|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MEXICO:
Tracking Down the
Serial Killer of Poor, Elderly
Women
Adrián
Reyes
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - "When
someone asks how old I am, I say
I'm 15, just in case the 'little
old lady killer' is listening,"
said 78-year-old pensioner
Beatriz Juárez, her irony
masking her fear of a killer on
the loose who is blamed for the
murders of nearly 50 people in
Mexico City.
Police in the Mexican capital
acknowledge that they are
dealing with a serial killer.
According to police reports, in
1998 there were three homicides
of elderly women; from 1999 to
2002 there were two or three per
year; in 2003 the killings
climbed to 12; in 2004 they
totalled 17; and 11 have been
reported so far in 2005.
The victims are women aged 70 or
over, who live alone and belong
mainly to the poorer social
strata.
The city's office of the
attorney general has declared a
state of alert for elderly women
because of fears that the
murderer will strike again. The
police have an identikit sketch
of the killer based on witness
testimony.
According to the police, he is a
strongly-built man, 1.70 metres
tall, who dresses up as a woman
in order to win the confidence
of his victims. He is apparently
aided and abetted by a woman. He
usually passes himself off as a
nurse or a representative of
some government institution that
provides economic assistance or
health care to the elderly.
"We must not let strangers into
the house, we must avoid walking
alone in the streets, we must
not tell anybody we live alone,
and we have to join the
volunteer brigades that do the
rounds in apartment blocks,
keeping a look out," Juárez
said, repeating some of the
recommendations set forth by the
National Institute for Elderly
People.
Rosalba Bueno, head of the
Gender Project in the Department
of Psychology at the private
Iberoamerican University,
thought there was still doubt
about whether the killer is a
man or a woman. She said that
police will have great
difficulty in capturing the
murderer because they lack a
scientific method for defining
his or her psychological
profile.
Bueno, who is also studying the
case of the hundreds of women
murdered in the northern border
town of Ciudad Juárez, in the
state of Chihuahua, told IPS
that serial killers have always
existed, but that they have not
been studied in Mexico, least of
all when the victims are women,
because of gender discrimination
in the culture.
More importance has not been put
on the elderly women victims in
Mexico City and the more than
600 women killed in Ciudad
Juárez because women are
culturally marginalised, which
enables their attackers to go
unpunished, Bueno said.
An individual who kills elderly
women must have had a childhood
relationship with a woman that
deeply marked him. That's why he
now chooses his victims
according to specific physical
characteristics. He studies
them, gets involved with them,
prepares the crime scene as if
it were a stage, and then
murders them. "He is leaving
tracks so that his work may be
recognised and so that someone,
somehow, will stop him," the
psychologist added.
More than 300 police have joined
the special team of 100 agents
assigned to investigate and
solve the case. Víctor Hugo
Moneda, executive director of
the Directorate of Criminal
Investigations in the Office of
the Public Prosecutor, called on
the public to take part in
preventive measures, as he
recognised that no matter how
many police are put on the
streets, it will not stop the
murders.
Criminologist Miguel Ontiveros,
head of the National Institute
of Criminal Science, stated that
on the basis of the cases
analysed, the criminal is a
narcissistic egomaniac who was
possibly abused as a child and
who has a sexual identity
problem. He always hangs or
beats his victims to death.
Ontiveros warned that the killer
might change his disguise, due
to the major deployment of
police.
He is probably following the
news on the media, and "by this
time he knows that there is an
intensive police operation to
capture him. He is a good actor
who can change his appearance,
and that's why it is so
important to take precautionary
measures to detect any unusual
movements around elderly
people," he advised.
The lack of results has led
lawmakers from the conservative
ruling National Action Party,
who are in the opposition in the
Mexico City government, to put
intense pressure on left-wing
Mayor Alejandro Encinas.
PAN legislators are pressing the
mayor to dismiss Mexico City
Attorney General Bernardo Batiz
on grounds of inefficiency.
Encina's response is that it is
not easy to capture this
murderer, and that he is
determined to solve this case
before his administrative term
ends in December 2006.
In spite of all its modern
resources, it has taken the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) as long as 10 years to
track down certain serial
killers in the United States,
said criminologist Gabriel
Barrón, a member of the FBI who
joined the Mexican police
investigation in October.
Out of nearly 105 million
Mexicans, some 8.2 million are
over 60, and 60 percent of the
elderly are women who live alone
or with a relative. Twenty
percent of over-60s live in
extreme poverty, according to
the National Population Council.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
