The Old Lady Murders of Mexico City

[00:00:00] In this horror story, we're going to listen to a true crime case originally published on another one of our podcasts that is merging with this one. So if you've already listened to it, thank you. We'll be back with more paranormal creepy episodes in the next one

[00:00:13] with the occasional true crime topic, depending on your feedback. Here we go. At 64, Maria de la Luz Gonzalez Ayala was starting to feel her age. She took pride in keeping her home in Ciudad de Mexico clean, but it was getting difficult. She needed help.

[00:00:33] Her kids were long out of the home now, and she was mostly by herself. She needed to hire help. And there was this woman who walked through her street offering her cleaning services. So she figured she would wait for her on that specific day.

[00:00:47] They met and she accepted her services. When the cleaning lady was finally done, she told Maria that she needed more money. Her house was dirtier than normal and it took more work. Maria couldn't believe what the woman was saying.

[00:01:03] In anger, she offered the woman even less money than before. The woman flew into a rage. She started insulting Maria. Things escalated into a fight, and soon this lady started beating her. The woman was too strong, and within minutes, Maria found herself being strangled.

[00:01:23] Some hours went by and Maria's son stopped by to visit her. The door was open and he knew something was wrong. He ran inside and found his mother lifeless, slumped over a chair. He called the police and they immediately closed off the scene.

[00:01:41] Other than Maria's missing money and one fingerprint, they had nothing. It was the first of what turned out to be a series of elderly women being reported dead around Mexico City. My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story.

[00:02:03] At first, Maria's tragic death seemed like a robbery gone wrong. It was scary, but something that happened regularly in a big urban area like Mexico City. And life continued for Maria's family, for her neighbors and for the police that responded to the call. The path to recovery started.

[00:02:22] But four months after Maria's killing on March 2nd, 2003, another elderly woman was found dead. Her name was Guillermina Leon Oropesa. She had also been strangled, and just like in Maria's case, there were no clues to help police identify the killer. Money was missing too, just like Maria.

[00:02:43] Police made no connection. They thought it was just another violent robbery. A sad but typical response. Five months after Guillermina was found murdered in her home, it happened again. On October 24th, Maria del Carmen Muñoz Cote de Galvan was found dead in her home.

[00:03:05] And it was the same situation. Things were missing from the house and she had been strangled. Yet somehow police thought it was just another random killing. 20 days later, another elderly woman was dead. And then two more. Lucrecia Elsa Calvo Marroquin, Natalia Torres Castro and Alicia Cota Ducoin

[00:03:30] were all strangled to death. They were all over 75 and all about 10 days apart. Three months after Alicia Cota Ducoin was killed, another lady was found dead in her home. Five days later, another woman. They were Alicia Gonzalez Castillo and Andrea Tecante Carreto.

[00:03:51] They were 74 and 75, and like the others, they had been robbed, beaten and strangled to death. But it didn't stop there. By the end of 2004, there were another 14 elderly women murdered in Mexico City. They were Carmen Cardona Rodea, Socorro Enedina Martinez Pajares,

[00:04:12] Guadalupe González Sánchez, Estela Cantoral Trejo, Delfina González Castillo, Maria Virginia Tizapán, Maria de los Ángeles Cortez Reynoso, Margarita Martel Vazquez, Simona Bedoya Ayala, Maria Dolores Martínez Benavides, Margarita Arredondo Rodríguez, and María Imelda Estrada Pérez. It was the same pattern again.

[00:04:38] They were all over 70 years old and they had been strangled to death. There was no denying the connection. Mexican media started calling this unknown killer El Mata Viejitas, the old lady killer. And somehow the police and the mayor of Mexico City were still denying it.

[00:04:56] It's Mexico. We don't get serial killers. They continue to treat these investigations as separate incidents. That's probably why they missed the one other detail that connected two of the killings. On July 19, Maria de los Ángeles Cortez Reynoso was found dead in her house.

[00:05:15] She lived alone in the neighborhood of Gustavo Madero. In her room, police found paperwork for a new assistance program. And this program was created to help the elderly with health care and sanitation. Police started to think that this could have been how the killer lured

[00:05:30] their way into Maria's house. And this wasn't the only health care related item found at crime scenes, though. Three months later, on October 24th, Maria Dolores Martinez Benavides was found dead in her home. The killer beat her, strangled her to death and positioned her on the couch.

[00:05:47] Police entered her home and found a stethoscope wrapped around her neck. Now, this could have been it. Another clue to help the investigation that police could have noticed. But they were still denying this connection between the old lady murders. They were refusing to see a lot.

[00:06:04] Neighbors saw the killer leaving Maria Dolores' house, and they all gave the same description, a tall, robust woman or a shorter man with dark eyebrows and a wig. Most of the neighbors agreed that it was probably a woman, but the police didn't listen.

