Suspect in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez Serial Killings Arrested in Dallas
The San Antonio Express News reported that law enforcement officials said a man arrested here on a 1996 murder warrant will be questioned by Mexican authorities in connection with the slayings of dozens of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Dallas County deputies arrested Jose Juarez Rosales, 24, on an unrelated charge Th[ursday morning (2/22/01) at an apartment here where he lived with his sister, sheriff's investigator Don Peritz Jr. said according to the San Antonio Express News.
He said the arrest came after officials with the Mexican attorney general's office in San Antonio notified them late Wednesday that a man named in a 1996 Mexican warrant charging him with rape, murder and kidnapping might be living in Dallas.
Hector Davalos, a representative of the Mexican attorney general's office in the Alamo City, told the San Antonio Express-News that Juarez Rosales only had been charged in one of the slayings but that he was being investigated in connection with many other sexual assaults and killings.
The sprawling border city next to El Paso was terrorized for years by what authorities feared was a serial killer.
"We don't really know for sure. As soon as he arrives (in Mexico), we will be looking at all the other cases and see if he is linked to any, as many as dozens perhaps," he said. "For now all we have is a man who has been a fugitive for four years suspected in the slaying and rape of a young woman."
Davalos told the San Antonio Express News that the office in San Antonio had been working with law enforcement officials in Dallas for several months in coordinating information learned about Juarez Rosales.
He said Mexican investigators gathered much of the information and relayed it to Dallas officials, who in turn, made the apprehension.
Davalos said he doesn't anticipate any problems in extraditing Juarez Rosales to Mexico.
Juarez Rosales was arrested after Dallas County authorities checked records and found they had a bond forfeiture warrant for a man with the same name and birthday.
Once in custody, Peritz said, Juarez Rosales' fingerprints matched those of the man wanted in the Mexican warrant.
"He's a suspect in multiple sexual assaults, murders and possible dismemberments," Peritz said.
The bond forfeiture warrant was for failure to appear in county court last year on a DWI charge, Peritz said.
Victor Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office, told the El Paso Times that Juarez Rosales "is believed to be a member of the Rebeldes (Rebels) gang, which was accused in 1996 of killing and raping at least seven women."
Through a translator, Sara Rosales, the sister of Juarez Rosales, said she believes authorities "are mistaken."
Sara Rosales blamed her brother's arrest on confusion on the part of Mexican authorities.
The 30-year-old sister said her mother still has the paperwork from the previous investigation that proves his innocence.
Juarez Rosales had been released from Chihuahua police custody in 1996 after a Mexican judge determined there wasn't enough evidence to hold him, the newspaper reported.
Mexican authorities appealed the ruling, and a different judge issued a new arrest warrant for him.
"Now I'm nervous about how they're going to treat him here," Rosales said in Spanish through a translator. "We have faith in God that all is going to come out OK because our mother has all the papers."
Juarez Rosales also faced charges he was in this country illegally, Peritz said. A few hours after Juarez Rosales was arrested, a judge in Dallas dismissed the DWI case and Juarez Rosales was handed over to the custody of INS officers.
(More than 200 women have been killed in Juarez since 1993. Authorities say many of the killings were related to drugs, gangs or domestic violence. But at least 64 of the women were raped, and many of those matched a similar profile: young, thin, dark-skinned workers at maquiladoras -- U.S.- and foreign-owned factories.)
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