Shoddy Probe Torments Kin of Mexican Murder Victims
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) -- All Rosaura Montanes was allowed to see of her murdered daughter was half a foot. Another grieving mother was given the runaround by bungling police who dug up the wrong grave to check the identity of her strangled daughter.
More than 300 women have been killed in the past decade in Ciudad Juarez, an industrial sprawl bordering Texas, in a murder spree that has drawn international outrage and seen few convicted for the crimes.
Montanes' 19-year-old daughter Esmeralda was found bludgeoned and strangled on July 3, 1995, a few blocks from their home. Without letting her see more than part of the foot, officials -- possibly trying to cover up crudely done autopsies -- pressured Montanes at the morgue to claim the body they said belonged to her daughter and bury it quickly.
"I thought how am I going to recognize my daughter by her toes?" said Montanes, her eyes ringed with dark circles. "But I thought if I didn't identify her then they'd throw her in a common grave. I would regret it if I found out it was her."
Montanes has stayed in Ciudad Juarez, hoping that the body in the morgue was not Esmeralda and that one day her daughter might return. She has kept all her daughter's clothes at her heavily barred home in a middle class district.
Under pressure after highly publicized visits to the city by the United Nations and U.S. lawmakers in past months, President Vicente Fox has appointed a special commissioner to oversee efforts to stop the killings and improve the flawed investigation.
Relatives have become increasingly vocal in their accusations of gross police negligence, corruption and inefficiency in the city, home to a vicious drug cartel and numerous factories employing mostly young women.
Now, the police probe is focusing on forensic methods in an effort to track down the killers and identify as yet unnamed victims.
Chihuahua state police are creating a DNA bank and have invested in state-of-the-art forensic laboratories, as well as receiving training from the FBI. Past cases are being reviewed.
But rights campaigners are skeptical whether anything has really changed. Esther Chavez, founder of the Casa Amiga rape crisis center, said police announced recently they had misidentified a girl they found dead in February.
"And who is that girl? If they do such poor investigations how can we have any trust?" asked Chavez.
Wrong grave
But of 100 of the murders that involve rape, just four men have been convicted, according to state police.
Serial killers, gangs or even well-connected prominent local men out for sport are thought to be behind the crimes.
Local investigators recognize the early probe was shoddy.
Crime scene investigator Hector Hawley at the special prosecution unit for women's murders opened a slim file from 1996 to show a photo of a mutilated woman's corpse.
"Look, the agents are treading around her on crucial evidence. They shouldn't be there."
Since the unit was established in 1998, forensic practices have become more careful, he said.
Paula Flores, who lives in the shanty town of Lomas de Poleo where several girls have been killed, doesn't agree.
Her daughter Sagrario, 17, was snatched on April 16, 1998, heading home from work at a factory. Her stabbed and strangled corpse was found in the desert 14 days later.
In September 1998, Flores' hopes were raised when she received a letter saying DNA evidence indicated the body was not her daughter's. Investigators said they had exhumed the body to re-check the DNA, but when the family went to Sagrario's grave, it was intact. The wrong body had been taken.
Then in 2000, a document arrived saying the DNA was indeed a match. Now Flores doesn't know what to think.
"It may well be her but, as a mother, I had the hope she was alive when the studies came back negative," she said in a whisper, her eyes full of tears.
The new commissioner, Maria Guadalupe Morfin, is considering creating an autonomous forensic body, staffed by experts from outside Chihuahua "so there can be greater neutrality and to give greater certainty to the families."
She told Reuters government structures in the state had broken down at all levels, leading to impunity. Police treated families without respect, often blaming the victims for their own deaths.
In theory, there should be no more blunders now that methods and equipment have become more advanced. Federal police have also been sent to help with the investigation.
But Oscar Maynez, who headed Ciudad Juarez's forensic department until his resignation in 2001 over police irregularities, said the problem is not technology.
"They can have the most sophisticated equipment but if there is no honesty in the handling of evidence, it's no use."
Copyright Reuters 2003 | found at CNN