On July 18, 1946, hundreds of people gathered outside the wall of the Cementerio General in Guatemala City to watch a firing squad execute José María Miculax Bux. He was 21. Less than three months earlier he had been arrested and accused of killing boys and adolescents whose bodies had been turning up around the capital, in Mixco and near Antigua Guatemala since the start of the year. To try him, the Congress of Guatemala passed a decree that shortened the procedure in criminal cases, and in popular use the law is known by his name: the Ley Miculax.
The case came during the government of President Juan José Arévalo, which followed the revolution of 1944. Guatemalan outlets describe it as the first serial killing case in the country's records. In 2023 Prensa Libre, reporting on a forensic investigation into a modern series of sexual assaults, went back to Miculax as the first such offender identified in Guatemala's historical records and gave the number of children he killed as more than 14. Most other reports give 15, and Prensa Libre's 2016 archive feature reported that he was accused of killing 15 children and of other offenses against ten more. The República news site reported in 2023 that the death sentence itself rested on two of the 15 killings proven against him.
His cousin, Mariano Macú Miculax, was tried with him and sentenced to 30 years in prison as his accomplice.
Miculax was born in 1925, according to El Heraldo of Honduras and the Diario La Voz. His family came from Patzicía, a town in the department of Chimaltenango, west of the capital. República described his parents as farm workers who could not read or write and who moved from Patzicía to Guatemala City. Reports describe him as a day laborer (jornalero), and two outlets give his height as about 1.50 meters. La Voz de Guate reported that he had two children.
República's 2023 account of his childhood rests on what he later told a cellmate. By that account he was born to a mother who was still a teenager, grew up with a stepfather who drank and was violent toward the family, and never went to school. The cellmate said he had not shown signs of psychosis as a boy. The same report says he took up stealing and changed his name to avoid being identified, and that he was arrested at 16 for robberies, with other charges, and sentenced to four years in prison. According to República, he was released in January 1946, and his cousin Mariano met him on his release.
Accounts differ on the exact family link between the two men. Most call Mariano Macú Miculax his cousin; one Mexican report also calls him his brother in a single passage. News reports of the trial name him as the accomplice.
The bodies began to appear early in 1946. Reports differ on when the series began: El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz put the killings between January and April 1946, while La Voz de Guate and Soy502 put them between February and April. The towns named in news reports are Guatemala City, Mixco, Santa Catarina Pinula, Antigua Guatemala and San Pedro Sacatepéquez, in the departments of Guatemala, Sacatepéquez and Chimaltenango. El Heraldo wrote that bodies appeared one after another, sometimes almost daily, and that each new discovery added to the pressure on the security forces and on the Arévalo government.
The victims were boys. El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz gave their ages as five aged 15, two aged 14, four aged 13, three aged 12 and one aged 11. República's 2023 account gave a different breakdown, ranging from 10 to 18 years old: one aged 18, two aged 15, two aged 14, five aged 13, two aged 12, two aged 11 and one aged 10. Soy502, drawing on the Guatemalan paper Nuestro Diario, gave their ages as 11 to 15. Some of them were never identified. The cause of death was strangulation; in one case República reported that an autopsy found asphyxia.
Only a few of the boys have been named.
Enrique Sactic Cuyuch was 14. He came from San Pedro Sacatepéquez, and La Voz de Guate reported that he had come to the capital to sell firewood. His body was found on February 23, 1946. Relato.gt, a Guatemalan narrative journalism site, reported that he was killed around February 22 and found the next day. His death is the first that the reports date.
Oscar Emilio López was 12, according to La Voz de Guate, which gives March 15, 1946, as the date in his case.
César Augusto Bolfovich was 13. La Voz de Guate gives March 28 as the date in his case, and Relato.gt also names him, with the same age.
Francisco Juárez Ajvix had been sent by his father to visit his sister and did not come home. República reported that his older brother found him on March 30, 1946, and that an autopsy found that he had died of asphyxia.
On April 5, La Voz de Guate reported, the body of a boy of about 11 was found, and he was buried the same day as an unidentified child.
Guillermo Rolando Castillo is named among the victims by Relato.gt. The remaining boys are not named in the news reports, and some of them were not identified at the time.
Several children survived attacks. República reported that the accounts of four children who escaped, together with the description given by an elderly woman, confirmed his guilt.
