Disappearance of Tehuel de la Torre

Tehuel de la Torre, born 26 March 1999, was an Argentine trans man living in San Vicente, Buenos Aires, with his mother, partner, her son, and his brother. He had begun his gender transition a few months before he disappeared. On 11 March 2021, he left home to travel to Alejandro Korn to meet Luis Alberto Ramos, a 37-year-old man he had met through Workers' Socialist Movement rallies, who had offered him work as a waiter at a birthday party. He arrived earlier than the scheduled 19:00 interview. The last signal from his mobile phone was recorded at 00:24 on 12 March from Ramos's address. His family reported him missing on 13 March, after his girlfriend, Michelle, initially had difficulty filing a report at the San Vicente police station.

Police geolocated De la Torre's phone at Ramos's home, and a raid on 16 March recovered a destroyed phone and clothing belonging to him, along with blood samples. Ramos was arrested on 23 March after shaving his head and deleting his phone's contents; he declined to make a statement. A friend of Ramos, Oscar Alfredo Montes, was detained on 27 March and initially charged with concealment and false testimony. A photograph recovered from Montes's phone showed De la Torre with both men on the day of his disappearance. Searches for De la Torre's body were conducted through 2021 and 2022 at lagoons, waste-management properties, and other sites, without locating his remains. A bloodstain matching De la Torre was found in Ramos's home in September 2021, and in November 2021 prosecutors changed the charge against both men to aggravated homicide motivated by hatred of gender identity.

The case was committed to oral trial in March 2022 on charges of homicide aggravated by hatred of gender identity. In 2023, the family campaigned to move the trial date forward, and it was rescheduled to July 2024. In mid-2024, the court split the proceedings into two separate trials after Montes's new defence requested a jury trial rather than a bench trial. Ramos stood trial alone before the Oral Criminal Court No. 2 of La Plata from 15 to 26 July 2024. Witnesses, including De la Torre's mother, girlfriend, sister, forensic experts, and psychologists, testified over multiple hearings; forensic genetics testimony confirmed a blood stain in Ramos's home matched De la Torre with 99.9% certainty. Both the prosecution and the family's legal representation sought a life sentence, while Ramos's defence sought acquittal, citing lack of definitive evidence and raising alternative theories, including that De la Torre might still be alive.

On 30 August 2024, the court found Ramos guilty as co-perpetrator of homicide aggravated by hatred of gender identity and of causing the disappearance of De la Torre's body, sentencing him to life imprisonment. Montes's separate jury trial had not been scheduled as of the reporting period covered. De la Torre's body has not been found. The case became a focal point for Argentina's LGBT and trans-rights movements, prompting marches, a reward fund, and sustained activist and governmental attention.