Ciudad Juarez:The Serial Killer's Playground

Body Count

Map: Ciudad Juarez in Mexico

Joe Lopez Jimenez wasn't looking for trouble when he and a friend went for a stroll in the desert northeast
of Ciudad Juarez on Monday, February 17, 2003. The two teenagers took their dogs along, searching the
wasteland for bottles and cans, or any other cast-off articles that could be redeemed for pocket money.
The last thing they expected to discover was a human body.

Much less three.

The boys ran home to tell their parents, who then alerted the municipal police. The officers were skeptical
at first and responded slowly. But when detectives reached the scene off Mimbre Street at 2:00 p.m., any
notion of a hoax evaporated. They saw the remains of three barely concealed women.

The police wasted little time carting the bodies from the scene. They had the third corpse in an ambulance
and ready to depart by 2:30, when a neighborhood bystander called their attention to a fourth corpse, a
little away from the others. Most local reporters had already left to file their stories, but Miguel Perea, a
photographer for Norte newspaper, remained to document the discovery of the fourth corpse.

Searchers find bodies

These were not the first corpses found in the desert near the rundown suburb. Two other victims had been
found a short distance away in October 2002; one of them later identified as 16-year-old Gloria Rivas.
More recently, residents of nearby Lomas de Poleo had reported finding three more corpses in January
2003. But police and Attorney General Jesus Solis refused to confirm or deny the account.
Gloria Rivas, victim

The story took an even stranger turn on Wednesday, February 19, when authorities identified three of the
victims. They were 17-year-old Juana Sandoval Reyna, missing since September 23, 2002; 16-year-old
Esmeralda Juarez Alarcon, last seen January 8, 2003; and 18-year-old Violeta Alvídrez Barrios, who
vanished February 4, 2003. Each girl was last seen alive in downtown Ciudad Juarez. When reporters
asked about the fourth victim, police spokesmen abruptly ended the briefing, and refused to acknowledge
that there was another body.

Juana Sandoval Reyna & Esmaralda Juarez Alarcon, victims

That stubborn attitude was old news to the residents of Ciudad Juarez, where a mounting toll of brutal
homicides had stunned the city--and attracted global attention--during the past decade. Body counts are a
touchy subject in Ciudad Juarez, a bustling city across the border from El Paso. No two sources agree on
the death toll of young women. The El Paso Times claims that there are "nearly 340" victims since 1993.
Some of the cases have been solved, although unnamed "experts" speculate that "90 or more" may be
serial murder victims. But no one seriously claims that one person is responsible for all of the murders.

In fact, police have jailed more than a dozen suspects --the first in 1995. Each new arrest is hailed as a
"solution" to the grisly murder spree, but the body count still increases. Many residents and some
discouraged investigators now believe that the police themselves may be behind some of the murders. At
the very least, many think the police are involved in an ongoing cover-up.

A decade after the start of the official roster of the dead, only one thing is certain: All females are in danger
on the streets of Ciudad Juarez.

Dead Line

Ciudad Juarez & El Paso skyline

Most Americans outside west Texas know Ciudad Juarez--if they know it at all--from fictional portrayals in
dramas such as the recent NBC-TV miniseries "Kingpin." These tales are replete with sex, drug-dealing,
gunplay and intrigues—all of which exist in Ciudad Juarez. As is always true with television, these
depictions are only glimpses into the city's history.
No one is sure how many people live in Ciudad Juarez. A Rand McNally atlas published in 1999 claims an
impossibly precise 789,522 residents, while media estimates from 2000 onward range as high as 2 million.
Many are street people, living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day, while others are simply in transit, passing
through the city en route to the border and the promised land of the U.S.

The exodus is driven by need. Wealth rarely trickles down from top-rank politicians, manufacturers and
narco-traffickers to everyone else. British author Simon Whitechapel, in his book Crossing to Kill (2000),
describes Ciudad Juarez as "a kind of contact sore, a purulent wound ground out on the border by the
rubbing together of American plutocracy and Mexican poverty, of American desire and Mexican
desperation."

Young women in Ciudad Juarez

Those who stay behind often work in maquiladoras--sweat-shop factories producing goods for sale
abroad--at wages averaging five U.S. dollars per day. Thousands of those workers are young women from
outlying towns and villages, collectively described by adding an "l" to the name of their workplace:
maquilladoras. They come hoping for the best, but often find the worst. Squalid work conditions and sexual
harassment can become mere annoyances in a city where life is cheap.

