Case of the Captain's Mistress

At first it looked as if the woman's body fished out of the muddy waters of the River Plate would have to be tagged as another unsolved crime. With hair shorn, dental plates removed, fingertips destroyed by acid, all clothes removed, the corpse offered no clue to identity.

Then one morning Reporter Jacinto Toryho, 39, answered a telephone call at Buenos Aires' La Razoon.

"The man who killed the woman found in the river," said a feminine voice, "is an army captain who lives in Don Torcuato [a suburb north of Buenos Aires]."

The tipster gave an exact address, then hung up.

At Don Torcuato, Reporter Toryho found the address, an iron-roofed cottage, but it was deserted.

Neighbors said that a man named Domingo Massolo had lived there. He was said to be a captain in the veterinary corps, a quiet, aloof fellow of about 40, with a wife and three children. The reporter found the Massolos' former maid. The last morning she visited the house she had found a note on the door telling her she was no longer needed. She went in anyway, noticed blood spots on the carpet and on a mirror, then hastily left.

Back in Buenos Aires, army headquarters referred Toryho to an address in the city where Captain Massolo lived with his brother. The reporter and a few "friends kept the place under watch, trailed Massolo day after day. The captain finally figured out that he was being watched; one day he went to Federal Police Chief General Arturo Bertollo, broke down, and made a full confession.

For years, said Massolo, he had led a Jekyll & Hyde existence. His respectable life he lived with his brother in Buenos Aires. The other part he played in Don Torcuato with Matilde Romero, his mistress, mother of his three children and the confidante of his secret. One day, Massolo said, Matilde threatened to expose him. In a rage, he clubbed her to death, dumped her body into the river, placed the children with relatives.

Reporter Toryho had a sensational, exclusive story; La Razoon's circulation rose a fat 40,000. But there was one frustration. Lest the heavy-handed authorities be offended, La Razoon's editors had prudently deleted some details. Days after La Razoon broke the story, the fearless, independent La Prensa reported: "Domingo Massolo was not a veterinarian, as previously announced. He was an army chaplain . . ."

Domingo Massolo had so successfully carried out the public half of his double life, as army officer and Roman Catholic priest, that he had risen to be secretary of the army's Vicar General, was in that job when he surrendered himself.

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