In the early hours of August 23, 1911, municipal inspector Tomas Valdivia received a complaint that would forever change the criminal history of Santiago. An elderly woman, with trembling hands and bloodshot eyes, entered the police station in the Yungay neighborhood.
She claimed to have seen something impossible: human bodies hanging from hooks in the Aguilera brothers’ slaughterhouse, the same place where she had bought meat for her family for years.
Inspector Valdivia, a skeptic hardened by 20 years of service, thought it was just another hallucination brought on by alcohol or old age. But something in the woman’s broken voice, something in the way her fingers scratched the wooden desk as she spoke, convinced him to investigate.
What he found that night at number 347 Matucana Street surpassed the darkest nightmares that the human mind could conceive.
The Aguilera slaughterhouse wasn’t just a butcher shop; it was a meticulously organized factory of horror, where the line between livestock and human beings had been completely erased. For three years, the Aguilera brothers had perfected a system that allowed them to kidnap vagrants, prostitutes, and day laborers—people no one would miss—and turn them into merchandise.
The surviving court records in Chile’s National Archives contain testimonies so disturbing that they remained classified for decades. This is not fiction. This is the documented story of one of the most atrocious crimes committed on Chilean soil, a story the authorities tried to bury forever.
In 1911, the Matucana neighborhood was the industrial heart of Santiago. Smoking chimneys, textile factories, and slaughterhouses formed a labyrinth of alleyways where the smell of animal blood mingled with the sweat of the workers. Among these establishments, the Aguilera brothers’ slaughterhouse stood out for its efficiency and competitive prices.
Rodrigo and Emilio Aguilera had arrived in Santiago from Valparaíso in 1907, after a fire destroyed their previous business. Municipal records indicate that they obtained operating permits without major problems, presenting themselves as respectable businessmen with experience in the meat industry.
His business prospered quickly. Restaurants and markets in the city center bought his products without suspecting a thing. The meat he offered was of superior quality, according to customers, with a particular flavor that some described as milder and more tender than ordinary beef.
The brothers worked mainly at night, justifying this by arguing that the cooler temperatures helped preserve the merchandise. The neighbors grew accustomed to the nighttime noises: the metallic clang of the saws, the muffled thumps, and the whimpers they attributed to frightened livestock.
No one questioned anything because no one wanted to lose the jobs the Aguilera family provided to dozens of families in the neighborhood. But there were signs. Cart driver Vicente Soto later testified that, on several occasions, he transported pieces of meat wrapped in cloths that had strangely human shapes.
The laundress Juana Pizarro mentioned that the clothes the Aguilera family gave her to wash sometimes contained strands of human hair among the blood stains.
On the night of August 22, 1911, Rosa Maturana was walking back to her room after working cleaning offices downtown. At 58 years old, Rosa had developed the habit of taking shortcuts through alleyways to save time. That day, her route took her behind the Aguilera slaughterhouse.
It was almost 11 p.m. when she heard a scream that chilled her blood. It wasn’t the bellow of an animal; it was unmistakably human. A scream of absolute terror that ended abruptly, as if someone had covered the screamer’s mouth. Rosa stopped dead in her tracks, her heart pounding in her chest.
Curiosity and fear battled within her. She should have kept walking, gone back home, forgotten what she had heard; but something compelled her to approach one of the back windows of the slaughterhouse. A small opening, at eye level, led directly into the processing room.
What he saw through that window shattered his sanity forever. The room was lit by kerosene lamps that cast dancing shadows on the blood-stained brick walls. In the center, hanging from industrial hooks identical to those used for hanging cattle, were three human bodies.
A young man, perhaps 20 years old, hung upside down with his legs tied. Blood dripping from his severed neck formed a dark pool on the cement floor. Beside him, a middle-aged woman, still dressed in her work clothes, hung from a hook through her shoulders; her open eyes stared into nothingness.
The third body was that of an older man, already partially dismembered, with parts of his limbs missing. Rodrigo Aguilera, the older brother, worked methodically at a steel table. He wore a black leather apron soaked in blood and handled butcher knives with the precision of someone who had repeated the same movements a thousand times.
His brother Emilio weighed pieces of meat on an industrial scale while jotting down figures in a notebook. They chatted casually about prices and deliveries, as if they were processing pigs or cows.
Rosa Maturana fell to her knees, fighting back the vomit rising in her throat. Her mind refused to process what she had just witnessed. She crawled backward, afraid that the slightest noise would alert her brothers. Once she felt safe, she got up and ran.
He ran like he’d never run before, stumbling over stones, scraping his hands against the walls of the alleyways. He didn’t stop until he reached the Yungay police station, where he burst in shouting incoherently that took the officer on duty several minutes to decipher.
Inspector Valdivia was called in as an emergency. Initially, he treated the complaint with skepticism, but Rosa’s detailed description of the slaughterhouse’s interior—a place she had never visited—seemed too specific to be a fabrication.
