Walking in the desert area of the Mexican town of Juarez, on February 17, two teenagers searched for details like bottles and cans which they could sells. Instead of that, they ran into blood stained rocks: three women’s corpses, barely hidden. After they informed the police, they found a fourth body not far from the others.

Juarez’s dead women

This is not a singular happening for the town near the Mexican-American border, which reached world fame and a place in Wikipedia due to many years of systematical, brutal murders of hundreds of women with no known reason and without end. The wave of murders started back in 1993, with “the dead women of Juarez” case, followed by many international organizations for human rights and sexual discrimination, by the state attorney’s office, and by the police. Books have been written and several documentaries and movies have been made on them. However, the mystery has still not been solved. The authorities have not found an efficient way to stop the disapperance of hundreds of women.

Kidnapping, raping, suffocation

The main question mark in these crimes is the motive. There are no acceptable theories on why in 15 years, around 400 women were killed, and hundreds are still missing. Most of the bodies found, show signs of sexual violence. Witnesses say that it is not a matter of usual raping, but a matter of releasing wild instincts. Women had traces of biting, thrusting, hitting and slitting. According to the autopsy report, about 70% of the cases died of suffocation or due to beating. The motive is even harder to find because these women have no specific common features.

They are mainly young women between 17 and 22 years of age, but there also some victims who are younger, between one and four years old. They are hack workers in a corporations owned by Americans and which use cheap a Latin-American workforce. For this reason, many think that these crimes are connected with the American corporations which have branch-offices in the town. Working in inhuman conditions, the workers are imposed unreachable norms, and failure is strictly punished. Although a connection between the brutal murders and the work in factories has never been proved, they think that it can not be a coincidence that most of the women killed were working in some of these American factories.

Unique mystery

In Ciudad Juarez, like in many other Mexican towns, there is a high rate of criminality, corruption within the authorities, the drug business is widespread, poverty is high, and many think that in the whole story the ‘machismo’ element has an important role, that is the lust for male domination. However, if we take this element in to consideration, we have to think that every border Mexican town should have a similar rate of rape and murder of women. The dead women of Juarez are a unique case, which contributes to the mystery of the town.

The first official victim was Alma Chavira Farel, who was found beaten, raped and suffocated on January 23, 1993 in Ciudad Juarez. They believe that she was not the first victim of these murders, but only the first one to be found of about ten women who went missing before her. By the end of the year, the police officially recognised 16 more similar murders, but it was never confirmed if they were committed by the same murderer or if there were more. As the murders continued year by year, criminologists and a state attorney monitored the horrifying rate of killing, but they never found out whether it was the work of one person, a gang or whether the murders have no connection with one another. Some crimes bore the same ‘signature’ and they think that in Juarez there are at least three serial killers.

Several arrested, murders continue 

The first suspect was Abdel Sharif, who supposedly raped and murdered a women, and whose former girlfriend filed charges against him for attempted murder. Sharif was condemned to 30 years in prison, but this did not stop the murders in Juarez.

Later, a member of the local gang ‘Los Rebeldes’, Olivares Villalba, confessed he took part in the murder of 18-year-old Rosario Garcia. According to him, six more members of the gang took part in the crime. He was condemned, and part of the gang was arrested and then released. The police even tried to prove that the murders were the result of a conspiracy in which Abdel Sharif and his gang were involved, but the did not manage to do so, and the number of murders only grew.

The police hoped to solve the case when a girl who survived kidnapping, raping and beating in 1999, told her horrible experience. They accused a bus driver who drove the workers from a factory, and the police began to arrest several of so called ‘Los Choferes’. They filed charges against them for a total of 20 murders, but they denied the accusations and stated that the Mexican police mistreated and  tortured them. The American FBI joined the investigations, but after they went to the town, they left with no more answers than before and the murders continued.

No woman is safe 

These murders have come to a level where we must do everything in our power to solve them, said a Mexican official and cooperator of the FBI for Dallas Morning News.

There is no precise information on the total number of victims. Different associations offer differing numbers, because many women are still considered missing. The most accepted theory is that between more than 300 women were killed between 1993 and 2005, and about 400 are missing. In the past years, the rate of murders has grown. Despite the monitoring of the media, of the FBI, of the public and of the police, there are still no answers. Only the facts are certain, no woman is safe in Juareze, and there will be other murders.