Investigation of Multiple Murders Now Includes 2 El Paso Men
EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- A long-standing investigation into the killings of dozens of women across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, now includes two El Paso men, the El Paso Times reported Sunday in a copyright story.
The newspaper said the two men emerged as suspects largely because of psychological profiles.
"These men are suspects, and we are investigating them," interim El Paso Police Chief J.R. Grijalva said Saturday, declining to identify them because it might jeopardize the investigation.
Manuel Esparza, a state prosecutor in Chihuahua, Mexico, said the two suspects are ex-convicts and fit the profile of people who may be involved in multiple slayings.
The string of deaths that dates to 1993 follows a gruesome pattern. Many, but not all, of the victims were raped, strangled and dumped in remote areas of Juarez. Several were maquiladora workers in their teens or early 20s.
The exact number of victims isn't known. While Mexican officials put the number of the unsolved murders of girls and women in Juarez at 95, advocacy groups like Mujeres por Juarez (Women for Juarez) say the number is closer to 130 to 150.
Theories on who's behind the deaths have ranged from one or more serial killers to copycat killers to gangs.
Esparza believes one person probably did not commit the murders because of differences among the cases.
"Two or three of the victims lived in El Paso and New Mexico," he said. "Not all the victims were sexually abused. Some were gang-related. Others were overdoses. There are patterns in some of the cases and none in others."
But others disagree.
Richard Ressler, a former criminologist with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, says he thinks a serial killer probably committed the murders, perhaps capitalizing on the easy access to the U.S.-Mexico border. Ressler, who operates a private criminology firm in Virginia, talked to the Mexican investigators about the cases earlier this year.
Authorities have made some progress in some of the cases.
In 1996, Mexican police arrested Egyptian national Sharif Halil Sharif, a chemist, and several members of a gang known as Los Rebeldes (the Rebels), in connection with 17 of the deaths.
Police accused Sharif of raping and strangling women the gang members had procured for him. Authorities said people had seen Sharif with some of the victims shortly before they disappeared.
Sharif denied the charges or any link to the gang. At one time, he was charged with two of the killings, but Judge Netzahualcoyotl Zuniga ruled there was insufficient evidence to try him in the deaths of Olga Carrillo Perez and Silvia Morales Rivera.
Sharif is in the CeReSo prison in Juarez as a suspect, and the deaths have continued. Police said after Sharif was jailed last October on the rape charge, he paid gang members to continue raping and killing other women to deflect suspicion from himself.
Eight reputed gang members currently are on trial for seven of the killings.
Esparza said U.S. "law enforcement units are helping a great deal," especially in "the areas of identification, handwriting, criminal history and administration of polygraph tests."
In addition to the El Paso Police Department, Mexican investigators are getting help from the El Paso County Sheriff's Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Copyright 1998 Associated Press