Explore sourced Venezuelan criminal cases with legal outcomes stated precisely. The collection distinguishes final criminal convictions from partial accountability, including state violence, failed prosecutions and international human-rights judgments.
Conviction or equivalent adjudicated outcome verified from reliable reporting or official-court statements reproduced by established news organizations.
Geraldín Moreno, a 23-year-old university student, died after being shot with pellets during a protest in Naguanagua in February 2014. Two National Guard sergeants were convicted, and the Supreme Tribunal upheld their sentences in 2019.
Open case file →Journalism student Roxana Vargas disappeared in Caracas in July 2008 and was found dead in Parque Caiza two days later. Psychiatrist Edmundo Chirinos was convicted of intentional homicide in 2010 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Open case file →John Bryan, Kevin and Jason Faddoul and their driver, Miguel Rivas, were kidnapped at a false police checkpoint in Caracas in February 2006. Their bodies were found in Miranda state in April; a 2009 judgment imposed 30-year terms on 13 defendants.
Open case file →Rapper Canserbero and musician Carlos Molnar died in Maracay in January 2015. A case first presented as murder-suicide was reopened in 2023; Natalia and Guillermo Améstica admitted the facts and received 25-year prison terms in 2024, followed by five additional accomplice convictions.
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Mónica Spear and Thomas Henry Berry were killed during a roadside robbery in Carabobo in January 2014. Multiple defendants later admitted responsibility or were convicted, with adult prison sentences reaching 30 years.
Open case file →Cases remain here only when reliable evidence supports that classification.
Fourteen fishermen were killed by a joint police-military unit near El Amparo in October 1988. Venezuela accepted international responsibility, but the domestic prosecution remains unresolved and has produced no valid individual conviction.
Open case file →Prosecutor Danilo Anderson was killed by a car bomb in Caracas in November 2004. Three men were convicted, but the Inter-American Court later found the proceedings fundamentally invalid and ordered their consequences erased; no reliable replacement solution has been judicially established.
Open case file →Linda Loaiza López Soto survived months of captivity and severe violence in Caracas in 2001. A domestic conviction covered unlawful detention and serious injuries, while the Inter-American Court later found Venezuela responsible for major failures and continuing impunity for sexual violence.
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Authorities abandoned their initial suicide account and two SEBIN officers received reduced culpable-homicide sentences, but intentionality and wider responsibility remain unresolved.
Open case file →Crime by Region separates adjudicated findings from allegations and from facts that were still disputed at a particular point in a prosecution. The archive records both domestic criminal outcomes and, where relevant, international human-rights judgments, without treating the two as interchangeable.