On August 15, 2018, a boat was making its way around Valparaíso Bay, Chile, with a group of tourists on board. It was just like any other tour, near Prat Pier.
But then something appeared floating in the water.
The tour guide thought it was a sea lion, and the passengers got excited to see it, but as they got closer, they realized it wasn’t an animal.
It was a person’s torso floating adrift.
No one had gone looking for that. No limbs. No name.
For five days, no one knew who he was. The PDI Homicide Brigade began reviewing missing person reports from across the region.
On August 20, prosecutor José Miguel Subiabre confirmed it: genetic tests from the Legal Medical Service showed that the torso belonged to Nibaldo Villegas, a teacher from Villa Alemana. He had been reported missing five days before it appeared in the sea.
According to the investigation, he had been drugged, stabbed, and taken to Las Docas beach, in Laguna Verde. There, he was dismembered, and some of his remains ended up in the sea.
After a lengthy investigation, his ex-wife Johanna Hernández and her boyfriend at the time were implicated as the perpetrators.
If it hadn’t been for that group of tourists who dared to look out at the sea in the middle of their vacation, Nibaldo’s story might never have come to light.
Sometimes the truth comes to the surface on its own.