The Many Deaths of Nora Dalmasso, a 2025 true crime documentary series available on Netflix, presents a mysterious murder in Argentina that remains unsolved. In November 2006, Nora Dalmasso was found murdered in an extremely brutal manner in her own home, located in the wealthy neighborhood of Villa Golf, in Río Cuarto, Argentina. While the manner of her death shocked her friends, family, and neighbors, they were soon horrified by the media attention the case would receive. The Many Deaths of Nora Dalmasso is a rather intriguing series, raising difficult questions about how society should treat the families of murder victims, especially when they are the prime suspects.
To her closest friends, Nora Dalmasso was a beautiful, kind, and charming woman who attracted attention wherever she went, both for her appearance and her good nature. Nora was always very lively, ever since childhood, and was very popular in the city's wealthy circles. Her parents belonged to the wealthy and influential Grassi and Dalmasso families, revered in Río Cuarto. Therefore, Nora also had a number of suitors in her youth, who were naturally attracted to her for both her beauty and her heritage. As her family owned numerous businesses throughout the city, Nora was often the center of conversation among her friends throughout her childhood, and she had learned to live with all the attention.
When she finally met Marcelo Macarrón and fell in love with him, it seemed like a match made in heaven. Nora and Marcelo not only came from similar economic backgrounds, but they both shared the same passion for achieving something meaningful in their lives and achieving success together. After being a popular young man thanks to his rugby skills, Marcelo studied medicine and became a prestigious doctor. Many still believe that Marcelo and Nora already had their lives figured out thanks to their family heritage, and that the beautiful house they built was a direct result of this generational wealth. But her closest friends, who appear in the docuseries, disagree with this statement, as they speak of how the couple worked hard and demonstrated enormous dedication and passion in building their lives.
After getting married, they settled in the Villa Golf neighborhood of Río Cuarto, in a house they painstakingly built from scratch. They also had two children: Facundo and Valentina, raised with love and affection. But Nora Dalmasso's seemingly happy life was just a facade, according to some of those close to her, and there was something unsettling and disturbing beneath the surface. One of her friends would later state that she had suggested to her that there were apparently very dark secrets behind her refined and well-kept life.
The reason this alleged statement had to be brought up again in the conversation was the shocking events of the night of November 26, 2006, which would forever mark the Dalmasso and Macarrón families. The family was scattered at the time due to very normal circumstances: Marcelo was away, participating in a golf tournament in Punta del Este, in neighboring Uruguay. Nora was alone in Río Cuarto, as she usually stayed behind to attend to her business and her own life.
The children were also away, as Facundo had gone partying in Córdoba with his friends, given that it was a Friday, and Valentina was in the United States as part of a school exchange program. Nora had gone out to dinner with her friends that night, after which she returned home and decided to call it a night. However, the police had to be called to the house shortly after, apparently after loud noises were heard from inside. "The Many Deaths of Nora Dalmasso" doesn't reveal how the police arrived at the house, but instead focuses on the media coverage of the incident, with the press receiving a tip and responding to the scene.
An absolutely horrifying scene was discovered inside the house: Nora Dalmasso's body was found on the bed in Valentina's bedroom, completely naked. The 51-year-old woman had been strangled with the belt of the robe she must have been wearing minutes before the murder. Although it initially appeared to be a botched burglary, there were no signs that an intruder had searched the house for money or valuables. Even the rings on Nora's hands were intact, which ruled out the possibility of a burglary in the initial investigation.
The initial investigation report was confusing in several respects, and the police were at a loss to understand what could have happened. While Nora had struggled to get her attacker off her, there was no evidence of forced entry, suggesting that she must have let the person in herself. The fact that she had had sex just before she was murdered, and with someone she must have let in herself, was used as gossip in some media outlets.
Added to this were some rumors circulating around the house after the murder was discovered, apparently from neighbors who had come to check on the situation. Among the women gathered, whose husbands, incidentally, were also on the same golf trip as Marcelo, some claimed that Nora was heading for such a disastrous end because of the sex scandals she was currently embroiled in.