Machismo is an element of the problem. It exalts men over women to the detriment of both. Spanish-
language dictionaries define it as "behavior of the man who believes himself superior to women," and it
manifests itself in forms ranging from casual insults to, according to some, ritualistic murder. Corruption
plays its part, too. The legal system thoroughly corrupted by drug money. Police earn so little that bribery
(mordida) is an accepted practice. Any crime can be overlooked for a price.

Still, there is clearly something else at work in Ciudad Juarez. Otherwise, every border town from Tijuana
to Matamoros would share in the rising toll of raped and murdered women.

Silent Screams

The first to die, officially, was Alma Chavira Farel, a young woman found beaten, raped and strangled
to death in the Campestre Virreyes district of Ciudad Juarez on January 23, 1993. She may not even have
been the city's first female murder victim in 1993, since local disappearances exceed known homicides
each year. But Chavira remains the first acknowledged victim of a predator the media would later dub "the
Juarez Ripper" or El Depredador Psicópata. While no mutilations were recorded in Chavira's case, many
subsequent victims suffered "similar" slashing wounds to their breasts.

Police acknowledge 16 more murders of women in Ciudad Juarez by year's end, with the last recorded on
December 15. That case was solved, along with three others. In the dozen cases still unsolved today, five
of the victims remain unidentified. Of the 12, at least four were raped. Cause of death in those cases
included four strangulations, four stabbings (with one set afire afterward), one beating and one gunshot.
Decomposition ruled out a determination in the last two homicides.
In 1994 police acknowledged eight unsolved murders of women in Ciudad Juarez; "possible culprits" were
named in three other cases, but none were arrested. Three of the dead are unidentified today; the others
ranged in age from 11 to 35. This time, at least four were raped. Of those whose cause of death is listed,
six were strangled, two stabbed, one beaten to death, and one burned alive.

Criminologist Oscar Maynez Grijalva

Before that year of brutality ended, state criminologist Oscar Maynez Grijalva warned Ciudad Juarez police
that some of their unsolved murders might be the work of a serial killer. In later interviews, Maynez said his
warning was ignored.

1995 was worse yet, with at least 19 women slain by mid-September. Eight of the victims remain
unidentified, with one case solved and "probable suspects" named (but not convicted) in two others. At
least four of the victims were raped. Where cause of death could be determined, six were strangled, one
stabbed and one shot. Three of the four victims found in September alone presented police with an
obvious pattern: each had her right breast severed, with the left nipple bitten off.

It appeared that at least one serial killer was stalking the women of Ciudad Juarez, linked by a similar
modus operandi to three of the most recent crimes. But authorities did not seem overly concerned.

In October, detectives claimed they had solved the case. They had detained a suspect who was charged
with one of the city's brutal sex murders. Best of all, he was a foreigner.

Predator

Abdel Latif Sharif

Suspect Abdel Latif Sharif was born in Egypt in 1947. Decades later, he would claim to have been sexually
abused as a child, allegedly sodomized by his father and other male relatives. He emigrated to the U.S. in
1970, settling first in New York City, where he soon established a reputation for alcohol-fueled promiscuity.
Acquaintances, questioned long after the fact, recalled his obsessive interest in young girls.

Fired from his job for suspected embezzlement in 1978, Sharif moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania. John
Pascoe, a former friend later recalled a deer-hunting expedition with Sharif, where the Egyptian reportedly
wounded a buck and then tortured the dying animal. Pascoe also claimed that when girls were in Sharif's
company they "often" disappeared. But none of the alleged victims was ever found. Pascoe says he ended
the friendship in 1980, after finding various possessions of an unnamed "missing" girl in Sharif's home and
a mud-caked shovel on the porch.
By 1981, Sharif had settled in Palm Beach, Florida. Reportedly a chemist and an engineer, Sharif was
hired by Cercoa Inc. His talents were sufficiently impressive that the company created a department
specifically for him. On May 2 he took a 23-year-old woman home, beat and raped her repeatedly, then
suddenly turned solicitous and said, "Oh, I've hurt you. Do you think you need to go to a hospital?" Cercoa
bankrolled Sharif's defense in that case, and again in August, when he attacked a second woman in West
Palm Beach. Sharif received probation for the first rape and served only 45 days for the second. Cercoa
fired Sharif the next year because of his mounting legal bills.