Furthermore, there was a disturbing detail. In recent weeks, three people had been reported missing in the Matucana neighborhood: a day laborer who went out to look for work and never returned, a seamstress who left her workshop one night and vanished, and a street vendor who was never heard from again.
Valdivia made a decision that would save his career, but would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would organize a nighttime operation without a warrant, relying on his instincts and the testimony of a woman who could barely speak without her teeth chattering.
At two in the morning on August 23, Inspector Valdivia gathered six trusted officers in front of the Aguilera slaughterhouse. The lights inside the establishment were still on. From outside, the characteristic metallic sounds of butchering could be heard. Valdivia ordered them to surround the building before giving the order to enter.
When the officers broke down the front door, time seemed to stand still. The scene they encountered surpassed even Rosa Maturana’s terrifying description.
The main room of the slaughterhouse was a space of approximately 100 square meters, with high ceilings crisscrossed by steel rails from which dozens of hooks hung. But there were no cattle or pigs. There were seven human bodies in different stages of dismemberment.
Some still had their clothes torn to shreds. Others had been reduced to neatly cut pieces and piled on processing tables. The cement floor was covered in a viscous layer of clotted blood that reflected the yellowish light of the lamps. The walls bore spatter that climbed to the ceiling, evidence of months or perhaps years of systematic butchery.
In one corner, several wooden barrels contained what would later be identified as human viscera in brine, preserved for later sale. Rodrigo and Emilio Aguilera were found in the back room, desperately trying to clean up evidence.
On the table where they worked were meticulously organized accounting documents. The brothers had kept detailed records of their criminal operation as if it were a legitimate business: notebooks with names, acquisition dates, body weight, parts sold, and clients.
The most disturbing file was a list of buyers: restaurants, boarding houses and markets in downtown Santiago that, for years, had been buying and selling human flesh without knowing it, or at least that’s what they would later claim.
Officer Ramón Gutiérrez, one of the first police officers to enter the slaughterhouse, testified at the trial that Rodrigo Aguilera didn’t even attempt to deny the charges. When asked how they could have done something so monstrous, Rodrigo responded with chilling coldness:
—It’s just meat. People buy meat. We provided it to them at a good price.
Emilio, the younger brother, appeared more agitated. According to testimonies, he broke down during the initial interrogation and revealed the full details of the operation. The brothers had developed a system for selecting victims based on a simple criterion: solitary individuals with no known family in Santiago.
Homeless people sleeping on the streets, prostitutes working in dangerous areas, migrant workers newly arrived in the capital who hadn’t yet established connections. They were lured with offers of well-paid jobs at the slaughterhouse, usually night shifts.
Once inside, the victims were struck on the head with butcher’s hammers, the same method used on cattle. Then came the process of bleeding, butchering, and preparing the meat for sale.
The brothers had perfected techniques for differentiating the cuts. Legs and arms were sold as special cuts of beef; the torso was processed as premium pork loin; the offal was turned into sausages. The operation was surprisingly efficient and profitable.
The trial against the Aguilera brothers began on October 15, 1911, and lasted just three weeks. Chilean authorities wanted to resolve the case quickly to avoid the mass panic that was brewing in Santiago. News of the infamous slaughterhouse had crossed borders, appearing in newspapers in Buenos Aires, Lima, and even in European dailies.
Chile, which projected itself as a modern and civilized nation, saw its reputation tarnished by this unprecedented scandal. The Attorney General, Arturo Alessandri, presented overwhelming evidence. The brothers’ accounting records showed that they had prosecuted at least 32 people between 1908 and 1911.
Witnesses confirmed the disappearances of many of these victims. Forensic analysis of the remains found at the slaughterhouse identified 17 people through clothing, personal belongings, and physical characteristics. Families who were able to recover some of their loved ones’ remains organized mass funerals that became demonstrations of grief and outrage.
But a troubling legal problem arose. What to do with the merchants who had bought and sold the meat? The Aguilera family’s records included the names of restaurant, market, and boarding house owners who had been regular customers. Some of these merchants were respectable figures in Santiago society.
The political pressure to protect certain families was immense. Ultimately, the prosecution decided not to press charges against any of the buyers, arguing that they had been deceived and had no way of knowing the true nature of the product they were purchasing. This decision sparked controversy and protests.
Many citizens argued that the buyers should have suspected something was amiss when the meat was unusually cheap and had unusual characteristics. Some testimony at the trial revealed that certain customers had commented on the different taste of the “Aguilera meat,” but none had investigated further. Was it possible that they genuinely didn’t know, or had they chosen to ignore the signs for economic reasons?
The defense for the Aguilera brothers attempted to plead insanity, arguing that no sane person could commit such acts. They hired Dr. Augusto Orrego Luco, a prominent psychiatrist of the time, to evaluate the accused.
