Former Police Officer Hugo Osorio Arrested After a Mother and Daughter Are Killed in Chalchuapa
Two men were found buried in the yard of the former officer's house, and El Salvador's Security Minister said there could be many more victims.
Published
Police in Chalchuapa, in El Salvador's western department of Santa Ana, arrested a former officer of their own force on Saturday, May 8, 2021, at a house where a mother and her daughter had been killed the night before. He was Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, 51, and by the time the weekend was over the Security Minister was calling him a psychopath and saying the house might hold many more bodies.
The women were Mirna Lima, 57, and her daughter, Jackeline Cristina Palomo Lima, 26. They died on the night of Friday, May 7, at house number 11 on the Estévez alley in Colonia Las Flores, where Osorio lived. One was found naked and the other half-naked. In a pit at least three meters deep, about ten feet, police found the bodies of two men. All four had been killed with blows and bladed weapons, the news site Diario1 reported.
Officers had answered a call about violence inside the house, El Salvador Times reported, and found a great deal of blood at the door. They forced their way in and found Osorio with the bodies of the two women, then spotted the pit with the two men while searching the property. Prosecutors said he was taken in the act. Diario1 reported that his wrists were cut, that he was treated at a hospital, and that police identified him after his discharge and learned that he was wanted on a rape warrant. El Salvador Times reported that the warrant was for the rape of an incapacitated minor. He had once been an agent of the National Civil Police and had been purged from it.
On Sunday, Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro and the police director, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, held a press conference. An operation that ran from Saturday into the early hours of Sunday had detained eleven more people, they said, all under investigation for links to Osorio. "This psychopath's activity is related to a sexual deviation, and he killed his victims," Villatoro said. "He did many of his hunts through social networks." The minister said Osorio had close ties to coyotes, the smugglers who take Salvadorans illegally north, and that the early accounts suggested he met victims through them. He ruled out any link to the MS-13 or Barrio 18 gangs. Arriaza said Osorio chose his victims, approached them, and then used those skills to deceive them.
Investigators believed there were more people buried at the house, and police and prosecutors began collecting reports of missing people to cross-check. Villatoro first said the work would take fifteen days, then that it would take more than thirty. He warned that the forensic teams might find the bodies of Salvadorans who had set out to migrate to the United States and been handed over to Osorio instead.
On Monday, May 10, prosecutors filed charges against Osorio in Chalchuapa's First Peace Court for the aggravated femicide of the two women. Max Muñoz, the chief prosecutor for Santa Ana, said investigators saw a misogynistic pattern in the killings, and prosecutors said he could face up to 100 years in prison. By May 12 the court had ordered him held in custody and sent the case to Santa Ana's specialized court for crimes of violence against women. Investigators, El Salvador Times reported, had indications that the pit might hold some thirty bodies.
What the record does and does not say. When this story broke, Osorio was charged only with the aggravated femicide of Mirna Lima and Jackeline Palomo Lima. The two men in the pit were not part of those charges, and the eleven people detained over the weekend were under investigation, not convicted. Reports differed on some details. El Salvador Times said he was purged from the police in 2005, while Diario1 cited a police log putting it in 2010. One report gave the mother's name as Mirna Cruz Lima, and the daughter's first name was also printed as Jacqueline. The minister's account of how Osorio found his victims was a preliminary one, given the day after the arrest. In June 2022 Osorio was convicted of the two femicides and sentenced to 70 years.
Sources
- Fiscalía presenta requerimiento contra el psicópata de Chalchuapa, Diario1
- Expolicía acusado de masacre en Chalchuapa estaría involucrado en el asesinato de niños y adultos, El Salvador Times
- Cárcel provisional a expolicía señalado de masacre en Chalchuapa, El Salvador Times
Related News
- June 10, 2022: Former Salvadoran Police Officer Hugo Osorio Sentenced to 70 Years for Chalchuapa Femicides