Resettled in Gainesville, Florida, Sharif was married briefly. The divorce was the result of beating his bride
unconscious. He advertised for a live-in housekeeper on March 17, 1983, then beat and repeatedly raped
a 23-year-old woman who answered the ad, telling her, "I will bury you out back in the woods. I've done it
before, and I'll do it again." Held without bond pending trial in that case, Sharif escaped from the Alachua
County jail in January 1984 but was soon recaptured. On January 31, 1984 Sharif received a 12-year
sentence for rape. Gordon Gorland, the prosecutor, promised reporters that on the day Sharif was
released he would be "met at the prison gates and escorted to the plane" and be deported to Egypt.

But when Sharif was paroled in October 1989, he was not deported. He moved at once to Midland, Texas,
and a job with Benchmark Research and Technology. The U.S. Department of Energy singled him out for
praise, and Sharif was photographed shaking hands with former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm.

Sharif was arrested again 1991, this time for drunk-driving. The arrest alerted a former acquaintance from
Florida, now living in Texas, who reported Sharif to the Border Patrol as a fugitive from deportation
proceedings. A lengthy series of hearings ensued. The matter was still pending two years later when
Sharif held a woman captive in his home and raped her repeatedly.

His deportation defense lawyer offered the government a deal: if the latest charges were dismissed, Sharif
would voluntarily leave the U.S. In May 1994 Sharif moved to Ciudad Juarez, working at one of
Benchmark's maquiladora factories, and resided in the exclusive Rincones de San Marcos district. In
October 1995 a young maquilladora accused Sharif of raping her at his home. She also said that Sharif
threatened to kill her and dump her corpse in Lote Bravo, a desert region south of town where several
other victims had been found. Those charges were later withdrawn. But detectives had learned by then
that Sharif had dated 17-year-old Elizabeth Castro Garcia, who was found raped and murdered in August.

Sharif was charged with that murder and finally convicted at trial in March 1999. He received a 30-year
sentence. Although police called Sharif a serial killer, the conviction did not solve the grisly mystery of
Ciudad Juarez. The murders continued--even escalated--after his arrest. One month after Sharif was in
custody, police acknowledged that 520 people had vanished in the past 11 months and that "an important
percentage of them are female adolescents."

Another solution was needed--and authorities offered it in the form of a bizarre conspiracy theory.

Los Rebeldes

Between Sharif's arrest and the first week of April 1996 at least 14 more female victims were slain in
Ciudad Juarez. Their ages ranged from 10 to 30. Where cause of death was known, 10 had been stabbed,
one shot and one strangled. At least four suffered unspecified mutilations after death, and one victim--
Adrianna Torres, 15, fit the pattern of three other slayings, with her right breast severed and her left nipple
bitten off.

The continuing slaughter belied official reports that the city's homicide wave had ended with Abdel Sharif's
arrest. Residents were frightened. The local police was embarrassed. They needed an explanation for the
murders; but one that would not exonerate their prime suspect. They got their wish on April 8, 1996; when
18-year-old Rosario Garcia Leal's raped and mutilated body was discovered.

Among those questioned in the latest case was Hector Olivares Villalba, a member of a local street gang
called Los Rebeldes ("The Rebels"). In custody, Olivares claimed he had participated in Garcia's murder
on December 7, 1995. Half a dozen Rebels were involved, he claimed, including gang leader Sergio
Armendariz Diaz (also known as El Diablo). Armed with Olivares' confession (later recanted as the product
of police torture), officers raided several nightclubs and detained 300. They winnowed out nine more
Rebels, including Armendariz, Juan Contreras Jurado (El Grande), Carlos Hernandez Molina, Carlos
Barrientos Vidales, Romel Cerniceros Garcia, Fernando Guermes Aguirre, Luis Adrade, Jose Juarez
Rosales, and Erika Fierro.

