MEXICOS OLD LADY KILLER

“It must be a man.” That’s what police thought when a serial killer stalked Mexico City’s older women in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The sheer strength needed to manually strangle people --- even the elderly --- decided it.

Even when witnesses reported seeing a woman leave the scene of some of the murders, the law was unconvinced. Police instead focused on transvestites. Mexico City’s transvestite prostitutes were detained and questioned, suffering through a brutal, humiliating investigation. Who knows how long this would have gone on if not for a tenant with incredible timing.

In January 2006, a man arrived at his rental home, nearly bumping into the killer. Discovering his landlord, 82-year-old Ana Maria de Los Reyes Alfaro, dead on the floor, he immediately called police, giving a detailed description of the attacker.

Police rushed to the scene and were finally able to nab the real Old Lady Killer, who --- to everyone’s astonishment --- was a woman. Juana Barraza, 48, was not your average woman . The single mother of four could bench press over 200lbs repeatedly, completing multiple sets of ten.

Like many serial killers, Barraza had endured a horrific childhood. When she was just 12 years old, her mother traded her to a drinking buddy for the princely sum of three beers. Barraza was reportedly abused repeatedly by the man, who treated her as his own personal sex slave, and by whom she became pregnant with a boy. She had four children in total.

Her eldest died as a young man from injuries received when muggers attacked him with a baseball bat. Her second child, a girl, married early and left home, although she stayed close to her mother’s modest ground – floor flat on the very eastern edge of Mexico City.

Barraza lived there with her youngest two children --- a boy aged 13 and a girl aged 11 --- who are now staying with their elder sister . According to her lawyer, Barraza is “proud to say she has kept things going on her own. She is proud of being both a father and mother to her children.”

Barraza seemed to have supported her family through a mixture of domestic work, street vending, and petty theft. Neighbors in this otherwise largely middle-class area described the children as friendly and their mother as always pleasant in passing.

Barraza wasn’t leading a double life, but a triple one. At night she entertained audiences as The Silent Lady, a professional wrestler in the sport of luche libra --- Mexican masked wrestling . Wearing a butterfly mask and hot – pink spandex, she was a stunning sight in more ways than one.

The search for Barraza was complicated by conflicting evidence. At one point, the police hypothesized that two killers might be involved. Then an odd coincidence distracted the investigation. At least three of Barraza’s victims owned a print of an eighteenth -century painting by the French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze, Boy in Red Waistcoat .

Bernardo Batiz, the chief prosecutor in Mexico City, initially profiled the killer as having “a brilliant mind, being quite clever and careful,” and probably struck after a period spent gaining the trust of an intended victim.

Reasons which can be attributed to the authorities believing that Barraza was brilliant was because she was a psychopath. Barraza had no remorse for her actions and therefore did not associate pain with her actions either.

She attributed the older women whom which she preyed on to be similar to her mother and thus she was helping society by killing them. By posing as a government official she was able to gain these women's trust.

Because of these tendencies, Barraza can be classified under the care giving classification which depicts women murderers categorizing them by their actions. Even though Barraza was not directly caring for these women she posed as a person who would care for them, which was the government official who worked in the welfare department.

Barraza cruised public places in search of elderly women on their own. She sometimes gained their trust and access to their homes by helping them with their shopping bags and requesting cleaning work. On other occasions she pretended to be a nurse or social worker offering a free check – up or information about benefits.

All of Barraza’s victims were aged 60 or older, and most of them lived alone. She used objects such as phone cables, lights, or the stethoscope she often carried with her,to strangle her victims, then bludgeoning and robbing them.

The authorities were heavily criticized by the media for dismissing evidence that a serial killer was at work in Mexico City as merely “media sensationalism” as late as the summer of 2005. By November 2005, the Mexican authorities were reporting witness statements to the effect that the killer wore woman’s clothing to gain access to the victim’s apartments.

Police began checking the fingerprints of bodies in the city's morgue in the apparent belief that the killer might have committed suicide. Barraza closely resembled a model of the killer’s features which showed The Old Lady Killer with close -cropped hair dyed blonde and a facial mole, and was carrying a stethoscope, pension forms, and a card identifying her as a social worker when she was detained .

Barraza is said to have confessed to murdering Alfaro and three other women, but denied involvement in all other killings. She told reporters she had visited Alfaro’s home in search of laundry work. While fingerprint evidence connects Barraza to “only” 11 of the murders, she is believed to be responsible for killing between 24 to 49 elderly women.

The authorities and the press have given various estimates as to the total number of the killer’s victims. When Barraza was detained she looked respectable and unremarkable, with neatly cut hair and conservative clothes.

Barraza was tried in the spring of 2008, the prosecution alleging she had been responsible for as many as 40 deaths. She told police her motive was lingering resentment regarding her own mother’s treatment of her.

When it comes to Mexican trials, there are no juries and no public hearings. Instead prosecutors and defense lawyers present their evidence to a single judge during largely closed -door proceedings that can last years.

On March 31, she was found guilty on 16 charges of murder and aggravated burglary, including 11 separate counts of murder. She was sentenced to 759 years in prison. Since sentences imposed in Mexican courts are generally served concurrently , but the maximum Mexican law is 60 years, Barraza will most likely serve the full sentence in prison .

I believe this killer shocked society through the senseless killings of vulnerable elderly women along with the fact that the gender was not the usual male profile. Classic case as to not judge a book by its cover, because things aren’t always as they seem.