[00:06:22] They were positive they were looking for a man. And this made the investigation take a lot longer than it needed to. 2004 came and went, and there was a little break in the killings as people in Mexico City started to feel safe again. It was another one.

[00:06:42] On January 11th, 2005, 60 year old Julia Vera Duplan was killed. She had been strangled to death just like the last 21 women. And almost exactly one month later, Maria Elena Mendoza Valleres was killed. Police could not continue to lie to the public. These were serial murders and they needed help.

[00:07:04] They had no leads and only fingerprints that matched no one. They came up with a profile, but they based it on American serial killers like Ted Bundy, the figure of the old lady killer was a man, someone who was cold, charismatic and calculated, highly intelligent

[00:07:21] that he was probably dressing himself in women's clothing to lure his way into his victims homes. Mexico City detectives even traveled to France to try and get help catching El Mata Viejitas, the old lady killer. The 1980s, a French police dealt with similar murders.

[00:07:38] A man was attacking and killing old ladies, killed 21 women in a span of three years. But unfortunately, this didn't get the police very far. The killings continued. By the end of April 2005, four more women were dead. They were Maria Elisa Perez Moreno, Artura Patiño Barranco,

[00:08:00] Carolina Robledo and Ana Maria Velazquez Diaz. They were all killed in the same way, and one of them lived in the same neighborhood as a victim from the year before. The help from the French police and the profile of the killer were leading them nowhere.

[00:08:17] Police started looking for any connection. They noticed three women all had the same painting, for example. It was a school-aged boy in a black shirt and a red ribbon. They had red curly hair and pale skin.

[00:08:31] The painting is called A Boy in a Red Waistcoat by Jean Baptiste Cruz. But this, like everything else, led nowhere. By fall of 2005, there were 11 more women dead. Celia Villaliz Morales, Maria Guadalupe Nunez Almanza, Julia Vargas, Emma Armenta Aguayo, Emma Reyes Peña, Carmen Sánchez Serrano,

[00:08:55] Dolores Concepción Silva Calva, Maria del Carmen Camila Gonzalez Miguel, Guadalupe Contreras and Maria de los Ángeles Repere Hernández. The summer of 2005, when Emma Armenta Aguayo was murdered, neighbors saw the killer again. They told the police the same thing.

[00:09:12] A tall, robust woman ran out of the house, but police ignored this. They were still sure the killer was a man. But then something else happened. In late 2005, there was an attempted robbery at an elderly woman's house.

[00:09:31] Someone had offered to help the old lady sign up for the new health care program, and she agreed. The old lady thought this was a nurse, and she asked the nurse to check on her adult son.

[00:09:41] He was staying with her because he broke his leg and was bedridden. The nurse agreed and left behind a fingerprint on the son's X-rays. This fingerprint matched the other fingerprints that were collected at previous crime scenes.

[00:09:54] The son and the old lady were able to give the police a better description. A tall, strong woman with very short hair, strong facial features and dark eyebrows. It matched the description other witnesses had already given the police.

[00:10:10] They put up a sketch drawing of the description all over Mexico and told elders not to trust strangers. No one felt safe, and the fact that the police had not found the killer was scaring the community.

[00:10:23] And it didn't help that police seemed to be ignoring everything witnesses had told them. For some reason, they had a new profile. They were looking for a gay man, one with a violent past who lived among women. It was probably highly intelligent and hated older women.

[00:10:40] Witnesses described a tall, strong woman with short hair. They were searching in all the wrong places. The killer had to be a man dressed in women's clothing. You can probably sense the frustration of the community at this point. And even worse, they began to raid gay clubs

[00:10:55] and round up members of the LGBTQ plus community. There was no evidence pointing to any of the people they rounded up. And yet they continue to target them. At one point, arresting up to 49 people. This was clear discrimination. So the community started organizing protests against Mexico City police.

[00:11:15] They were fighting these unjust arrests. Being a member of a marginalized community is difficult in most places, and Mexico is no exception. It also didn't help that the most popular novella in Mexico City at the time,

[00:11:28] which, by the way, is like a Mexican soap opera, called La Madrastra, The Stepmother, began airing in February of 2005. The novella, Maria is wrongfully convicted for the death of her best friend. She was released after 20 years for good behavior.

[00:11:46] She goes back to her husband, who hated her so much that he told her kids she was dead. But they reconcile and she pretends to be their stepmother. She decides she needs to find who was a real killer. And in the final episode of the novella,

[00:12:00] the killer is revealed to be Demetrio, the husband's lawyer. Demetrio also happens to be a crossdresser. This novella was showing the watchers that crossdressing is evil and immoral, and those who do this can't be trusted.

