The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border by Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané Read Free Book Online
Authors: Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané
nipple bitten off.
Even more telling was an apparent link between the bodies of two more young women discovered in December not far from Lote Bravo in the fields behind the Pemex property, just off the Casas Grandes Highway. One belonged to a fourteen-year-old girl, who was later identified as Isela Tena Quintanilla. Police noted that the child's hands had been bound together with a rope that was knotted in the exact fashion as one found on an earlier victim, a seventeen-year-old student and maquila worker named Elizabeth Castro. Castro had disappeared on her way home from her factory job that past August. Her mutilated remains were found four days later in Lote Bravo, not far from the corpses of the other dead girls.
With no real answers from authorities, wild theories were being floated. Was organized crime part of the equation? Were police looking at one or more than one serial killer? Were there copycat murderers taking advantage of the situation? Was this a case not of serial murders but instead of a sophisticated organ-trafficking ring? Was someone or some group using these women as leading ladies for cheap snuff films and later disposing of them so as to leave no evidence? Or perhaps the killings were the work of a satanic cult, sacrificing these women as part of a ritual?
* * *
Though record keeping was shoddy at best, and it's unclear when the first crime may actually have occurred, authorities believed that the first of the murders took place in 1993.
State police said the first victim was discovered on January 23 of that year, in a vacant lot in the Campestre Virreyes district of the city. An autopsy revealed that the young woman, later identified as Alma Chavira Farel, had been raped, both anally and vaginally, and had died as a result of strangulation. Bruises on Farel's face indicated she'd been savagely beaten during the assault that claimed her life.
Another young woman was found on May 13, lying on her back in an expansive hilly region about five miles off the city's main highway, known locally as Cerro Bola. Authorities observed puncture wounds and abrasions on her left breast. It was determined that she too had been brutally raped and strangled to death. Her identity remains unknown.
Subsequently, nine more bodies exhibiting the same sorts of injuries and mutilations turned up in the desert. In all, at least fifteen other girls were found murdered in 1993.
Ten more young bodies were discovered in 1994, their deaths just as grisly. Eleven-year-old María Rocío Cordero's pathetic corpse was found on March 11, in a drainage pipe that ran alongside the Casas Grandes Highway. She had been abducted on her way to primary school, raped anally and vaginally, and then strangled to death by an unknown attacker.
Another teen was found tied to a stake in her middle school playground. An autopsy revealed she had been beaten and raped before she was strangled to death and left to be found by students returning to class the following day.
Oscar Maynez Grijalva, a young and talented staff criminologist with the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, or Procuraduría General de Justica del Estado de Chihuahua, had noticed distinct similarities among several of the homicides soon after joining the agency earlier that year.
Maynez found no forensic evidence to suggest that organs were being harvested from the dead women. Such a procedure would require careful removal by someone with medical training, refrigeration, and rapid transport to some facility where the organ could be used. Instead, the criminologist was convinced there was another kind of serial killer on the loose in Juárez.
Born and raised in Juárez, Maynez was also a professor of forensics at the Chihuahua State Police Academy in south Juárez and held university degrees in both psychology and criminology. Determined to make the coursework interesting to the young cadets,
Even more telling was an apparent link between the bodies of two more young women discovered in December not far from Lote Bravo in the fields behind the Pemex property, just off the Casas Grandes Highway. One belonged to a fourteen-year-old girl, who was later identified as Isela Tena Quintanilla. Police noted that the child's hands had been bound together with a rope that was knotted in the exact fashion as one found on an earlier victim, a seventeen-year-old student and maquila worker named Elizabeth Castro. Castro had disappeared on her way home from her factory job that past August. Her mutilated remains were found four days later in Lote Bravo, not far from the corpses of the other dead girls.
With no real answers from authorities, wild theories were being floated. Was organized crime part of the equation? Were police looking at one or more than one serial killer? Were there copycat murderers taking advantage of the situation? Was this a case not of serial murders but instead of a sophisticated organ-trafficking ring? Was someone or some group using these women as leading ladies for cheap snuff films and later disposing of them so as to leave no evidence? Or perhaps the killings were the work of a satanic cult, sacrificing these women as part of a ritual?
* * *
Though record keeping was shoddy at best, and it's unclear when the first crime may actually have occurred, authorities believed that the first of the murders took place in 1993.
State police said the first victim was discovered on January 23 of that year, in a vacant lot in the Campestre Virreyes district of the city. An autopsy revealed that the young woman, later identified as Alma Chavira Farel, had been raped, both anally and vaginally, and had died as a result of strangulation. Bruises on Farel's face indicated she'd been savagely beaten during the assault that claimed her life.
Another young woman was found on May 13, lying on her back in an expansive hilly region about five miles off the city's main highway, known locally as Cerro Bola. Authorities observed puncture wounds and abrasions on her left breast. It was determined that she too had been brutally raped and strangled to death. Her identity remains unknown.
Subsequently, nine more bodies exhibiting the same sorts of injuries and mutilations turned up in the desert. In all, at least fifteen other girls were found murdered in 1993.
Ten more young bodies were discovered in 1994, their deaths just as grisly. Eleven-year-old María Rocío Cordero's pathetic corpse was found on March 11, in a drainage pipe that ran alongside the Casas Grandes Highway. She had been abducted on her way to primary school, raped anally and vaginally, and then strangled to death by an unknown attacker.
Another teen was found tied to a stake in her middle school playground. An autopsy revealed she had been beaten and raped before she was strangled to death and left to be found by students returning to class the following day.
Oscar Maynez Grijalva, a young and talented staff criminologist with the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, or Procuraduría General de Justica del Estado de Chihuahua, had noticed distinct similarities among several of the homicides soon after joining the agency earlier that year.
Maynez found no forensic evidence to suggest that organs were being harvested from the dead women. Such a procedure would require careful removal by someone with medical training, refrigeration, and rapid transport to some facility where the organ could be used. Instead, the criminologist was convinced there was another kind of serial killer on the loose in Juárez.
Born and raised in Juárez, Maynez was also a professor of forensics at the Chihuahua State Police Academy in south Juárez and held university degrees in both psychology and criminology. Determined to make the coursework interesting to the young cadets,
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