The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

maintained he knew nothing of any conspiracy.

Again, the arrest of Los Choferes did nothing to stem the murders. By May 1999 it was reported that “nearly 200 women” had been murdered since 1993—a substantial leap from October 1998’s figure of 117.

Celebrated profiler Robert Ressler, who heads the Virginia-based corporation Forensic Behavioural Sciences, visited Juarez at the invitation of the authorities and concluded that his former employer, the FBI, were wrong. He found that 76 of the murders fitted into a pattern. The victims were all women aged between 17 and 24. Most of them had been raped and strangled, and more than a dozen had been killed on their way to, or on the way home from, work at a maquiladora. But he concluded that the killings were not the work of a lone serial killer.

“I think it’s probably two or three,” he said. One of them, he thought, was an American coming across the border to take advantage of the situation in Juarez. The police had already demonstrated their inability to catch one killer. There were plenty of dark streets and abandoned buildings, and with a transient population of young women there were plenty of victims to choose from.

“It’s an ideal situation for an American with money,” said Ressler.

The founder of the Citizens’ Committee Against Violence Astrid Gonzales Davila said: “The failure to solve these killings is turning the city into a Mecca for homicidal maniacs.”

Candice Skrapec, the Canadian-born professor of criminology at California State University in Fresno, also identified 67 cases where she thought serial killers were involved. She told the Toronto Star she believed that three or four killers were at large in the 182 post-1993 cases she had studied and “there may be even more murders that could be tied to the three suspected serial killers, and that they were operating in 1992”.

Skrapec believed that “Railway Killer” Angel Maturino Resendez, was one of the perpetrators as he had lived in the barrios there and much of this family—including his uncle, Rafael Resendez- Ramirez, whose name he used as one of many aliases—still live in Juarez. On 13 July 1999, at the urging of his brother and his sister, Resendez crossed the Ysleta Bridge over the Rio Grande into the United States and surrendered to the Texas Rangers after a six-week televised manhunt that made him the most wanted man in America. The US authorities had held back on charging Resendez, fearing the Mexican government would prevent the suspect’s extradition if he was liable to face the death penalty—in Texas he would receive death by lethal injection. But a $125,000-reward had been offered for his capture and his family feared that he might be shot by a bounty hunter. Instead, they brokered his surrender and claimed the reward themselves.

Resendez was charged with nine counts of murder. The first was the murder of a 21-year-old college student who was bludgeoned to death while walking with his girlfriend along a railway line in Kentucky on 29 August 1997. After that eight more bodies were found in victims’ homes along a railroad track from Texas to Illinois as he travelled from state to state. His last two victims were a 51-year-old woman and her 79-year-old father who were found dead in their home near the line in Gorham, Illinois, on 15 June 1999.

Although Resendez could be a suspect in at least some of the Juarez killings, it is unlikely that he was responsible for the majority of the unsolved cases. Indeed, they continued after his arrest.

In December 1999, a mass grave was found outside Ciudad Juarez. It contained nine corpses—three belonging to three US citizens. This invited renewed attention across the border with some, again, suspecting the involvement of the Mexican police. The Dallas Morning News wrote: “Still a mystery is what happened to nearly 200 people, including 22 US citizens who, in many cases, vanished after being detained by men with Mexican police uniforms or credentials.”

These missing persons became known as Los Desaparecidos—“The Disappeared”. Some were thought to be victims of Juarez’s drug wars. But the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons in El Paso believe they may have been kidnapped by the police.

Maquilladoras still went missing and on 6 November 2001 a mass grave containing the skeletal remains of eight women were found in employ plot just 300 yards from the headquarters of the Association of Maquiladoras, the organization that represents most of Juarez’s US-owned export assembly plants. Police then announced creation of a new task force to investigate the murders and a $21,500 reward for the capture of those responsible.

Three days after the grave had been opened bus drivers Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, La Foca, and Javier Garcia Uribe, El Cerillo, both 28, were charged with killing the eight women. The prosecutor claimed they “belonged to a gang whose members are serving time for at least 20 of the rape-murders”. The victims were identified as 15-year-old Esmerelda Herrera, 17-year-old Laura Ramos, 17- year-old Mayra Reyes, 19-year-old Maria Acosta, 19-year-old Veronica Martinez, 20-year-old Barbara Martinez (no relation to Veronica), 20-year-old Claudia Gonzales and 20-year-old Guadalupe Luna.

The suspects claimed that their statements were extracted under torture. Their lawyers received death threats. On 5 February 2002, one of them was killed by police after a high-speed chase. The police claimed they “mistook him for a fugitive” and a judge ruled that the shooting was “self-defence”. Meanwhile it was revealed that DNA tests had failed to confirm the police’s early identifications of the victims. New DNA tests apparently confirmed the identification of Veronica Martinez, though it threw no light on the other seven cases. Then Gonzalez died in jail, ostensibly from complications arising after surgery.

By now 51 suspects were in jail, but still the killing did not stop. Ten days after Garcia and Gonzalez and Garcia were arrested, the body of another young woman, stripped and beaten to death, was found in Ciudad Juarez. Maquilladoras protesters were reportedly harassed by police and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights moved in to investigate. The new Mexican President Vicente Fox sent in “federal crime specialists”. Resentful, local prosecutors told the Dallas Morning News that “27 of the 76 cases” were resolved, while “the other killings involving women have been isolated incidents”.

On 9 March 2002, member of the Texas state legislature joined a protest march through El Paso. Then a federal deputy attorney general in Mexico City claimed that the killings were committed by “juniors”—the son of prosperous Mexican families whose wealth and influence had protected them from arrest. He was quickly found another job. Later that year the FBI returned to lend a hand but have failed to further the investigation.

Juarez’s leaders are particularly conscious of the effect the killings are having on the image of the city. When a large wooden cross was erected as a memorial to the murdered women, the mayor received a letter from the chamber of commerce, complaining that this would damage tourism.

The day that letter was received—23 September 2002—the bodies of two more women were found in Ciudad Juarez. One victim was strangled and partially undressed; the other, the police said, had died of a drug overdose. Special investigator David Rodriguez was “sceptical” of that claim. Another young woman was found beaten to death two weeks later. Then Martha Sahagun de Fox, Mexico’s new first lady, addressed more than a thousand women dressed in black who marched through Mexico City in protest at the deaths.

In January 2003, residents of Lomas de Poleo reported finding three corpses, but the Attorney General Jesus Solis and the police refused to confirm or deny whether they were connected to maquilladoras murders. These were not the first corpses found in this desert area near a rundown suburb. Two others had been found nearby in October 2002. One of them identified as 16-year-old Gloria Rivas.

On V-Day, 14 February 2004, in Ciudad Juarez, busloads of female students from around the world calling themselves “vagina warriors” marched into town for special performances of The Vagina Monologues, performed by such film stars as Jane Fonda and Sally Field, to highlight and denounce what was now being dubbed “femicide”. It did no good.

On 17 February 2003, two teenagers searching the wasteland for cans and bottles found three more bodies. When the police turned in Mimbre Street at 2 p.m., they found the remains of three women dumped there. While the bodies were being removed, an onlooker found a fourth.

At a press conference two days later the police said that they had identified three of the victims—16-year- old Esmeralda Juarez Alarcon who had vanished on 8 January 2003, 17-year-old Juana Sandoval Reyna who had been missing since 23 September 2002 and 18-year-old Violeta Alviedrez Barrios who had disappeared 4 February 2003. All three had last been seen alive in downtown Juarez. When asked about the fourth victim, the police refused to acknowledge that there was another body and called a halt to the press conference. With no end to the killings in sight, the authorities are in a state of denial.