[00:12:15] This is all assumption at this point, but perhaps this is why the police were so intent on their killer being a gay crossdressing man. They were rounding up trans people and gay men and beating them. During the protest, the LGBTQ plus community chanted

[00:12:31] No somos machos, pero si somos muchas. We're not men, but we're many. These violent raids led nowhere. The killings were still happening, and now the elderly and the LGBTQ people of Mexico City were both living in fear. The pressure was building for police to stop these killings.

[00:12:51] It was an election year in Mexico City, and Lopez Obrador was running against Felipe Calderon. The current mayor, Lopez Obrador, was losing popularity amongst the people. He had been one to create the very program the killer was exploiting to rob and murder old ladies.

[00:13:06] In the end, too many blamed Lopez Obrador and he lost the election. Investigators started going to all the morgues in Mexico City. They were hoping the old lady killer would turn up in one of them. Police even tried making a wax figure of the killer,

[00:13:23] hoping someone would identify him. But still nothing was changing. 2005 ended and whoever was responsible for the old lady murders was still out there. But there was one more murder waiting to happen. And this one would change everything for Mexico City. Murders continues right after this. Stay with me.

[00:13:49] On January 25th, 2006, Ana Maria de los Reyes was at her house in Colonia Moctezuma. It was a white house with a green door that had two units. She rented out the other side, but on this day, her tenant was not there. There was a knock on her door.

[00:14:06] It was a woman. She was thirsty. She told Ana Maria that she had been tired from walking in the neighborhood. She was a social worker and was making rounds to help the elderly sign up for a program.

[00:14:18] Ana Maria listened as a stranger at her door continued to talk. She didn't want to be rude and sent her away. The woman asked for a cup of water and Ana Maria let her in. When she returned with the cop, the woman attacked.

[00:14:33] Ana Maria could not defend herself. The woman used her stethoscope and strangled her to death. Just at that moment, Ana Maria's tenant was walking up to the house. He saw someone rush out of it, and as he got closer, he noticed that the door was open.

[00:14:51] He ran inside and Jose Joel found Ana Maria dead on the floor. He ran outside and started to yell that Ana Maria was killed and that the killer was running not far from the house. Two officers were patrolling the area. Jose Ismael and Marco Antonio saw someone running.

[00:15:07] The person was carrying bags, and so they ran after the person and apprehended them, but not without a fight. The officers dragged the person back to Jose Joel and asked if this was a killer. Yes, it's her. Jose Joel confirmed it.

[00:15:27] When officers looked through the bag she carried, they found paperwork to enroll the elderly woman in a program. They also saw social worker cards. This woman strongly resembled the woman in the sketches in the wax figure. And when her house was searched,

[00:15:42] they found altars to both the Santa Muerte and Jesus Malverde. Santa Muerte is a folk saint, mostly worshipped in Mexico. She is the personification of death. She's not evil, but the Catholic Church and evangelical pastors condemn her worship.

[00:15:59] And Jesus Malverde is considered the patron saint of cartel members. This is who the killer worshipped. The police held a conference to announce her capture and inform the public. Her name was Juana Barrasa. Her fingerprints matched all the fingerprints they had collected at crime scenes.

[00:16:20] They even brought out the wax figure to show how much it and Juana looked alike. Juana's trial was taking place in the spring of 2008. Her past was uncovered. Juana Dayanara Barrasa Samperio was born on December 27th in a rural town Nidalgo, Mexico, 1957.

[00:16:42] Her dad, Trinidad Barrasa, was a police officer who had 32 children. Her mother was Justa Samperio, a sex worker and an alcoholic. She was a teen when Juana was born. She met Trinidad at a bar. He was in his late 30s.

[00:16:58] And Justa abandoned Juana when she was three months old. She left her to be with Refugio Samperio, who was Justa's stepfather and still married. Juana never learned to read or write. She was physically abused by her mother. She was also isolated, forced to stay home from school.

[00:17:14] She had a troubling relationship with her mother. Justa returned to her life when she was about 12, but started trafficking Juana for alcohol. She sold her to a man named Jose Lugo for three beers. Juana stayed with Jose Lugo for four years, where he constantly abused her.

[00:17:33] He impregnated her twice in these four years, once at 13 years old and again at 16. The first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, but at 16 she had her eldest son, Jose Enrique Lugo Barrasa. She still had nowhere to go. Her mother was an unreliable alcoholic

[00:17:50] and she had not seen her father since she was 12. And so she stayed with Jose Lugo. She had not forgiven her mother for the abuse and it felt like she had no one. The person who was supposed to protect her was her abuser and trafficker.