The killings came in quick succession, and families kept their children indoors, Soy502 reported. The killer became known as el monstruo de Guatemala, a name that has stayed with the case. According to Soy502, the forensic doctor could say only that the killer was a man. President Arévalo spoke publicly of the urgency of making an arrest, the authorities asked the public for help, and a reward was offered.
A rumor spread, with no evidence behind it, that the president himself was behind the deaths. República and Relato.gt both describe the rumor, which tied the killings to a car accident in December 1945 that had injured Arévalo's spine. Relato.gt called it baseless gossip.
The authorities came to believe that one man, or two, was responsible, República reported.
The break came from a witness. An elderly woman went to the police and described a man she had seen. Soy502 reported that she described him as dark-skinned and walking with a limp. Children who had escaped from him also said he limped, according to Soy502 and the Diario La Voz. Relato.gt reported that a sketch was drawn from her description.
Miculax was arrested on April 26, 1946, according to Soy502, Relato.gt and La Voz de Guate. El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz give April 26 and 27 as the dates of the two arrests, and República gives April 27 as the day the woman identified him. His cousin Mariano was arrested next, in Antigua Guatemala.
República reported that the two men had been going about the streets openly. Its 2023 account set the case against the background of the 1944 revolution, as the Second World War was ending, and said that in the upheaval of those years several crimes went unsolved and Miculax at first passed unnoticed.
Miculax confessed. The Diario La Voz and La Voz de Guate report that he made his confession before the Juzgado Quinto de Paz, a justice of the peace court in the capital, and that he named his cousin as his accomplice. Soy502 reported that he denied nothing, described each killing and led police to further remains. The Diario La Voz reported that two of the dead were found only through his directions. República likewise reported that his directions led to more remains.
Mariano Macú Miculax denied the accusations. At a careo, the formal face-to-face confrontation used in Guatemalan criminal procedure, contradictions came out in his account, El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz reported, and he was charged as well.
According to Relato.gt, Miculax also tried to shift blame onto his cousin, including for the death of an elderly woman that the court attributed to a fall.
República reported that delays in the case led to the new law. The parents of the victims wrote to President Arévalo asking that both men be executed in public, saying that only with their lives could they pay for their crimes, República reported. Relato.gt reported a petition from residents of Antigua Guatemala, written to the president, demanding the death penalty for the two cousins.
The Congress of Guatemala then passed Decree 235. El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz describe it as a law that shortened procedures for crimes that cause public alarm, and the Diario La Voz quotes its preamble on crimes that cause "justified alarm in society." República describes it as a law that shortened the process for trying murderers. In popular use it became the Ley Miculax.
NVI Noticias of Oaxaca reported that the crimes caused public outrage and that President Arévalo pressed for a fast trial and penalty.
At his trial Miculax described the killings calmly, and those present described him as sadistic, República reported.
On June 18, 1946, he was sentenced to death. República reported that the death sentence was imposed for two of the 15 killings proven against him. Mariano Macú Miculax was sentenced to 30 years in prison. República wrote that he was sentenced as an accomplice; according to that report there was evidence that he shared his cousin's intentions, but not that he had acted directly in the killings.
The judge and the court that passed sentence have not been named, and no appeal has been reported.
The execution took place one month after the sentence, on July 18, 1946, outside the outer wall of the Cementerio General in Guatemala City. Prensa Libre, El Heraldo, Soy502 and La Voz de Guate all give that date. Relato.gt and NVI Noticias give July 17.
According to Relato.gt and NVI Noticias, he was taken from the city penitentiary, a site now occupied by the capital's Torre de Tribunales, to the cemetery. Emisoras Unidas and República reported that his last wishes were to wear a suit and hat, to be given two octavos of aguardiente, a cane liquor, and to receive spiritual assistance. Soy502 reported that he drank one octavo in a single swallow and asked for another. He asked for a priest to hear his confession, El Heraldo reported.
Before the shots he said that he had killed only four of the children and that his cousin had killed the rest. Soy502 quoted him as saying, "Yo solo maté a cuatro, a los otros se los tronó mi primo" ("I only killed four; my cousin did the others in"). República wrote that there was no way to verify the claim. The Diario La Voz reported that he complained that his cousin had been left alive.
Prensa Libre's historical archive feature of 2016 described the execution as one of the most controversial in Guatemala's history and as something closer to a public ceremony. It reported that he called out "¡en tus manos encomiendo mi espíritu!" ("into your hands I commend my spirit") and that he smiled and raised his arms to the crowd before the volley.