The nine, with Olivares, were accused of plotting with Sharif to free him from prison by murdering local
women and thus make it seem as if the original "Ripper" was still at large. Police claimed that some of the
Rebels had visited Sharif in jail and were paid for their "copycat" crimes. Juan Contreras told police
Armendariz had sent him to collect "a packet" from Sharif in prison. The envelope contained $4,000 in
cash. Later, Contreras alleged, he had joined Armendariz and other Rebels in the rape-murder of a young
woman known as Lucy.

Contreras also later recanted his statement, and the charges were dropped against suspects Ceniceros,
Fierro, Guermes, Hernandez and Olivares. The remainder are incarcerated pending trial (a slow process in
Mexican courts), and El Diablo earned a separate six-year prison sentence for leading the February 1998
gang-rape of a 19-year-old fellow inmate.

The other Rebels all claim they were tortured by police. Some display burn scars which they say are the
product of crude torture with cigars and cigarettes. Authorities, meanwhile, stand by their charges, claiming
that Sharif and the Rebels together committed 17 murders. Chihuahua's medical examiner goes further,
telling reporters that dental casts from Armendariz "identically" match bite marks found on the breasts of at
least three victims.

But a Mexican court ruled in 1999 that there was insufficient evidence to charge Abdel Sharif as a
conspirator in any of the slayings attributed to the Rebels. Even before the ruling, police concluded that
their conspiracy theory was deficient.

Just as the murders had not stopped with Sharif's arrest, neither did they end with the round-up of Los
Rebeldes. In fact, the rate of killings continued to climb.

Kill Zone

The arrest of Los Rebeldes changed nothing in Juarez. The brutal murders continued and community
groups accused police of negligence or worse. At least 16 female victims were slain between late April and
November 1996. Eight remain unidentified. Five were stabbed, three shot, and one was found in a drum
of acid. In several cases advanced decomposition made determinations about cause of death or sexual
assault impossible.

The following year there were 17 unsolved murders of females. Again they ranged in age from 10 to 30
years, and seven of the dead were never identified. While rape was confirmed in only four cases, the
position and nudity of several other corpses suggested sexual assault. In the cases where the cause of
death could be determined, five were stabbed, three were strangled, three shot, and two beaten.
Statistically, 1998 was the city's worst year yet. There were 23 on the books by December. Six remained
unidentified. The killings reflected the usual pattern of stabbings, stranglings, bullets and burning. Rocio
Barrazza Gallegos was killed on September 21 in the parking lot of the city's police academy. She was
strangled inside a patrol car by a cop assigned to the "murdered women" case. Authorities described the
death of 20-year-old Rosalina Veloz Vasquez, found dead on January 25, as "similar to 20 other murders
in the city."

And indeed, by 1998 the long-running investigation had become a numbers game. In May, media reports
referred to "more than 100 women raped and killed" in Ciudad Juarez. A month later, reports from the
same source (Associated Press) raised the number to 117. In October 1998 another AP report placed the
official body count at 95, while a woman's advocacy group, Women for Juarez, placed the total at
somewhere between 130 and 150.

Mexico's Human Rights Commission issued a report in 1998 castigating the police. But politicians
suppressed it to avoid any adverse impact on upcoming state elections. Still clinging to suspect Abdel
Sharif, Attorney General Arturo Chavez told Reuters on June 10, 1998 that "police think another serial
killer may be at work due to similarities in three crimes this year." At year's end, on December 9, the
Associated Press reported: "At least 17 bodies show enough in common--the way shoelaces were tied
together, where they were buried, how they were mutilated--that investigators say at least one serial killer
is at work. And 76 other cases bear enough similarities that investigators say one or more copycats may
be at work."

In fact, all that anyone really knew was that the murders were continuing.

Los Choferes

The first quarter of 1999 brought with it the usual catalog of carnage: at least eight more female
victims. Abdel Sharif's trial for the murder of Elizabeth Castro began on March 3, but if authorities thought
it would solve the case, they were sadly mistaken.

In the predawn hours of March 18 a 14-year-old girl staggered up to the door of a stranger's home on the
city's outskirts. Bloody and sobbing, she told her story of rape and near-murder. She said she had been
assaulted and nearly choked to death by the hands of a maquiladora bus driver named Jesus Guardado
Marquez. His nicknames were El Dracula and El Tolteca. A background check on Guardado revealed one
prior conviction for sexual assault. By the time police went looking for him, he had vanished from Ciudad
Juarez with his pregnant wife.