[00:18:06] Juana left for Mexico City when her mother passed away from cirrhosis around 1980. During the 80s and 90s she had several jobs, but there was one that she did the longest and actually enjoyed. She was selling food during lucha libre fights. In 1990, during one of her shifts,

[00:18:24] she was approached by a man who was looking for new luchadoras, women wrestlers. She was able to earn 200 to 500 pesos each fight and this was much more than her previous wage. She became la dama del silencio, or the lady of silence. She was known for her strength

[00:18:42] or how she made her opponents submit. She felt a strength she had never felt before wrestling, like she was powerful, unlike the abused girl of her past. In lucha libre there are the good guys and the bad guys, or rudos and técnicos.

[00:18:59] Juana Barrasa was a ruda and she loved it. She believed she was a ruda at heart, it was her nature. Her wrestling costume consisted of a short sleeve, one-piece suit, pink and gold. Her mask was a butterfly that uncovered her eyes and cheeks.

[00:19:15] It was pink and gold as well and she wore pink and gold boots that reached her knees. She wore a butterfly belt. So she may have played a villain in the ring, but she didn't look like one. She loved her job and when she wasn't in the ring

[00:19:29] she was always at the wrestling matches with her kids. It was her calling. But unfortunately due to the amount of physical work needed she hurt her back. She used to try many different home remedies for her back and carry amulets for luck.

[00:19:43] Despite her amulets, her luck was running out. Her 1994 marriage was coming to an end. Her husband, Félix Juárez Ramírez, was killed. There were rumors that he was not a chauffeur, that he was actually a sicario, a hitman for the cartel

[00:19:58] and he was killed for it. This was her longest marriage. She was with Félix for 10 years. And so she was left alone with her 21-year-old, 12-year-old and two 10-year-olds. She did what she could selling food, candy and working in a chocolate factory.

[00:20:15] She still worked as a wrestler to make ends meet but it was taking a toll on her body. She began to steal in 1995 so she could feed her children. She stole from stores, she stole cars, robbed small stores and robbed people walking by.

[00:20:31] Elderly women were her main targets because they were the easiest to rob. She met Aracely Tapia Martínez and with her, she used to dress up as a nurse and rob elderly women. The nurse costumes made it easy for them to be trusted.

[00:20:47] The pair were not together long. Juana realized she didn't need Aracely anymore. She began to befriend elderly women and she would rob their houses after doing small jobs for them. Aracely started to cause problems for Juana. She was dating a corrupt police officer named Moises Flores Dominguez.

[00:21:05] He arrested Aracely in 1996 and then began to extort Juana. He was blackmailing her. If she paid him a cut from her robberies then he would keep her out of jail. In 1997, Juana's son was killed. She felt there was no justice and life was not fair.

[00:21:24] And so she became angry and bitter. First her husband, then her son. It just pushed her over the edge. In 2000, Juana started cleaning houses. She used to rob the houses she cleaned and kept trying to wrestle but she needed more money to raise her youngest children.

[00:21:41] At 43, she was getting too old to continue her career in lucha libre. That was her last straw. Losing her identity as a wrestler. During her trial, she insisted that she only killed one old lady. She said she did it because she was mad. The prosecution claimed

[00:21:59] that she had committed over 40 murders. Juana insisted she didn't stalk her victims and wasn't searching for them. But prosecution proved she was involved in at least 11 killings. Her defense tried to say that she was not mentally well and that's why she committed the murders.

[00:22:15] That she was doing this because of how her mother treated her. On the 31st of March, 2006 she was found guilty. Juana Barrasa was sentenced to 759 years in prison for murdering 16 elderly women in Mexico City. Though it's suspected that she killed at least 49 women.

[00:22:38] She cried when she heard her sentence not because she was guilty but she claimed that she would not survive in prison. She is currently serving her sentence at the Santa Marta de Acatitla prison. The old lady murders of Mexico City made several things come to light

[00:22:58] among its citizens. Police incompetence and seemingly obvious connections that were missed. Assumptions made with little or no information to back them up. And a lack of accountability with these matters for accusing underrepresented members of communities they were supposed to be serving. It left the city with adult children

[00:23:18] paying visits to their lonely parents checking up on them to make sure that they weren't relying on deceptive strangers knocking on their doors offering their help. And if we're left with anything it was that sense of unease the need to check in on your parents and grandparents

[00:23:35] realizing that going up to the doorstep to find it securely shut or when they finally pick up the phone after the second or third attempt that you finally breathe a sigh of relief. This episode was researched and written by Cristina Lumagui with production by me Edwin Covarrubias.

[00:24:00] Our other show Murders has merged with this one to keep everything in one place and we're still gonna stick with the horror paranormal topics based on your emails and messages. Still real and still scary. Anyway to listen ad free check out Scary Plus over on scaryplus.com

[00:24:17] and you can also help out the show by sending this episode to someone who's into this type of thing. You can also find me on Instagram and TikTok I'm at Edwin Cove that's E-D-W-I-N-C-O-V I'll link to everything in the description of this episode anyway. Keep it scary everyone.

[00:24:35] See you soon.