Families, Officials Claim Cover-Ups Keep Killings From Being Solved
By Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
JUAREZ - Josefina Gonzales clung to the white overalls and wept.
Found during a search of the area where her daughter's body had been discovered almost four months earlier, the overalls were solid evidence to her that officials don't care who killed 20-year-old Claudia Ivette.
Solid evidence that whoever killed her daughter and as many as 89 other women and girls in Juárez may never be brought to justice. Thought to be serial murders, these are the most notorious of the 325 cases of slain women in this border city during the past nine years.
"Someone rich and powerful has to be involved in my daughter's murder," she said.
"I'm not an investigator, but only someone like that can keep getting away with this," Gonzales said. She is among the many victims' relatives and human-rights advocates who have lashed out at a justice system they say has turned a blind eye to what experts say is a growing string of serial killings.
They are not alone in their beliefs. Critics say the investigations have been stymied by cover-ups, contaminated evidence, witness intimidation and a corrupt system of incompetent officials eager to charge someone and declare the cases solved.
They point to the discoveries of evidence at the scene months after the police said their search was over.
"It's incredible that the authorities would leave behind so many items at the site, like women's underwear, shoes and clumps of human hair," said El Pasoan Victor Munoz of the Coalition on Violence Against Women and Families on the Border, one of the volunteers who took part in the Feb. 24 sweep. "They did not do a good job."
Chihuahua state authorities have denied that corruption and police intimidation have ground the investigation into the killings to a halt. Those in charge said the investigations have stopped because the cases are solved.
"The state police conducted a professional investigation. I have no doubt about that," said Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, who was Chihuahua state attorney general when the bodies of eight women, including that of Claudia Gonzales, were discovered in November 2001.
Guillermina Gonzalez Flores, whose 17-year-old sister, Sagrario, was found dead April 1998, was not satisfied either. "Our family believes a true investigation needs to take place ... we are skeptical that my sister's death has been solved."
Her sister's body was found near Zaragoza almost two weeks after she was reported missing. She was raped, strangled and mutilated. Like about a third of the serial-killing victims, she was a maquiladora worker. One in five of all the murder victims was a maquiladora worker.
Some allegations of police incompetence and corruption have come from people who served in the upper levels of Mexican law enforcement.
Former forensic chief Oscar Maynez Grijalva worked on the most-recent multiple-grave case - the eight women whose bodies were found in November.
He quit his job Jan. 2, saying he was disgusted and shamed by how the investigation was being handled.
"We were asked to help plant evidence against two bus drivers who were charged with the murders," Maynez said. "A couple of police officers brought us items for us to put in the van they said was used to abduct the women. We had already checked the van and another vehicle belonging to the suspects for such things as human hair, fibers and blood, anything that could link the two suspects to the victims. We even conducted a Luminol test for traces of blood that might have been wiped off. We found nothing. The van was clean."
Maynez declined to name the officers involved, but said he gave the information to his supervisors.
Chihuahua state Deputy Attorney General Jose Ortega Aceves denied the charge.
"As far as I know, no one asked (Maynez) to plant evidence," he said. "The suspects (two bus drivers who contend they were tortured) confessed to the murders, and that is an important part of the investigation."
Maynez said that since his assertions of corruption, he has received threats. He would not elaborate.
Worse yet, Maynez said, was that he first warned police in 1994 that a serial killer could be at work. At the time, he was a staff criminologist with the Chihuahua state attorney general's office. Maynez said his experience has led him to believe some police are involved in the slayings.
Ortega's response: "We are willing to investigate any of these allegations if the proof is presented to us."
In January, Jorge Campos Murillo, a federal deputy attorney general in Mexico City, told reporters that "juniors" - sons of wealthy Mexican families - allegedly were connected to killings involving sex and torture.
Campos said then that he requested the FBI's help through the Mexican consul's office in El Paso. A couple of weeks later, Campos was transferred to another section of the federal attorney general's office, and he no longer answers questions about the Juárez cases.
