Shivangi Sinha
Between February and March of 1979, three women in the Monserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, passed away. At first, there did not seem to be anything unusual about the case, but as the police looked more closely, they found one common person who was known to all three and was also the last person seen with them. It was Yiya Murano. Detectives alleged that she had poisoned the three by mixing cyanide with their tea so that her debts would be forgiven. In the Netflix documentary ‘Yiya Murano: Death at Tea Time,’ the exact details of the case, about which so much has been written, are explored.
Yiya Murano Had Stolen IOUs From the Three Victims After They Passed Away
María de las Mercedes Bernardina Bolla Aponte, fondly called Yiya, was born on May 20, 1930, in Corrientes, Argentina. She came from a family with a long military background. Her father was a lieutenant colonel and her mother was a housewife in an average middle-class home. However, it has been said that Yiya always sought the finer things in life. In 1953, at the age of 23, she married lawyer Antonio Murano, and they began their life on Mexico Street in Buenos Aires. The couple soon welcomed their son, Martín Murano. However, things were not as idyllic as they seemed, as Yiya later admitted to having numerous affairs, claiming there were more than 200 men who lavished her with gifts and luxury items that she proudly flaunted in the neighborhood.
In her dealings with men, Yiya developed a sense of how finances worked and was able to gain some credibility within her circle of friends. She often acted as an informal investor, taking sums of money and promising to double or triple them in a short span of time. However, what she was actually running was a pyramid scheme, and by early 1979, it had begun to fall apart. There were not enough funds with her, and her creditors were asking for their money back with interest. On February 10, 1979, Nilda Gamba, who was Yiya’s neighbor in the Monserrat neighborhood, passed away. She had been unwell for some time, and Yiya was known to care for her and bring her tea.
On February 19, 1979, another of Yiya’s friends from the neighborhood, Leila Chicha Formisano de Ayala, passed away suddenly. Yiya had visited her apartment, but her death was initially ruled a heart attack and no foul play was suspected. Then, on March 24, 1979, Yiya’s cousin, Carmen “Mema” Zulema del Giorgio de Venturini, died after falling down the stairs in her building. Her death, too, was initially attributed to a heart attack, though the family was unconvinced. Mema’s daughter, Diana María Venturini, noticed that the IOUs Yiya had given her mother were missing. When she informed the police, they noted that Yiya had arrived at the scene shortly after they did.
Yiya Murano Was Acquitted Once Before Before Being Tried Again for Triple Homicide
Yiya Murano had expressed shock at what had happened to her friend and told the officers that she wanted to quickly go into the apartment to get a notebook. The request was unusual, but she was allowed in, and she walked out with an envelope and a small bottle. As she left, she herself remarked that it was her third friend to pass away in a short span of time. The family demanded that an autopsy be conducted, which revealed traces of cyanide, indicating poisoning. The police began looking closely at Yiya and soon started having doubts, as all three women had been seen with her shortly before their deaths, and she was in debt to each of them.
On April 27, 1979, Yiya was arrested from her apartment on suspicion of three homicides and was kept behind bars. In the meantime, the police decided to exhume the remains of the two other women associated with the case and reportedly found traces of cyanide in their bodies as well. Detectives theorized that Yiya had been arriving at their homes with petit fours and herbal tea, which she would offer them. They alleged that the tea was laced with small amounts of cyanide, which she would advise them to consume later. They also noted that she had an alibi at the time of their deaths, but believed that this delayed consumption worked in her favor and kept her outside immediate suspicion.
In 1982, Yiya Murano was acquitted of the charges, as the court deemed that the evidence against her was not strong enough. During her time in jail, she also underwent surgery to have one of her lungs removed. She was released and returned home to live with her husband and son, denying any involvement in the case and claiming she had been wrongfully held. However, the prosecution appealed the decision, leading to a retrial, and in 1985 Yiya was convicted of triple qualified homicide and fraud based on forensic and financial evidence. Due to sentence reductions, changes in Argentina’s penal code, and the time she had already spent in custody since her 1979 arrest, she was released in 1995 after serving 13 years.
Yiya Murano Passed Away All Alone in a Geriatric Home
Yiya Murano was 65 years old at the time of her release, and when she came out, she was not willing to live a private life. Her son, Martín Murano, had written a book in which he claimed that his mother had allegedly admitted the homicides to him and he even alleged that she had committed more killings. He had painted her as a cruel and absent parent who never cared for him. Yiya went on to give a series of interviews in which she denied everything her son had said and maintained that she was innocent. Her first husband, Antonio Murano, had passed away in 1985, and shortly after her arrest, she remarried under the alias Mercedes Bolla. In 1996, she also worked briefly as a fashion columnist for La Hoguera.
Yiya also made an appearance on Mirtha Legrand’s lunch show, where she humorously served the host petit fours while once again maintaining her innocence. She got married to Julio Banín, an elderly blind newspaper proofreader, whose family claimed that Yiya had allegedly poisoned him for financial gain. In the docuseries, several reporters and journalists from the time stated that Yiya would approach studios offering interviews and expected payment in return, and was reportedly unhappy when that was not provided. Towards the end of her life, she moved to a geriatric home in Belgrano, Buenos Aires, had no contact with her son, and reportedly developed Alzheimer’s disease. She passed away on April 26, 2014, at the age of 93.
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