Suspect Says Women In Juarez Killed For Their Organs
by Mark Stevenson/Associated Press
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - In what seems more like an old horror movie script than a confession, a man in this rough border city told prosecutors he was hired to lure young women to a comfortable suburban home where they were killed for their organs.
Now a protected witness, the suspect told federal authorities he wrapped the dissected bodies of the women in blood-soaked sheets, snuck them out of the bathroom of the Juarez home and buried them in vacant lots.
He reportedly told police he was aghast at what he found when he removed the sheets before burial.
"The girls were all cut up. They were opened. And they didn't have any internal organs left," two people familiar with the man's confession quote him as saying.
It's the latest and perhaps the strangest theory yet in the bid to explain the decade-long series of murders of at least 90 young women in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Odd as it may seem, the theory was enough to lead the federal attorney general's office to announce that it was taking over the cases of 14 of the slain women because it had evidence two suspects may have targeted the victims for their organs.
Federal investigators couldn't take over any Juarez investigations when they involved simple murder, a state offense. Organ trafficking is punishable under federal statutes, however.
The suspect who provided the gruesome testimony is a former bricklayer and T-shirt vendor whom prosecutors will only identify with an alias.
He said he took at least three victims to the home of a second man, a 29-year-old factory manager. He said he left them at the home alive, but came back the next day to collect their corpses, whose organs had been removed.
But the factory manager's brother called the testimony "absurd."
"They have presented absolutely no evidence," said Armando Valles, who recounted details of the case that were later corroborated by his brother's lawyer, Hector Villasana. "It's impossible."
Rumors of organ trafficking have long circulated in Mexico. Five years ago in central Hidalgo state, two Mexican men were beaten and killed by a crowd enraged by rumors they were stealing children's livers for a man in Texas.
The rumors have always proved baseless. But federal prosecutors say there is new evidence that "behind the apparently sexual motivation in many of the killings, there was another hidden motive."
That evidence led them to take part of the investigation over from state police. They claim the women were killed by a gang of criminals and bus drivers led by an Egyptian-born chemist who has been convicted of the killings - and in jail for over seven years.
Human rights advocates and family members of the victims have never quite believed that theory, but they are also doubtful of this new line of investigation.
"I don't believe it," says Benita Monarrez, whose daughter Laura Ramos, 17, was killed in 2001 and is among the 14 victims who may have been hunted for their organs. "You can't perform that kind of thing in the bathroom of a house."
Two doctors who have autopsied the bodies of the victims are also dubious.
"This sounds like something out of a movie or science fiction," said Dr. Enrique Silva Perez, who during two decades as assistant head of forensics in Ciudad Juarez has examined most of the bodies in the Juarez slayings.
Like Perez, forensic examiner Dr. Maria Carmen Sanchez - who examined the most recently discovered bodies - says she has never seen a body with physical evidence of organ trafficking.
"This requires a great deal of infrastructure and medical expertise," Silva Perez said of harvesting, preserving and transporting live organs. "I don't believe many people have access to that."
Federal prosecutors are acutely aware of how vulnerable they are to criticism. During 10 years of running the investigation, state officials have been accused of torturing confessions out of suspects and ignoring evidence that could help solve the crimes.
"The public has a feeling of distrust, and they have a thousand reasons to feel that way," said Hector Garcia Rodriguez, the mild-mannered, plainspoken head of the federal Justice Department in northern Chihuahua state.
He also acknowledges "there was a lot of public pressure for us to take over the investigation."
Little physical evidence has been produced to support any of the conspiracy theories. Most importantly, the murders have not stopped.
But Garcia Rodriguez notes there is evidence - "statements from many people, and some evidence we are developing" - to support the idea that some form of organized crime was involved in the killings.
The slayings have also always appeared sexual, not medical, in nature. The victims have all been young, slender women strangled and left half-clothed in the desert, often with their underwear pulled down along their legs or their bras around their necks.
To date, the physical evidence in the organ-trafficking theory is slim. A cellular phone that belonged to one victim was found in the possession of a prostitute, who said it had been given to her by one of the suspects.
Since most of the victims were mere skeletons by the time they were found, it is hard to determine if their organs were intact.
Federal officials here say they are only investigating the possibility of organ trafficking and have not ruled out other motives.
Armando Valles and many others believe the organ trafficking charges were simply an excuse for federal officials to step in and examine other possible angles, like pornography or drugs.
"The feds needed an excuse to take over this case, which has been so badly handled," Valles says. "This is their excuse."
Copyright 2003 thestatesman.com/Associated Press