There is no shortage of suspects. Along with those already in jail, a number are still at large. There is Armando Martinez, alias Alejandro Maynez, who was arrested in 1992 for the murder of a woman in Chihuahua City, some 220 miles to the south of Juarez. He was released “by mistake” and then conveniently vanished along with his police file. Ana Benavides, who was accused of killing and dismembering a couple and their child in Juarez in 1998, claimed that Martinez committed the triple-murder and framed her.
Then there is Pedro Padilla Flores. Convicted in 1986 for the rape and murder of two women and a 13-year- old girl, he confessed to other killings but was not charged. Padilla escaped in 1991 and is still at large.
The police themselves remain under suspicion. At least ten women have accused Juarez police officers of sexual assault and kidnapping over the past five years. No charges have been brought. But an unnamed policeman is sought in connection with the murder of 27-year-old Laura Inere and 29-year-old Elizabeth Gomez in 1995.
In April 1999, Julio Rodriquez Valenzuela, the former police chief of El Sauzal, Chihuahua, was accused of attempting to rape a 16-year-old girl near where two previous murders had been committed. Chihuahua authorities report that he fled to “El Paso or New Mexico”. He remains a fugitive.
Also on the run are ex-Mexican federal agents Jorge Garcia Paz and Carlos Cardenas Cruz. They are sought for questioning in the disappearance of 29-year-old Silvia Arce in 1998 and the death of 24-year-old Griselda Mares, who was allegedly killed in error by police in a dispute over stolen guns.
Former Chihuahua state policeman Sergio Hernandez Pereda fled in 1998 shortly after the murder of his wife. He is still at large.
Former Ciudad Juarez policeman Dagoberto Ramirez was fired in 1999 after he was accused of murdering his lover. He claimed that she had committed suicide and was released, but the police officials did not reinstate him.
Melchor Baca, a former federal policeman, has been on the run for eight years. He disappeared after killing a male friend of his wife at the courthouse where they both worked. And then there is Pedro Valles, the cop who was assigned to investigate the Ciudad Juarez murders and killed his girlfriend at the state police academy in 1998. He is still at large.
Then there are the conspiracy theories. Some maintain that the murders are the work of organ harvesters who are collecting spare parts for transplants. Others believe that they are the work of a satanic cult like that run at Matamoros by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo who died in a shoot-out in 1989. Some of his cannibalistic followers are still thought to be at large.
As drug gangs are at work in the area, it had been mooted that the missing women were addicts or small- time mules, who were executed because they knew too much. In November 2004, the FBI report accused unnamed narcotics traffickers for the torture and death of 17-year-old Lilia Garcia in the February 2001. Her body was found 100 yards from the spot where eight other victims were discovered. Then there are the juniors, or perhaps a cabal of rich and powerful sadists whose wealth puts them above the law.
Meanwhile Abdul Sharif won a judicial review in the Elizabeth Garcia case. The murder conviction was upheld, but his 30-year sentence was reduced to 20. However, the prosecutors say that Sharif may be charged with other murders. But as he has already been in jail for over 11 years, fresh charges are hardly going to stop the killings.
In 2004, a federal special prosecutor was appointed. Her remit extends to investigating the incompetence of the local police. But so far she has drawn a blank. However, a $2.7 million fund to aid the families of the victims has been established. Amnesty International has criticized the Mexican government’s efforts to investigate these crimes and the United Nations has condemned Mexico’s record on violence against women. But nothing helped. There were more than 28 related murders in 2005.
On 15 August 2006 Edgar Alvarez Cruz was arrested by US Marshals in Denver, Colorado and charged with 14 of the murders. Jos Francisco Granados and Alejandro Delgado Valles, aka
Even if they are caught, many will escape justice as much crucial evidence has been lost, incinerated or even intentionally destroyed, some in exchange for money for suspects seeking to clear their names, according to a recent report from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. In the winter of 2003, homeless men took refuge from the harsh cold inside the warehouse housing many of the case files. To keep warm, the men used the files as fuel, or so the story goes.
The following year, an official was appalled by the smell that permeated the warehouse. He discovered the source of the stench was clothing, caked with blood, worn by one of the victims, a ten-year-old girl whose corpse had been dumped in the desert. Nauseated by the odour, the official, a crime scene investigator, ordered the clothes washed and deodorized with fabric softener.
“I was aghast,” said an investigator for the Human Rights Commission. “We lost crucial hair, fibre, prints, semen and God knows what other vital potential evidence.”
Far from an isolated incident, this is part of a pattern of the mishandling of evidence that will make solving the killings even more daunting for a new crop of investigators and will ensure the perpetrators remain at large. In a review of the investigation by the special prosecutor’s office, some 177 state officials were found to have been responsible for negligence or omission in the original investigations. However, none of these officials has been brought to justice by the state authorities as the statute of limitations has been applied in their favour. Others have been forced to resign after refusing to fabricate evidence or documenting the use of torture in the investigation.
Portugal’s Lisbon Ripper
A Portuguese serial killer is being hunted across Europe. Known as the “Lisbon Ripper”, he is being sought by police in Portugal and other four countries where he has killed.
The Ripper first struck in Lisbon city in July 1992. The victim was found with her throat cut. She had been disembowelled. Soon after a second victim was found within 50 yards of where the first had been dumped and in March 1993 a third body was discovered.
The killer then seems to have travelled further afield. Over the next four years, victims appeared in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the Czech Republic. All were young, drug-addicted prostitutes. In each case, the method of killing was identical. This has convinced the Portuguese police and Interpol that the same man was responsible. Victims have been strangled or had their throat cut. Then they have been disembowelled with a piece of glass. He does not appear to have raped his victims.
Detectives also travelled to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in an attempt to link the Lisbon Ripper murders with a string of similar unsolved slayings there in 1988. The theory is that he was a member of New Bedford’s large Portuguese population who left the city and continued his twisted ways back in his native Portugal, then out across Europe. Police believe he may have been a long distance lorry driver. However, no solid link was ever established.
He is believed to be tall, white, and aged between 35 and 40 at the time of the European killings. He has a pathological hatred of women and is thought to be suffering from AIDS, perhaps contracted from a drug-addicted prostitute.
Russia’s Rippers
Police in the Altai administrative district of central Siberia have been searching for a serial killer responsible for the murders of at least five teenage female applicants to the Altai Technical University. Ksenia Kirgizova, Anzhela Burdakova, Yulia Tikhtiyekova, Liliana Voznyuk and Olga Shmakova disappeared between 26 June and 15 August 2000 after sitting entrance exams at the university campus in the Siberian city of Barnaul.
Two other women—the mothers of the university applicants—have also gone missing. Some bodies of