Other Mexican federal law-enforcement officials alleged further that six people from the Juárez-El Paso region and Tijuana are having women abducted for orgies and then killed. The suspects allegedly are prominent men who cross the border regularly, are involved in major businesses, are associates of drug cartels and have ties to politicians in President Vicente Fox's administration.
Gabriela Lopez, spokeswoman for the federal attorney general's office in Mexico City, gave only a brief response to the Mexican officials' allegations that powerful people were implicated:
"These cases do not fall under (federal) jurisdiction ... the Chihuahua state attorney general's office is handling the cases."
Liliana Herrera, the seventh Chihuahua state special prosecutor assigned to investigate the murders, has vowed to "check into any leads, no matter who they point to."
Chihuahua state officials acknowledged that they are looking into a high-profile suspect whom they would not identify because it involves a pending investigation.
Herrera said her predecessors sent the federal attorney general's office certified copies of 31 murder files that state officials said should be investigated by federal police.
"It's been several months, and we have not received an answer from the (federal attorney general's office) on what it plans to do with the cases we sent them," she said.
FBI officials and former FBI profiler Robert Ressler said the serial slayings appear to be the work of one or more killers who take advantage of the border to avoid detection. That means the killer or killers could be living in El Paso.
But despite promises from people as powerful as Fox that the FBI's full assistance would be sought, the Mexican federal government has yet to solicit that help.
In 1999, Mexican officials asked for the FBI's help, but Chihuahua state authorities at the time rejected the FBI profilers' preliminary findings.
Texas state Rep. Norma Chávez, D-El Paso, is among the U.S. officials who suspect a cover-up.
"The fact that (Mexican authorities) don't want the FBI to help makes people wonder if they are protecting someone," she said.
Chávez, Texas state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, and New Mexico state Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Do–a Ana, are among those who are calling for a binational investigation into the killings.
Frank Evans, former El Paso FBI assistant special agent in charge, coordinated the FBI profilers' visits to Ju'rez in 1999. They became involved at the request of then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.
"Over 60 separate homicides were thoroughly reviewed by the team brought in from Quantico," said Evans, who is now retired. "The written and oral reports of the profilers were provided to the (Chihuahua state) investigators, but were dismissed as not fitting the established theory of the case. Recommendations as to strategies to locate the killer or killers were not followed up, and the effort faded."
"We have received anonymous tips from the public that we are pursuing, and we welcome any information about the murders from any source," Herrera said. "This is my commitment to the community."
But others have given up. As early as 1999, Mexico City criminologists Oscar Defassioux, a law-enforcement veteran, and Dr. Eduardo Muriel said they concluded that it was impossible to investigate the homicides in Juárez because of official corruption.
"We were invited by the Chihuahua authorities to help, but we soon discovered that police were blocking our work, and it was because police were involved in some of the murders, or were protecting someone who was killing the women," Defassioux said. Chihuahua special prosecutor Suly Ponce said the criminologists' allegations "are only their opinions."
Ponce now works for the Chihuahua state governor's office in Juárez.
On June 17, Herrera was reassigned and Angela Talavera Lozoya was named the new special prosecutor.
Nahum Najera Castro, the ex-Chihuahua state deputy attorney general who oversaw the cases from October 1998 to March 1999, said, "Officials lack the will, the capacity and the honesty to solve the crimes."
Former forensic chief Maynez is frustrated:
"I told the officials in charge at the time (1994) that the homicides warranted special attention, because the deaths would continue if they did not act quickly."
Maynez said he notified former deputy attorney general Jorge Lopez Molinar, former homicide investigator chief Javier Benavides and former state police academy chief Jorge Ostos. He contends he got no response.
"If they had investigated sooner, they would have caught the killer or killers, and who knows how many lives they might have saved," Maynez said.
Copyright 2002 El Paso Times