Irma Ovalle left the Punta Arenas Penitentiary Complex on the night of Wednesday, October 7, after spending more than 14 years in prison.
In 2013, she was sentenced to 20 years for commissioning the murder of her husband, Didier Mansilla, a retired senior noncommissioned officer in the Army. On July 29, 2012, a man contacted through a fake social media profile arranged to meet him, got into his vehicle, and attacked him with a knife, striking his neck. Mansilla died hours later at the Magallanes Clinical Hospital. The actual perpetrator, Sergio Escalona, received another 20 years for aggravated murder, and the investigation concluded that Ovalle had paid him for the crime.
She will now serve the final part of her sentence on parole, which does not extinguish the conviction. And there is a detail that has stirred tempers: in May, the Court of Appeals ordered Capredena to reinstate the widow’s pension of the very victim she had commissioned to be killed, including retroactive payments dating back to 2017 totaling nearly 150 million pesos. The argument was that there was no civil judgment declaring her unworthy of receiving it. The State Defense Council appealed, and the case is awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court. Can a pension remain in the hands of the person who ordered the holder’s murder?