Authorities in Durango arrested Guardado a few days later. Guardado later claimed that he was beaten by
police on arrival in Ciudad Juarez; the officers countered with claims that Guardado confessed to multiple
murders and named four accomplices. The other men in custody were: Victor Moreno Rivera (El Narco),
Augustin Toribio Castillo (El Kiani), Bernardo Hernando Fernandez (El Samber) and Jose Gaspar
Cerballos Chavez (El Gaspy). All were maquiladora bus drivers, collectively dubbed Los Choferes ("The
Chauffeurs"). Police claimed that Moreno was the ringleader of the rape-murder team, collaborating with
Abdel Sharif in another copycat scheme intended to spring Sharif from prison.

Charged with a total of 20 murders, all the Los Choferes denied any role in the crimes. They said that
there confinement was brutal, that they had been beaten, choked and shocked with electricity. It was the
torture, they said, that accounted for their incriminating statements. The statements could not be trusted
because they were given under duress. Sharif, for his part, denied any contact with Los Choferes and
maintained his innocence.
While police were convinced of their latest conspiracy theory, the facts contradicted the theory. The media
reported in May 1999 that "nearly 200 women" had been murdered since 1993--a substantial jump over
October 1998's body count of at least 117. Retired FBI profiler Robert Ressler had already come and gone
from Ciudad Juarez, leaving more questions than answers in his wake. A team of active-duty G-men also
tried their luck at profiling the Juarez Ripper, with no success. Steve Salter, the Mexican official who
enlisted the FBI's help, told the Dallas Morning News, "These homicides are up to a point where we have
to do whatever is possible to resolve it."

With another desert summer approaching, police and civilians alike feared that the situation would only get
worse.

"The Disappeared"

Theories flourished in Ciudad Juarez as the death toll continued to climb through 1999 and 2000.
Press reports from the summer of 1999 typically offered body counts between 180 and 190, sometimes
coupled with a reminder that "at least 95 women" were still missing. Chihuahua authorities claimed that
FBI agents had endorsed their conviction of Abdel Sharif, while El Paso G-men indignantly denied it.

Candice Skrapec

And there were other investigators. Candice Skrapec, a Canadian-born instructor at California State
University in Fresno and a "world-renowned expert on serial killers" spent the summer of 1999 advising
Mexican authorities. She had followed the case for more than a decade and had already reached some
conclusions. In July 1987 Skrapec told the Toronto Star that "Railway Killer" Rafael Resendez-Ramirez,
lately posted to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list on suspicion of multiple murders in the U.S., was also a
suspect in the slaughter around Ciudad Juarez. A month later, Skrapec told the Star that she believed "at
least three serial killers are involved in the unsolved murders of 182 women in Juarez" since 1993.
Resendez-Ramirez was still on the list, along with Sharif, Los Rebeldes and Los Choferes. Having thus
identified no less than 11 suspects, Skrapec went on to say that "there may be even more murders that
could be tied to the three suspected serial killers, and that they were operating in 1992." Finally, Skrapec
claimed that "of the 182 total deaths, 40 to 75 had been sexually violated."

Rafael Resendez-Ramirez

Rafael Resendez-Ramirez was later cleared of involvement in the Chihuahua slayings, which continued
nonstop after he was arrested. A new mystery surfaced in December 1999, with discovery of a mass grave
outside Ciudad Juarez, initially thought to contain as many as 100 decomposing corpses. In fact, it yielded
only nine, including three U.S. citizens. The fact that U.S. citizens were among the dead prompted an
entirely new line of inquiry. "Still a mystery," the Dallas Morning News declared, "is what happened to
nearly 200 people, including 22 U.S. citizens who, in many cases, vanished after being detained by men
with Mexican police uniforms or credentials."

Gonzalez Rascon, Attorney General for the State of Chihuahua

Those vanished persons, collectively dubbed Los Desaparecidos ("the disappeared"), were still missing a
year after the mass grave's discovery, despite joint investigations by Mexican and U.S. authorities. Some
were thought to be casualties of the drug wars that periodically rock Ciudad Juarez, but apparent police
involvement in the kidnappings rekindled suspicion. An El Paso-based organization, the Association of
Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, kept pressure on Chihuahua authorities to recover the
missing, so far without result.

