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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | May 2007 
Alleged Mexican Murderer of Elderly Featured in Exhibit
 Associated Press
| | Juana Barraza, 48, is presented to the media next to a bust the police used to help in the search for a serial murder suspect at the Mexico City police headquarters Wednesday Jan. 25, 2006. (AP) |
Mexico City — A Mexican woman who allegedly murdered numerous elderly residents of Mexico City will be featured in a cultural exhibit on serial killers from around the world.
Juana Barraza, a 49-year-old former female wrestler dubbed the "Little Old Lady Killer," was arrested in January of last year after allegedly terrorizing elderly residents for two years. She was captured leaving the house of her last alleged victim, Ana Maria Reyes, 82, who had been strangled with a stethoscope.
Barraza confessed to Reyes' slaying and later to the killings of three other elderly women, saying she committed the crimes out of anger. Police say her fingerprints match a total of 10 murders of female senior citizens. She is being held in a Mexico City women's prison on several homicide charges.
Police artists crafted a clay bust of Barraza's head based on 150 artist sketches that authorities say is 80 percent accurate. For the next six months, the bust will form part of an exhibit at a police department cultural center and then may move to a permanent exhibit in an adjacent police museum. The bust will be the centerpiece in a room of known Mexican killers, part of a larger show also including U.S. killer Charles Manson and London's Jack the Ripper.
Pedro Estrada, director of analysis and crime follow-up for the Mexico City Public Safety Department, said authorities decided to incorporate the bust in the exhibit not to exalt Barraza but "to educate and create awareness about the phenomenon that happened and which we don't want to see repeated."
Prior to the Barraza bust, authorities had only a few photographs and a handful of written references to Mexican serial killers. |
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