The media needed no further incentive and began to develop their own theories about what happened, all of which aired during prime time and were published in major newspapers. Nora's personality was judged by panelists and so-called experts, proposing claims ranging from her promiscuity to her relationship with the swinger. Some claimed that the murder must have been an intimate session gone horribly wrong, as Nora might have had certain fantasies and obsessions for which she was being strangled.
It was also suggested that the lives of the rich and famous are often plagued by such scandals and unusual sexual and family practices. Obviously, there's no smoke without fire, and soon indications of Nora's intimacy with a friend of her husband emerged, further complicating the case. Her cell phone was recovered at the crime scene, and certain messages from a man named Guillermo Albarracín suggested they were having an affair, or at least had thought about having one. But Albarracín had an alibi, as she was at the golf tournament that night with Marcelo.
Many of Nora's neighbors claimed she had a habit of dating different men, and the silence her close friends maintained when contacted by the media further damaged her reputation. News channels exploited the situation by presenting it as if Nora's dangerous and promiscuous choices in her personal life had led to her murder, and the public enjoyed every second of the report, shaming the victim and her family in the worst possible way.
The media didn't stop there; they continued pursuing more scandalous and absurd theories, and they didn't spare the children either. Certain old photographs of Valentina and Marcelo were used to suggest that father and daughter might have been involved in an incestuous relationship (simply because that seems like something rich people do), and it was insinuated that Valentina had murdered her mother out of jealousy. Facundo had to deal with much more humiliation in comparison, as journalists unearthed information about his personal life as a law student and outed him before he was ready.
Facundo was secretly gay and hadn't told his parents about his sexuality because he knew they would be disappointed. In the docuseries, he admits that he was preparing to reveal his sexual orientation to his mother at the time of her murder. When the media broke the news about his sexual orientation, Marcelo had to learn the secret about his son from this source, causing a rift between father and son. But an even worse situation awaited Facundo, as his sexual orientation would soon be formally presented as a possible motive for his mother's murder.
DNA samples collected from Nora Dalmasso's body and from the crime scene were sent for analysis, and the results apparently revealed traces of macaroni blood on her body, suggesting that her father-in-law, Félix, her husband, Marcelo, or her son, Facundo, must have murdered her. Police soon found perfect alibis for Félix and Marcelo, as the former had been watching television with his wife all night and the latter was in Uruguay at the time, meaning Facundo was considered the prime suspect. It was suggested that Facundo must have had a fight with his mother after telling her about his sexuality, and then sexually assaulted and murdered her. Some news channels even claimed that Facundo might have been attracted to his mother's male lovers and murdered her out of jealousy.
Facundo remained the prime suspect in the case for many years, until 2012, about five years after Nora's murder, and continued to be hounded by the media throughout this time.
The Many Deaths of Nora Dalmasso presents one last update about the murder case at its very end, as the state attorney's office released a statement in December of 2024. The final conclusion of the trial in 2022 had been that Nora had been murdered by an unidentified man, and the only way to find him would be using the DNA sample collected from the belt of the bathrobe, i.e., the murder weapon.
In this new statement released 2 years after the trial, the state attorney's office confirmed that a match has been found between the DNA sample on the belt and the DNA of one of the 200 men and women who had visited the house around and after the murder. This means that the murderer has finally been found, and a second piece of key evidence—a strand of hair of the perpetrator, which had been overlooked earlier—has also been found on the victim's body.
But the worst turn in this whole scenario is the fact that the statute of limitations on this case had already passed by the time of these new discoveries, in 2024, meaning that no more criminal cases can be filed in this regard. This, in turn, means that even if we ever get to know who the real murderer of Nora Dalmasso was, he cannot be punished by the law.
The state prosecutor, Pablo Javega, did mention in the statement, though, that the name of the perpetrator had already come up in the previous trial, meaning that the murderer was indeed among the list of suspects that the police had put together throughout their investigation, and that he had managed to get away by claiming innocence. As of now, the authorities have intentionally chosen not to reveal the name of the perpetrator even though they know who had committed the murder, as there is no point in doing so legally. Also, just revealing the name of the perpetrator without legally prosecuting them might make common people take up justice in their own hands, which should be avoided.
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