Even then, no one spoke for the murdered and missing maquilladoras. Another year would pass before
any protests were organized on their behalf.

By that time, some sources would claim that the body count had doubled.

Outcry

The advent of a new millennium did nothing to relieve the Ciudad Juarez's ordeal. On Tuesday and
Wednesday, November 6-7, 2001, skeletal remains of eight more women were found in a vacant lot 300
yards from the Association of Maquiladoras headquarters, a group representing most of the city's U.S.-
owned export assembly plants. Police announced creation of a special task force to investigate the
murders, with a $21,500 reward offered for capture of the killer(s), but the new display of energy consoled
no one.

Gustavo Gonzalez Meza & Javier (aka Victor J.) Garcia Uribe

The latest victims were still unidentified on November 10, when Chihuahua officials announced the arrest
of two 28-year-old bus drivers, Javier Garcia Uribe and Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, on charges of killing the
eight women found three days earlier. Fernando Medina, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, claimed
both men "belong to a gang whose members are serving time for at least 20 of the rape-murders," and that
they had identified the victims found on November 6-7 by name. Police named the dead as 19-year-old
Maria Acosta, 20-year-old Claudia Gonzales, 15-year-old Esmerelda Herrera, 20-year-old Guadalupe
Luna, 20-year-old Barbara Martinez, 19-year-old Veronica Martinez (no relation to Barbara), 17-year-old
Laura Ramos, and 17-year-old Mayra Reyes.
(From top left)Claudia Gonzalez & Guadalupe Luna & Mayra Reyes Solis & Laura Ramos Monarrez,
victims

The suspects, meanwhile, declared that any statements they had made were products of torture. Their
lawyers received death threats, and one of them--Mario Escobedo Jr.--was killed by police in a high-speed
chase on February 5, 2002, after officers allegedly "mistook him for a fugitive." (In June 2002 a judge
declared the shooting to be "self-defense.") Eleven weeks later, on April 22, police grudgingly confessed
that DNA tests had failed to confirm any of their early victim identifications. Waffling again on November 5,
2002, prosecutors declared that new DNA tests had apparently confirmed the identity of Veronica
Martinez, while yielding no results on the other seven. (Gonzalez died on February 8, 2003, allegedly from
complications arising after surgery in jail.)

The Garcia-Gonzalez arrests--bringing the total of suspects in custody to 51 by some reports--had no

apparent effect on the murder activity. Ten days after Garcia and Gonzalez were jailed, another young
woman was found stripped and beaten to death in Ciudad Juarez. Six days after the "accidental" death of
attorney Escobedo, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights dispatched Marta Altolaguirre to
investigate reports that would-be protesters around the city were harassed and threatened by police. The
new publicity moved Mexican President Vincente Fox to order a new investigation by "federal crime
specialists." Local prosecutors, resentful of that move, protested to the Dallas Morning News that "27 of
the 76 cases" were solved, while "the other killings involving women have been isolated incidents."

Vincente Fox, President of Mexico

Global publicity only shortened tempers in Ciudad Juarez. On March 9, 2002, Texas state legislators
joined in a binational protest march through El Paso. Jorge Campos Murillo, a federal deputy attorney
general in Mexico City, stirred reporters when he claimed that some of the slayings were committed by
"juniors"--sons of wealthy Mexican families whose money and connections had spared them from
prosecution. (Shortly after making those remarks, Campos was transferred to another job and refused all
interviews.) The FBI resumed its investigation in October 2002. Their profiling efforts have been fruitless
so far.

Ciudad Juarez's civic leaders remain keenly focused on business. After a large wooden cross was erected
near the border, as a memorial to the murdered and missing women, Major Jesus Delgado received an
angry letter from the Association of Business Owners and Professionals of Juarez Avenue, complaining
that the display was "a horrible image for tourism."

The same day that letter was written, on September 23, 2002, police found two more women's corpses in
Ciudad Juarez. One victim was strangled and partially disrobed; police claimed the other had died of a
drug overdose. But special investigator David Rodriguez was "skeptical" of that determination. Another
young woman, apparently beaten to death, was found on October 8.

