the 'razzi and left Pune on Friday night around 9pm on a small jet.
Goa's fame and beauty have attracted multiple old-school Hollywood types, as well as India's wealthiest families (think private beach houses, etc.) The Pitt's apparently checked into a guesthouse in Ashvem Beach in North Goa about 50 miles away from the Dabolim international airport there. Is Goa the Hamptons of India? Hm....The word is that North Goa is much more vibrant that South Goa, so we think it'd be like East Hampton vs. South Hampton perhaps. Shhh! Don't let Lizzie Grubman find out.

I'll see you in Filadelfia mmmm... (source)

Also a fan of Filadelfia...?

"Who wants to pray to the devil with me?"

(The Vigilant Citizen: The Occult Mega-Ritual)

another fan of Filadelfia...?

The Monkees in 1968 (left to right): Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones

(source)

Are you still here? For pete's sake go book your flight already. It's FILADELFIA, Paraguay.

The Mennonites of Paraguay settled the Filadelfia area.

Mennonite settlers came to Paraguay from Germany, Canada, Russia and other countries for a number of reasons: religious freedom, the chance to practice their beliefs without hindrance, the quest for land. Although German immigrants had settled in Paraguay before the turn of the 20th century, it wasn't until the 1920's and 30s that many, many more arrived. Many of the immigrants from Russia were fleeing from the ravages of the Bolshevik Revolution and the later Stalin repressions. They traveled to Germany and to other countries, and eventually joined the emigration to Paraguay.

...Three main waves of immigration arrived:

• a Canadian group from Manitoba founded the the Menno colony in 1926-1927
• a group from the Ukraine and the area of the Amour river came via China and created the Fernheim colony in 1930
• a group of Russian refugees founded the Neuland colony in 1947

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What is it with Paraguay? The indigenous people of Paraguay are Guarani Indians. They look like this:

Guarani child

In the 1500s the Jesuits went to Paraguay and converted the Guarani Indians. Paraguay is now a predominantly Catholic country.

The Mormons are in Paraguay.

Chabad is in Paraguay.

Organized crime is in Paraguay.

Lots of human trafficking takes place in Paraguay.

Nancy Pelosi and other famous people reportedly like to get away to Paraguay for R&R.

It's quite a place. White people really seem attracted to it for some reason.

Northeast of Asuncion lies Nueva Germania, a German colony founded in 1888.

"Nueva Germania—In a grubby plastic chair in front of his family’s shack, a shirtless Wilhelm Fischer swats blackflies from his face between sips of yerba maté tea."

Fischer’s forebears came to Paraguay more than a century ago at the cajoling of Elisabeth Nietzsche, the sister of the philosopher, and her husband, Bernhard Förster. Late-nineteenth-century Europe had grown too fond of Jews for the Försters’ extreme anti-Semitic tastes, so they decided to found a new, pure Aryan society. In 1887, the couple lured fourteen like- minded families across the Atlantic and up the Aguaray River, into territory inhabited by a few Indians and a truly astonishing variety of biting insects. Though wholly ignorant of South America, Förster had decided this was where they would preserve their Kultur: Paraguay had the soil, and German farmers would provide the blood.

For more detail on Nueva Germania, read Rebuilding a pure Aryan home in the Paraguayan jungle, SFGate, March 13, 2005.

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What is luring all these white people to Paraguay? Is it really the natural beauty? Because a lot of places have natural beauty, so maybe there's something else about Paraguay.

Maybe it's something else about the environment and the people.... that there is some sort of freedom and privacy in Paraguay that attracts certain people there. Privacy. I get the impression that anything goes, and you won't get turned in, in Paraguay.



Lots of white people shopping, clubbing, wearing little swim suits....(anybody speak German?)

The dictator Stroessner had a villa in San Bernadino.

Paraguay has a long history of anything goes for the elites.




1989... the end of Stroessner's reign.... baby trafficking in South America was already huge.

Chaim and Yael Ninyo were reluctant tourists: Asuncion, Paraguay was not the sort of place where the average working-class couple from Israel would have chosen to take a vacation. The summer heat was unbearable, the beggars relentless and the streets still bristled with the soldiers of the hostile dictator Alfredo Stroessner. But the Ninyos had more on their agenda than an exotic time in a foreign country. Chaim and Yael were waiting to adopt a baby.

...The Ninyos were desperate. They packed their clothes to conceal $20,000 in cash and flew to Paraguay to meet a stranger in Da Vinci's coffee shop. In broken English they placed their order for a fair-skinned baby boy: the man agreed to deliver in two weeks. The Ninyos returned to their room and sweated out the days nervously waiting for the miracle, unaware that they had begun dealing with one of the biggest baby-trafficking operations in South America.