After his death the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de San Carlos took his head to study his brain. República reported that the request came from the psychiatrist Carlos Federico Mora. According to República, the examination found no psychological disorder, although it relied on the physical study of the skull current at the time. Relato.gt reported that Mora concluded the acts were the work of a sick brain.
The head was kept at the university, in the Paraninfo Universitario according to Relato.gt and the director of a 2021 film. It disappeared in the 1990s. El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz say it was reported stolen; República and Emisoras Unidas say theft is suspected but has not been confirmed, and that it was not found.
His burial place is not known. Emisoras Unidas and República reported that the government placed no headstone and did not reveal where he was buried, to keep the body from being dug up or the grave from being used for rituals. Emisoras Unidas reported that he is believed to lie in the Cementerio General.
Mariano Macú Miculax was sentenced to 30 years in prison as an accomplice, and the Diario La Voz reported Miculax's complaint at the end that his cousin had been spared. What became of him in prison has not been reported.
In the 1940s and 1950s, parents in Guatemala used his name to frighten children. Instead of warning that the coco, the bogeyman, would take them, they said Miculax would come for them, República reported. Emisoras Unidas reported the warning as "Si te portas mal, Miculax viene por vos" ("If you misbehave, Miculax will come for you").
In February 2021 a Guatemalan horror film by the director Luis Garistú, titled Miculax and drawing on the case, premiered in cinemas, Emisoras Unidas reported. The film is fiction: its story moves between 1946, 2002 and 2016, and its child actors came from San Juan del Obispo.
Miculax's execution belongs to a long history of the death penalty in Guatemala. Prensa Libre's 2017 retrospective on firing squads traced it from 1840 to the last execution by firing squad, on September 13, 1996, which was broadcast live on television. Lethal injection replaced the firing squad, and the first execution by that method was carried out in February 1998. The last executions in Guatemala took place on June 29, 2000, according to the same report.
The number of victims. Most Guatemalan and regional reports give 15. Prensa Libre in 2023 said more than 14, and some reports give 14 to 15. República says the death sentence itself rested on two of the 15 killings proven.
The victims' ages. The reported age breakdowns differ: El Heraldo and the Diario La Voz give boys aged 11 to 15, while República gives 10 to 18.
The share of the killings each cousin committed. Miculax confessed and named his cousin as accomplice; at the end he said he had killed only four. The court sentenced him to death and his cousin to 30 years as accomplice. No report shows that the claim made at the execution was ever tested.
The arrest date. April 26, 1946, in most reports; April 27 in República's account of the identification.
The execution date. July 18, 1946, in Prensa Libre, El Heraldo, Soy502, La Voz de Guate, Emisoras Unidas and the body of the Diario La Voz report; July 17 in Relato.gt and NVI Noticias. A photo caption in the Diario La Voz gives June 18, the date of the sentence.
The rumor about the president. The talk that President Arévalo was behind the deaths had no evidence behind it, and both outlets that report it treat it as gossip.
The head. Whether it was stolen has not been established; the outlets agree only that it disappeared in the 1990s.
1925: José María Miculax Bux is born; his family comes from Patzicía, Chimaltenango.
At 16: arrested for robberies, with other charges, and sentenced to four years in prison (República; the year is not reported).
1944: revolution in Guatemala; Juan José Arévalo's government follows.
January 1946: released from prison (República).
January or February to April 1946: boys and adolescents are found dead in and around Guatemala City, Mixco and Antigua Guatemala.
February 23, 1946: the body of Enrique Sactic Cuyuch, 14, is found.
March 15, 1946: date given in the case of Oscar Emilio López, 12.
March 28, 1946: date given in the case of César Augusto Bolfovich, 13.
March 30, 1946: Francisco Juárez Ajvix is found (República).
April 5, 1946: a boy of about 11 is found and buried unidentified.
April 26, 1946: Miculax is arrested after an elderly woman's description (April 27 in some reports).
The next day: his cousin Mariano Macú Miculax is arrested in Antigua Guatemala.
After the arrests: confession before a justice of the peace; a careo between the cousins; letters to President Arévalo demanding execution.
1946: Congress passes Decree 235, the Ley Miculax.
June 18, 1946: Miculax is sentenced to death; his cousin is sentenced to 30 years in prison.
July 18, 1946: Miculax is executed by firing squad outside the Cementerio General, Guatemala City (July 17 in two reports).
After July 1946: the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de San Carlos studies his head.
1990s: the head disappears from the university.
February 18, 2021: the fiction film Miculax opens in Guatemalan cinemas.