Murder of José Rafael Llenas Aybar

José Rafael Llenas Aybar was a 12-year-old boy from an affluent, well-connected Dominican family. His parents were José Rafael Llenas Menicucci and Ileana del Carmen Aybar Nadal, and he had distant family ties to Major League Baseball player Winston Llenas and to two Dominican heads of state, President Hipólito Mejía and Vice President Jacinto Peynado Garrigosa.

On the morning of May 3, 1996, Llenas Aybar asked his mother for permission to attend a motorcycle exhibition at a local supermarket with his cousin, Mario José Redondo Llenas, who lived across the street. His mother agreed, on condition he return by 5 p.m. Redondo Llenas later called to say he had dropped the boy off at a bowling center to meet friends. His mother, finding this out of character, went looking for him, found no motorcycle exhibition and no sign of her son at the bowling center, and enlisted relatives, including Redondo Llenas himself, in the search. On May 4, 1996, the body of a middle-to-upper-class child was found bound in duct tape with 34 stab wounds in the Arroyo Lebrón creek near the 24th kilometer of the Autopista Duarte in northwest Santo Domingo. The body was identified as José Rafael Llenas Aybar.

The investigation was hampered by contamination of the crime scene by uncontrolled crowds, an autopsy conducted after funerary preparation had already destroyed forensic evidence, the loss of the victim's and suspects' clothing while in police custody, and the disappearance of alleged audio recordings of Redondo Llenas's interrogation. Redondo Llenas alleged that the husband and son of the then Argentine ambassador to the Dominican Republic coerced him into the killing under threat to his sister's life, and that he had been subjected to prior abuse by members of the ambassador's family. The family denied the allegations, invoked diplomatic immunity, declined to cooperate with investigators, and left the country before the diplomatic posting ended; they were never prosecuted and did not return despite summons from Dominican authorities. Police concluded the crime was a kidnapping intended to obtain a roughly US$700,000 ransom, though no evidence of a ransom demand was presented, and speculation about a sexual motive was similarly unsupported by evidence.

In January 1997, Redondo Llenas and Juan Manuel Moliné Rodríguez were found guilty and sentenced to the maximum 30 years' imprisonment plus US$300,000 each in damages to the victim's family. On appeal in 1999, Moliné Rodríguez's sentence was reduced to 20 years as an accomplice. The trial was among the first widely televised in Dominican history and drew large audiences. Subsequent reporting by journalist and filmmaker Erwin Cott reported that the ambassador's husband had been a member of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, a far-right group linked to killings and disappearances during Argentina's Dirty War. Moliné Rodríguez sought parole in 2007 and 2009, both times unsuccessfully; Redondo Llenas sought parole in 2013, citing prison education and rehabilitation, and apologized to his aunt and uncle for the killing.