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 News from Around the Americas | June 2007 
Extradition Sought in Mexico Deaths
 Mark Scolforo - Associated Press
| | Prosecutors want to return a federal inmate they say confessed to killing at least 10 women in a border city there as "offerings to Satan." |
Harrisburg, Pa. - Federal prosecutors want to return to Mexico a federal inmate they say confessed to killing at least 10 women as "offerings to Satan."
The U.S. attorney's office in Harrisburg, acting on a request from the Mexican government, asked a federal judge to extradite Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz for trial in the June 2001 slaying of a 17-year-old girl.
De la Paz, 29, is a Mexican imprisoned in Lewisburg Federal Prison on immigration charges. Authorities say he confessed last year to the deaths, which ranged from 1993 until 2006, to Mexican investigators and officials in Texas.
All took place near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the extradition complaint said.
Pennsylvania authorities specifically cited the slaying of Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis. Reyes Solis had been stabbed in the heart and dumped in a canal in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
De la Paz said he used a kitchen knife taken from his sister's home to stab the girl, then with another man concealed her body in a black bag and dumped it into a canal near Ciudad Juarez — the same place they had thrown two other victims, according to the complaint.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Behe said Thursday that he does not know whether de la Paz intends to oppose extradition.
"At this point in time, the Mexican government feels they have enough evidence to extradite him," Behe said.
In August, police in Denver arrested a suspected accomplice, construction worker Edgar Alvarez Cruz. Mexican authorities have charged him with Reyes Solis' killing. Police said another man, Alejandro Delgado Valles, admitted helping kidnap some of the women but claimed he did not participate in the killings.
More than 100 women disappeared in Ciudad Juarez in sexually motivated attacks over the decade ending in 2003, many of them younger women last seen taking a downtown bus. Often the victims were dumped in the desert outside the city.
The number of victims and the slow pace of the investigation have drawn international attention.
A hearing on the extradition complaint is scheduled for June 26. It was unclear whether de la Paz had a lawyer.
De la Paz is serving a multi-year sentence for illegally entering the United States. Federal prison officials said his release date is in 2010. |
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