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🇪🇨 Ecuador /Crime & Justice

Nathaly Mafla’s family demands answers from prosecutors three months after her disappearance and death

From El Comercio · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Under investigation
  • Relatives of 20-year-old student Nathaly Juliette Mafla Castillo protested outside Ecuador’s prosecutor’s office, saying the investigation has stalled.
  • Mafla disappeared on June 4, 2026, and police found her body five days later in a ravine in Quito’s La Vicentina sector.
  • The family is seeking clarification about the investigation, including the handling of her cellphone, events at her university and differences involving the clothing found with her body.

Three months after Nathaly Juliette Mafla Castillo disappeared, her family gathered outside Ecuador’s prosecutor’s office demanding answers. The 20-year-old student from the National Polytechnic School vanished on June 4, 2026, and relatives say the investigation has not moved forward clearly enough.

Her parents reported her missing on June 6. Family members, friends, volunteers and authorities searched areas of Quito including El Dorado, La Floresta and La Vicentina. The family and the university reviewed security-camera footage from Ladrón de Guevara Street to reconstruct her final movements.

Police found Mafla’s body on June 9 in a ravine in La Vicentina. The Dinased investigations unit led the case, while firefighters recovered the body and Criminalistics transferred it to forensic medicine. Prosecutors ordered a forensic autopsy, DNA tests and other procedures to confirm her identity and establish the cause of death. Within the first 30 days, the case shifted from a missing-person inquiry to an investigation into suspected femicide.

The case is not moving forward, we still have nothing clear, it has only reached the point where we as a family have investigated.

· Karina CastilloMafla’s aunt described the family’s concerns about the pace and clarity of the investigation.

Karina Castillo, Mafla’s aunt, said the family still lacked clear answers. “The case is not moving forward, we still have nothing clear, it has only reached the point where we as a family have investigated,” she said. Castillo also alleged that the chain of custody for Mafla’s cellphone had been broken and that prosecutors had asked the family not to disclose autopsy details. She said requests from the mother’s lawyer had gone unanswered.

The family and defense want investigators to clarify what happened in a university bathroom before Mafla disappeared. They are seeking statements from people who were on campus and access to records that could help reconstruct her final hours. The defense has also pointed to an apparent difference between security-camera images, which showed Mafla wearing shoes, socks, trousers, underwear, a bra, a shirt and a sweater, and the condition of the clothing found at the scene.

The case is stalled.

· Karina CastilloCastillo criticized the lack of progress in the investigation.
About this summary

Originally published by El Comercio in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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