Term Paper on "Murders of the Young Women of Juarez Mexico"

Term Paper 6 pages (1930 words) Sources: 7 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Murders

It began in February 2003 when two teenage boys were walking in a remote area searching for discarded items that they could sell for some spending money and they came upon not one, not two, but three dead bodies.

They raced home and their parents called authorities who discovered the boys were telling the truth. There were three dead young women and no hint as to how they died.

So was the beginning of what later became the ongoing mystery of the many women who were murdered from Juarez, Mexico (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/).

As the medical personnel went to work removing the three bodies someone on the scene found a fourth and pointed it out.

Earlier in the fall there had also been two victims found in the area but at the time the four other bodies were found authorities refused to state that the cases could be connected.

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 Alv'drez 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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

Once the information about the discovered bodies hit the airwaves people from the outside began looking in and discovered that it was not a new phenomena. Since 1883 there had been a total of 340 dead young girls found in the immediate vicinity of the town.

The city of Ciudad Juarez is a bustling and active city that is near the border of El Paso, Texas. To this day it is difficult to get experts to agree on a body count with regard to the number of victims found over the years however, there are several hundred. At least 90 of those murdered young women have been attributed to the work of serial killer or killers. Many experts insist that it cannot all be the work of one individual however, they are at a loss to explain how they know that and how many killers they believe are involved.

It is a deep and dark mystery that has hung over the otherwise productive town for many years.

It isn't that the police have not tried to solve the case of the hundreds of murders of young females in the area. In fact they have already arrested, jailed and then released many suspects with the first one being picked up in 1995. Each time they arrest someone they go to the media and announce the exciting news that they have found the murderer and it is finally over, however, as that person is incarcerated and undergoing intensive questioning or even a trial the murders continue to happen, leaving the experts baffled and looking incompetent.

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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

While the experts cannot name suspects, they cannot provide a theory or motive as to why these hundreds of murders continue to occur, they cannot stop them from happening, there is one thing they can all agree on. There is no such thing called safety on the streets of this town for women between 15 and 25 years of age.

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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

The city's population has been called into question because of the transient nature that it has in its streets. Estimates of residents have ranged from 700,000 to 2 million. Many of those who live there are transient street people while others are passing through on their way to someplace else, however, the sheer numbers who are living within city limits at any one time make the city a busy and bustling place.

There are many issues within the city including gambling, corruption and prostitution, but there are other cities in Mexico and the U.S. with similar issues that have a much lower homicide count, so experts do not believe it is the character of the city causing the problem.

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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

The area values males over females and the conditions for many young women who arrive in the city are horrible, squalor filled and include sexual harassment on the job as well as physical threats form the men who live there.

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 Psic pata (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/).While no mutilations were recorded in Chavira's case, many subsequent victims suffered "similar" slashing wounds to their breasts (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO

Murders (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

Police do admit there were at least 16 morel women murdered by the end of that first year with at least four of them being raped before they were killed.

The cause of death is varied and includes being set on fire, being stabbed to death, being strangled and being beaten to death with blunt objects.

The bodies are found in various stages of being disrobed and they are varied in the number, type and severity of their injuries.

In 1994 authorities named what they called "possible culprits" yet arrested no one.

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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

One of the first suspects in the case was an Egyptian man named Abdel Latif Sharif. He later claimed to have been sexually abused as a boy before coming to the U.S. And then traveling to Mexico to make his home.

He soon developed a reputation for drinking and womanizing and was questioned after authorities were alerted to the fact that he had an obsessive interest in young females and a temper to match his interest.

Before coming to Mexico he was questioned several times in the states for his bizarre behavior with regard to females.

At one point in Florida he reportedly "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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

He was supposed to be deported home to Egypt but instead ended up in Mexico.

He was later convicted of one of the brutal murders in Juavez however, even while he was under handcuffs and on trial the murders continued leaving authorities baffled.

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. 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 (MURDERS of the YOUNG WOMEN of JUAREZ, MEXICO (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/)."

Authorities soon uncovered what they believed to be a plot by Sharif's associates to murder many young women while he was captured to make it appear he could not be a serial killer and that he was being wrongly accused in a witch-hunt.

The courts ruled there was… READ MORE

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