Dr. Orrego Luco spent weeks interviewing Rodrigo and Emilio. His conclusion, presented to the court on November 2, 1911, was devastating for the defense: both brothers were perfectly sane. They displayed severe antisocial personality traits and a complete lack of empathy, but they fully understood the nature of their actions and the difference between right and wrong.
They had consciously chosen to murder and dismember people for financial gain. The verdict was unanimous: guilty of 32 premeditated murders, desecration of corpses, commercial fraud, and crimes against public health. The sentence: death by firing squad.
On December 14, 1911, Rodrigo and Emilio Aguilera were executed in the courtyard of the Santiago Penitentiary before a firing squad of 12 soldiers. Official records indicate that Rodrigo faced death with the same coldness he had displayed throughout the entire ordeal. His last words, according to the chaplain who accompanied him, were:
—I don’t regret anything. I only regret being discovered.
Emilio, on the other hand, spent his last hours crying and murmuring prayers.
The slaughterhouse was demolished immediately after the trial. The site remained empty for decades because no one wanted to build on a place where so much innocent blood had been spilled. But the story of the cursed Aguilera slaughterhouse doesn’t end with the brothers’ execution.
In the months following the trial, strange things began to happen in the Matucana neighborhood. Residents reported seeing lights moving within the vacant lot where the slaughterhouse had been, even though there was no electricity or any other structure. Some claimed to hear screams in the early morning hours; the same terrified screams that Rosa Maturana had heard that August night.
The neighborhood church saw a dramatic increase in requests for blessings and exorcisms. Father Eugenio Contreras, parish priest of St. Saturninus Church, visited the site several times and reported feeling an evil presence that refused to leave the place where so many souls had been violently taken from this world.
In 1915, a textile entrepreneur bought the land with the intention of building a factory. The workers refused to remain on site after sunset, claiming that tools were disappearing, that they felt invisible hands touching them, and that shadows were moving in human shapes. Construction was abandoned after three workers suffered inexplicable accidents in the same week.
The land was once again left vacant. Historical records show that there were multiple attempts to develop the property throughout the 20th century, all of which failed. In the 1940s, an attempt was made to build social housing. Families who moved there reported collective nightmares in which they saw the Aguilera brothers dismembering people.
The children would wake up screaming, describing bloodied men standing beside their beds. All the families abandoned their homes in less than six months.
In 1973, during the turbulent days of the military coup, rumors circulated that the land was used as a clandestine detention center, adding another layer of horror to an already cursed place. Although never officially confirmed, witnesses from that time claim to have seen military trucks entering and leaving the property at night.
Today, in 2025, the site of the Aguilera slaughterhouse is an anonymous public parking lot. There is no plaque, no monument, nothing to indicate that one of the most disturbing crimes in Chilean history took place there. Decades ago, the authorities decided it was better to forget, that keeping the memory of those horrors alive only perpetuated the pain.
But Matucana’s oldest residents still remember. They avoid parking their cars in certain areas of the property. They say there are stains on the pavement that never completely disappear, no matter how many times it’s repaved. They speak in hushed tones of the nights when the smell of blood and burnt flesh inexplicably hangs in the air.
The Aguilera case remains in Chilean judicial archives as one of the most consulted files by criminologists and historians. The original documents, stored in sealed boxes at the National Archives, contain photographs of the crime scene so disturbing that they require special authorization to be viewed.
Researchers who have had access to these materials report that the images haunt them for years. The unanswered question remains: how many similar cases have gone undetected? How many other infamous slaughterhouses operated in the dead of night, preying on society’s indifference toward the marginalized?
Rosa Maturana, the woman whose courage sparked the investigation, never psychologically recovered from what she witnessed. She spent her last years in a psychiatric hospital, repeating over and over:
—I saw them hanging like animals. They were people, they were people.
He died in 1923, taking to his grave details he never dared to share publicly. Inspector Tomás Valdivia, who led the operation, resigned from the police force a year after the trial. In a private letter to a friend, he wrote:
“I’ve seen many terrible things in my career, but nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to what I found in that slaughterhouse. I’ve lost my faith in humanity.”
The story of the cursed Aguilera slaughterhouse reminds us that true horror lies not in ghosts or urban legends. It lies in the human capacity to dehumanize other human beings, to turn them into objects, into merchandise, into mere meat.
It lies in our collective ability to ignore the signs, to look the other way when the victims are people we consider expendable. And it lies in the way history prefers to forget its darkest chapters rather than confront them.
Somewhere in downtown Santiago, people walk daily over the ground where 32 human beings were murdered and processed like cattle. They don’t know it, they don’t think about it. Life goes on, but the walls remember, the earth remembers. And the souls of those who screamed in the darkness without anyone hearing them continue to wait for their story not to be forgotten.
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If this story impacted you, leave your opinion in the comments: Do you think the authorities were right to try to erase the memory of this place, or should there be a memorial for the victims?