Mourner-protest, women march in black

The year ended badly for image-conscious merchants in Ciudad Juarez. Mexico's first lady, Sahagun de
Fox, publicly called for an end to the murders on November 25 as more than a thousand black-garbed
women marched through Mexico City, protesting the sluggish investigation.

Detectives, meanwhile, had no shortage of suspects. In fact, they had too many--and some of them were
policemen.

Muerte

By January 2003 published estimates of the body count ranged from "nearly 100" to 340. No one tried
to tabulate the missing anymore. The number of suspects was anyone's guess. Some additional suspects
were speculated about in press reports, including:

Angel Resendez-Ramirez - Awaiting execution in Texas, he remains a candidate for some of the
Chihuahua murders. Both Candice Skrapec and profiler Robert Ressler have named him.

Pedro Padilla Flores - A former resident of Ciudad Juarez, convicted in 1986 for the rape-murders of two
women and a 13-year-old girl. He confessed to other slayings but was not charged. Padilla escaped from
custody in 1991 and remains at large.

Armando Martinez (AKA "Alejandro Maynez") - Arrested in 1992 for the murder of a woman in Chihuahua
City, he was "accidentally" released and subsequently vanished (along with his police file). Murder
defendant Ana Benavides, accused of killing and dismembering a Ciudad Juarez couple and their child in
1998, claims Martinez committed the triple-murder and framed her for his crime.

Carlos Cardenas Cruz and Jorge Garcia Paz Former Mexican federal agents turned fugitives, they are
sought for questioning in the 1998 disappearance of 29-year-old Silvia Arce and 24-year-old Griselda
Mares, who was allegedly killed by police in a "mistaken" dispute concerning stolen guns.

Pedro Valles - He was assigned to investigate the Ciudad Juarez murders when he killed his girlfriend at
the state police academy in 1998. He remains a fugitive.

Dagoberto Ramirez - Another Ciudad Juarez policeman, fired in 1999 after he was accused of murdering
his lover. Ramirez was released after he claimed that the woman had committed suicide. Police officials
did not reinstate him.
Julio Rodriquez Valenzuela - The former police chief of suburban El Sauzal, accused in April 1999 of
attempting to rape a 16-year-old girl near the site of two previous murders. Chihuahua authorities report
that he fled "to El Paso or New Mexico," and he remains at large.

Sergio Hernandez Pereda - A Chihuahua state policeman until 1997, he fled the next year shortly after his
wife was murdered. He remains a fugitive.

Melchor Baca A former federal policeman who has been on the lam for eight years. He fled after killing a
male friend of his wife at the courthouse where they both worked.

Also rushing to fill the vacuum are the conspiracy theories. Among them:

Satanic cults - Reviving memories of the drug-cult murders committed by followers of Adolfo Constanzo at
Matamoros in the 1980s, some Chihuahua residents profess to see an occult hand at work.

Organ harvesters - An urban myth echoed in a few movies and novels, it has grisly resonance in Ciudad
Juarez. Rumors claim that vital organs were removed from some of the victims.

The Police - At least ten women in Ciudad Juarez have accused police officers of kidnapping and sexual
assault in the past five years. No charges have been filed. But investigators do say they suspect an
unnamed policeman in the 1995 murders of 29-year-old Elizabeth Gomez and 27-year-old Laura Inere.

Drug cartels - Authorities suspect that some of Chihuahua's murdered and missing women were addicts or
small-time smugglers, executed because they "knew too much." An FBI report last November blamed
unnamed narco-traffickers for the February 2001 torture slaying of 17-year-old Lilia Garcia, found 100
yards from the spot where eight other victims were discovered in November 2002.

Wealthy sadists - Some lawmen still blame the murders on "a cabal of rich and powerful men" whose
wealth makes them untouchable by the police.

As for Abdel Sharif, "problems with evidence" in the case of Elizabeth Garcia won him a judicial review in
February 2003. The murder conviction was upheld, but Sharif's 30-year sentence was cut to 20. Both sides
vowed to appeal the ruling, and prosecutors claimed that Sharif might be charged with additional murders.

Despite all the suspects, all the conspiracies, all the reassuring words from public officials, it is clear that
the case is nowhere near resolution. The only thing that will come from this state of affairs is more bodies
in the desert.

Boy holds candle for murdered women

Muerte
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