Men Detained in Juarez Serial-Killing Cases
Two men in Ciudad Juárez have been detained in relation to three of that city's approximately 93 serial-murders of young women. However, allegations of torture, the alleged detainment of the men's families, widely-unaccepted theories about organ theft and the fact that the men are being linked to bodies for which another man is being prosecuted has created much questioning of the investigation in the Ciudad Juárez press.
Arrested on Saturday, April 12, 2003 was Miguel Angel Vázquez Villegas, age 29, who was identified in the El Paso Times as a T-shirt salesman. On Tuesday, April 15, Hernaldo Valles Contreras, age 39, an ironworker, was arrested. In the federal case against the men, it is stated that Vázquez told law enforcement that Valles was the intellectual author of the killings.
Family members detained
According to the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario, on Wednesday, April 16, Vázquez's wife and two children were brought by law enforcement agents to the police academy where the two men were being held. Other members of Vázquez's family did not know where the wife and children were located so they filed a complaint with state law enforcement. On Friday, April 18, the extended family found out that Vázquez's wife, Sandra Mayela Almeida Baray, age 25, and two sons, ages 5 and 6, were being held at the police academy. At 5:30 p.m. on that same day Almeida and her sons were released.
The police academy in Cd. Juárez is where the Office of the Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of Women’s Homicides moved its offices in March 2003. In previous years, one man in Cd. Juárez claimed that he was taken to the academy where he was tortured to confess to a crime.
Allegations of torture
At the police academy, Almeida said her husband told her that he was tortured into naming Valles as the intellectual author of the killings. Almeida stated that she was not treated badly at the academy and that officers had told her that she was free to leave at any time but that they could not guarantee her safety if she left the building.
Although the men are being detained at a state police facility, the case against the two men is being made by the federal Specialized Unit against Organized Crime (Unidad Especializada contra la Delincuencia Organizada, UEDO). According to federal investigator Rolando Alvarado, part of the case UEDO/176/2003 looks at the possibility of human organ trafficking.
Allegedly under torture, Vázquez declared before federal investigators that Valles gave him a gray Pontiac with which to grab women from the city center and take them to Valles' home. Later, he testified he used the same vehicle to dump the bodies of women in the cotton field at the intersection of two avenues, Ejército Nacional and Paseo de la Victoria.
Tie to past cases?
It was in this same field that eight bodies were discovered in November 2001. However, two men, Víctor García Uribe and Gustavo Gónzalez Meza, were charged with all of these murders. Both men said they were tortured into confessing. Meza died in February 2003 after hernia surgery under what some Cd. Juárez activists and lawyers saw as suspicious circumstances.
García said he named González as an accomplice while under torture but that González was innocent of the killings. González's lawyer, Mario César Escobedo Anaya, was shot to death by state police officers in February 2002, also under suspicious circumstances which included allegations of evidence tampering by police. Charges against the officers were later dropped.
Trying to clear up the apparent confusion about the bodies in the cotton field, Manuel Esparza, the spokesperson for the Office of the Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of Women’s Homicides, said that none of the eight bodies found in the cotton field are related to the federal case. The federal case has to do with three bodies that have yet to be found, he stated. Esparza also said that his office investigates the serial killings of women in Cd. Juárez while federal investigators are only looking at organ trafficking. However, he stated that the two cases may be found to be related in the future.
Doubt cast on organ transplant theories?
Carlos Gastón Ramírez García, the president of the Chihuahua transplant council, called the organ trafficking theory unbelievable and absurd. A criminal would not have within reach the necessary medical equipment and team that would be necessary to traffic in human organs, he stated. Ramírez also stated that at a minimum, a successful transplant needs a specialized surgeon, a transplant specialist, a team of at least ten other medical specialists, sophisticated equipment, compatibility studies from the donor and the receiver, a blood bank and intensive care. He also stated that a heart must be transplanted in eight hours, a liver in six, and a kidney in 24.
An article in the El Paso Times on April 21 about the arrests noted that "rumors of organ trafficking frequently sweep parts of rural Mexico," and that such rumors have resulted in the lynching of people by mobs.
Found athttp://frontera.nmsu.edu/today.html