Who Is Killing the Women of Juarez?

J U A R E Z, Mexico, Jan. 30 -- Someone is raping and killing the young women of Juarez, and leaving their bodies in the desert to rot.

Hundreds of young women have disappeared from the Mexican border city since 1993 — many of them teenagers who came to Juarez to work in the town's foreign-owned factories, known as "maquilladoras."

The official toll is 260 women killed since 1993, but local women's groups believe the actual number is more than 400. Many of the victims — the Chihuahua state government says 76 — have the hallmarks of serial killings: they were raped, some had their hands tied or their hair cut or their breasts mutilated. Bodies have been found with their heads crushed or even driven over by a car. The killers appear to prey on a certain type of young woman: slim with big brown eyes and long brown hair. Most of the victims are assaulted on their way home from work.

Downtown first went to Juarez to report on the murders in 1998. Since then, the killing has continued, with more than 70 new victims, according to activists critical of the authorities' handling of the crimes. And, the groups say, the killings are getting more brutal.

"Each time, the girls are more tortured," activist Vicky Caraveo told Downtown's John Quiñones in an interview airing tonight.

New Bodies

Last November the 1.3 million residents of Juarez got a brutal reminder of the killings when police discovered eight more bodies near a busy intersection two miles from the city center. Four of the bodies were found in a cotton field and four in a nearby ditch.

One of the victims was Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, a 20-year-old factory worker who had disappeared a few weeks earlier. Her family recognized her remains by the white blouse she had been wearing and the white rubber bands still holding her pony tail. "It was pure bones... just a skeleton," her mother Josefina Gonzalez told Downtown.

Just a few days after the bodies were found, Juarez police arrested two bus drivers, who they said confessed to raping and killing the eight women and three others. Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, the attorney general of Chihuahua, the state that includes Juarez, triumphantly told the newspapers, "Our investigation has concluded the sad episode."