...Superficially it appears an equation of supply and demand: the Third World has the adoptable children while the West has the demand. But the demand from the vast majority of childless couples is for children that look like them and are young enough to learn a new language and culture. The lucrative illegal trade in white babies. Carlos Pereira - a prominent lawyer in the State of Santa Catarina - is currently pending trial for operating a black-market adoption agency. There are large numbers of abandoned children in Santa Catarina, But unlike other regions of Brazil, many of the children are fair - the result of an influx of Western European settlers in the first half of this century. Pereira arranged his first adoption for an Israeli woman in 1982. Four years later his law practice had taken a back seat to his baby-ranch - a thriving business with a staff of nurses and baby-finders, a stable of pregnant teenagers, and an annual income of more than quarter of a million dollars.

Pereira's staff regularly visited poor neighborhoods, identifying unwanted pregnancies and offering healthcare, food and the equivalent of about $75 in exchange for a newborn baby. To the impoverished and pregnant young women of the slums it was irresistible; by 1986 Pereira was delivering fresh babies with Brazilian passports to grateful customers from Israel, West Germany, the UK and the US. He had arranged 150 adoptions over two years and the business was taking off.

For a few thousand dollars, prospective parents could visit Pereira's plush baby-ranch. Here they rented comfortable rooms, lounged by the swimming pool and chose from a number of available infants. Unlike Brazilian adoption agencies which take two years, the baby-ranch at Itajai filled its orders within two weeks, Carlos Pereira received nothing but praise from his foreign clientele, but unfortunately for him, not all of the young mothers in his stable were as pleased.

In Itajai Brazilian Federal Police Chief Alcioni di Santana received complaints from thirty mothers that Pereira had deceived them into giving up their babies. Santana raided the ranch, seized twenty infants and detained twenty-two foreign couples. His evidence indicated that Pereira was preparing to increase his prices from $5,000 per baby to $8,000 - doubling his net profit to $6,000 for each transaction and turning the baby-ranch into a million-dollar business. The customers, it seemed, would be only too happy to pay. Santana said he had sympathy for the childless couples: 'I felt there was a great deal of good faith on their part,' said the chief, 'Their desire is just to have a child, while Carlos Pereira's desire is to profit. Profiteering is the crime, not having the child,'

Pereira claims the evidence of the complaining mothers is fabricated, As to the morality of buying and selling babies for profit, his conscience is clear: 'I feel very proud,' he says. 'If I could, I would send a million (babies out of Brazil). I would like to send all of the babies that need care, that need food, that need a mother and a father.' Meanwhile at least three less scrupulous baby-selling rings operate elsewhere in the State. Among these are people who pose as nurses to steal infants from hospital maternity wards: in Rio de Janeiro, 150 such thefts were reported in one month, Newborn babies are also smuggled into Paraguay and sold - complete with false Brazilian passports - for up to $20,000 each, The police raid shut down Carlos Pereira's operation but the black market in babies continues. Adoption officials in North America estimate that five per cent of healthy foreign infants adopted come through the black market.

As for Pereira - he was forced to start turning down a growing number of referrals from desperate childless couples. Among these were Chaim and Yael Ninyo's. Unable to contact Pereira, the Ninyos were eventually referred to a less-reputable baby dealer in Asunción, Paraguay.

Saving tiny lives
After countless coffees and several hot sleepless nights, the Ninyos were informed that their order had arrived. They were taken to meet their precious cargo. But there had been a serious mistake. The contact delivered not one baby boy - but a pair of sickly month-old twins - a boy and a girl. The contact said they had been abandoned at birth in Brazil and driven overland to be smuggled into Paraguay. Chaim Ninyo was stunned. 'The boy was shaking all the time and did not know how to drink milk. Every time he was hungry, he would open his mouth like a small bird.'

The Ninyos were offered the twins at a discount black-market price of $20,000 for both. Chaim was now bothered about the illegality of the transaction. But he was even more worried about the babies - one of whom appeared near death. 'We know it was not legal. We know it,' Ninyo recalls, struggling to find the right words in English. 'Of course it bothered me (because) if it was legal, maybe they take better care of them, and we not find them like we found them.'

The experience quickened the bond they felt for the children. They took the twins along with two freshly-minted Brazilian passports and left on the next available flight. With their daughter waiting at home in Israel, the Ninyos were now a family of five, All questions about the legality of what they had done were rationalized by Chaim and Yael's strong belief that they had saved two tiny lives.

People are lucrative.

Mandioca

With the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation...

"Scientists have determined how to fortify the cassava plant, a staple root crop in many developing countries, with enough vitamins, minerals and protein to provide the poor and malnourished with a day's worth of nutrition in a single meal."