Argentine man arrested for keeping his wife and three children locked up for years

Set against the snow-capped mountains of the Andes, Esquel is one of the most beautiful towns in Argentine Patagonia. Since last Thursday, this quiet municipality has been in an uproar over the arrest of Miguel Edgardo Battista, a biochemist accused of holding his wife and three children captive for at least four years. The situation came to light following reports from neighbors, who found it strange that only he would occasionally leave the house, that the children did not attend school, and that the windows were covered with cloth or paper. They heard desperate screams and noticed that the house seemed to come alive only at night.

Battista, who turns 72 this Wednesday, works in the development of food products and dietary supplements. In the back of the house, he had set up a laboratory where he extracted plant essences that he sold in small dropper bottles. He met his 41-year-old wife while working at a pharmacy in San Martín, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and they had three children, now aged 19, 17, and 13 — two girls and a boy.

The family arrived in the Patagonian province of Chubut in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to his defense attorney, Daniel Sandoval, Battista gained notoriety as a scientist during the health emergency, when he was invited to appear on television to present a product he had developed to combat the virus. From then on, he began receiving “extortion attempts” from people who told him that his products were not approved by the relevant health authorities and that they would report him and have him imprisoned. He decided to move with his family to Trevelin — 15 miles from Esquel and over 1,100 miles from Buenos Aires — where, in 2022, according to his defense attorney, a group found him and beat him up. After that, the family moved to another home in Esquel.

According to his defense, as a result of the threats against him, the family “adopted a life of self-imposed seclusion” and became increasingly isolated as they noticed the puzzled stares of their neighbors in the La Cascada neighborhood. “Their lives unfolded on a schedule opposite to the norm because they felt harassed by the neighbors’ stares. They lived at night and kept their windows closed during the day,” the lawyer argued.

In 2024, the neighbors filed their first police report. They were struck by the fact that the woman and the children never left the house. They also said they heard a woman’s desperate screams — as she shouted incoherently — and observed behavior they considered strange. A neighbor living next door stated that she had had to install a shade net to block the view between her yard and the Battistas’; she claimed that if any member of her family happened to cross paths with the woman outside, she would insult them or repeat everything they said. In recent days, the woman had started wearing a turban after shaving her head: she felt an itch and believed she might have a fungal infection, the lawyer explained.

Following that first complaint in 2024, the police went to the home but took no action. The intervention took place last week, after a second complaint was filed by neighbors on October 10. The Family Court sent an interdisciplinary team to the residence, but Battista did not allow them to enter or interview the family members. In light of the technical report’s warning of an “imminent risk,” the District Attorney’s Office acted on its own initiative and requested an emergency search warrant. “Upon entering the property, the authorities found a situation of profound vulnerability,” explained Cecilia Bagnato and Mónica Caveri, officials from the District Attorney’s Office, at a press conference.

The court ordered 10 days of pretrial detention for Battista, who is accused of unlawful deprivation of liberty and abandonment of a person. His wife was admitted to the mental health unit at the regional hospital in Esquel, while their three children — and one of their pets, which they refused to part with — were placed in the temporary custody of a foster family by court order.

According to Sandoval, the three teenagers were being homeschooled and “expressed their lives through science.” The attorney rejected claims that the children were malnourished: he asserted that none of them showed signs of malnutrition and that only the eldest daughter exhibited “mild dehydration.” A Gesell chamber hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, a procedure that allows for the collection of testimony from children and adolescents in a protected environment.

The family lived in a house of about 130 square meters, with a garden and architecture typical of the area, featuring exposed wood and natural stone. Neighbors, however, described unsanitary conditions, poor hygiene, and an accumulation of trash. The court officials limited themselves to noting that there was “disorder.”

Sandoval refrained from commenting on the possibility that the family members suffered from mental health disorders, but he believes that isolation and living on a reversed schedule may have had consequences for their physical and mental health. He even draws a parallel: “The effect of isolation is very vivid when the castaway [referring to Tom Hanks’ character in the 2001 film] talks to the volleyball,” he says.

As the investigation progresses, rumors about the family abound in Esquel. There is talk of dead dogs and children with long nails and unkempt appearances, though these accounts have not been corroborated. “There’s a lot of gossip,” admits a local resident, before explaining that the owner of the first house where the family lived decided to evict them because he noticed strange behavior on their part. “They said there was a black hole in the house through which you could see hell,” she recounts.

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