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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2006 
Officials: Denver Arrest is Long-Sought Break in Border Slayings
 Olga R. Rodriguez - Associated Press
| | In this undated photo released by the Denver Police Department, Edgar Alvarez Cruz is shown. Alvarez Cruz, suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least 10 women in a border city made infamous by the deaths of more than 100 young women since 1993 has been arrested, U.S. officials said Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006. (AP/Denver) |
How can they say they've found who did it if they don't even know who the girls are?
A man arrested in Denver for immigration violations is the main suspect in the rapes and killings of eight women whose remains were found five years ago in a trash-strewn lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexican authorities say.
Relatives and women right's activists, however, remain skeptical the women's killer has been caught and say some of the women were wrongly identified.
Chihuahua state Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez told the Ciudad Juarez daily newspaper El Diario newspaper that Edgar Alvarez Cruz, who was arrested Tuesday, is linked to the killings of eight women, ages 15 to 21, whose remains were discovered on November 2001.
Gonzalez didn't respond to repeated requests from The Associated Press for comment Friday.
State prosecutor Maria Teresa Gonzalez, who leads the investigations into the killings of women in the border city of Juarez, said her office did not have a warrant for Alvarez Cruz's arrest.
'We're currently working on getting a warrant,' Maria Teresa Gonzalez said.
Ken Deal, chief deputy U.S. marshal for Colorado, said Alvarez Cruz was arrested on immigration violations at the house where he had been living in Denver for at least a month while working at a concrete construction company.
Alvarez Cruz was flown to El Paso, Texas, where Patricia Gonzalez would arrange his extradition sometime next week, Maria Teresa Gonzalez said.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza called Alvarez Cruz's arrest 'a major break' in the investigations into the sexually motivated murders of more than 100 young women in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, between 1993 and 2003.
Relatives and women right's activists, however, remain skeptical the women's killer has been caught, given the spotty record of officials who have handled the investigation.
Celia de la Rosa, whose 19-year-old daughter Guadalupe Luna was identified as one of the eight women found in 2001, said she was told last month DNA tests conducted on the body didn't match her daughter.
'How can they say they've found who did it if they don't even know who the girls are?' De la Rosa said.
Shortly after the grisly 2001 discovery, state authorities in Chihuahua, where Juarez is located, announced they had identified the eight women and closed the cases after arresting two bus drivers.
One of the men died while awaiting trial. The other was released from prison last year after a judge overturned his conviction on grounds that the testimony of a key witness was unreliable. Two of the men's defense lawyers were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez in separate incidents.
Both men alleged they had been tortured into making stilted, videotaped 'confessions' as state officials came under increasing international pressure to solve the crimes against women.
Josefina Gonzalez was also told by state authorities that her 20-year-old daughter had been found in the empty lot, but two DNA tests later turned out negative.
'I believe I buried my daughter even if the tests were negative,' Josefina Gonzalez said.
She said a set of overalls and two of her daughter's IDs found at the crime scene lead her to believe her daughter, Claudia Ivette, was among the women found.
'If he killed my daughter, I want to see proof,' she said. 'As a mother, I doubt he did it. I just hope he is not another scapegoat.'
Most of the victims were dumped in the desert outside of Ciudad Juarez, provoking outrage that reached around the world. They seemed to fit a pattern: Many of the victims were young women last seen in the city's downtown or after taking buses. Their bodies often did not appear until months later.
Police have arrested several people in the killings, including an Egyptian chemist who died in prison earlier this year; a bus driver whose conviction was overturned and his co-defendant, who died in prison before sentencing. A group of gang members are serving out sentences related to some of the crimes.
The U.S. Embassy said Alvarez Cruz may have been involved in the killings as part of a gang.
Several gangs _ one allegedly made up of youths, and another of bus drivers and their friends _ have been mentioned as suspects in the killings. It was not clear to which gang Alvarez Cruz purportedly had belonged.
Associated Press writers Jon Sarche and Marina Montemayor contributed to this story from Denver, Colo., and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, respectively. |
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