Gangland (2 page)

Police had been called that morning because a Juárez family had found a streak of blood, indicating someone had been dragged into an alley, on a sidewalk near their home. Police then found a severed left hand and, a few feet away, Chávez's body with a black plastic garbage bag tied over her head.

Their subsequent investigation determined that Chávez had met three 17-year-old boys in a bar and decided to drink with them. After some time, the boys convinced her to go to one of their homes. Police said that Chávez went with them, but when she refused their sexual advances, they tied her up, covered her mouth with duct tape and drowned her in a bathtub. They severed her hand with a hacksaw, police said, in an effort to make the murder look like it was the work of organized crime, which, of course, was still running wild in Juárez despite thousands of police officers and soldiers occupying the city.

The Chihuahua state police claimed that her murder was an unfortunate isolated incident, and not the result of the Drug War or Chávez's activism. “Unfortunately, these people were drunk, they were taking drugs, and after hanging out for a while, they decided to kill her,” Chihuahua State Attorney General Carlos Manuel Salas told
Milenio
, a national daily newspaper. The boys were, according to police, members of a local street gang called Los Aztecas, but did not have previous criminal records.

Few in Juárez believed the boys were guilty of the crime. Since the murders began in earnest in 1993, many people have been charged with the killings and put behind bars, but the bodies keep showing up.

The first victim identified as one of the missing women of Juárez was 13-year-old Anna Chavira Farel. Her beaten, raped, sodomized and strangled body was found January 23, 1993 in a vacant lot in the city's Campeste Virreyes neighborhood. The next, 16-year-old Angela Luna Villalobos, was found two days later in a similar condition not far away. As more bodies were found and far more young
maquiladora
workers went missing, citizens pressured the authorities to do something about what they were calling “El Depredador” (the Predator). In October 1995, after at least 46 bodies of girls and young women had been found in Juárez, Chihuahua state police arrested a suspect.

He certainly seemed the part. Abdel Latif Sharif was born in Egypt in 1947. A gifted chemical engineer, he emigrated to New York City in 1970. He was fired from his job there for embezzlement and moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1978. One of his friends and co-workers, John Pascoe, later told police that he took Sharif on a deer-hunting trip and was surprised to see him torture a wounded buck, laughing while breaking the limbs of the helpless animal until Pascoe put it out of its misery. He also noted that Sharif was often in the company of young women, some of who had disappeared after their contact with him. When Pascoe found the possessions of a girl who had gone missing next to a mud-stained shovel on Sharif's porch in 1980, he severed their friendship.

Sharif's talents led an upstate New York-based building materials company called Cercoa (now part of the giant Ferro Corporation) to create a department specifically for him in Florida in 1981. The job paid him well enough that he could afford to live in Palm Beach. On May 2, 1981, he invited a 23-year-old woman named Molly Fleming, whom he met in a bar, to his house where he beat and raped her repeatedly. When he was finished, he offered to take her to a hospital where he was promptly arrested.

Cercoa bailed him out and paid for his legal defense, which was further complicated in August after he sexually assaulted another woman he met in West Palm Beach. He was sentenced to probation for the first rape and 45 days in prison for the second.

After his release, Cercoa fired him and Sharif moved to Gainesville, a city dominated by the University of Florida. He was married briefly. His wife, Joanne Collins Podlesnik, divorced him after he beat her unconscious. On March 17, 1983, Sharif placed an ad in
The Gainesville Daily Register
looking for a live-in housekeeper. He beat and raped a woman who answered the ad and threatened her by saying: “I will bury you out back in the woods. I've done it before, and I'll do it again.” After he was arrested, he escaped from jail, but was quickly apprehended. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison with the understanding that when his sentence was over, Sharif would “be met at the prison gates and escorted to the airport” for deportation to Egypt.

But it didn't work out that way. He was paroled in October 1989 and soon hired by Midland, Texas-based Benchmark Research & Technology, where his work in nonflammable, hydrocarbon-free well drilling materials received praise from the U.S. Department of Energy and influential Senator Phil Gramm. It also earned Sharif a consistent income from patents he registered while working there. But he was arrested again in 1991, this time for driving under the influence. A former co-worker from Florida who had coincidentally moved to Midland saw his name in the paper and called Immigration to investigate Sharif's deportation order.

The case dragged on, and in May 1994, a judge agreed to a deal in which the prosecution would drop all charges if Sharif would voluntarily leave the U.S., never to return. Benchmark then transferred him to one of their
maquiladora
factories in Juárez and rented him a large house in the city's posh Rincones de San Marcos neighborhood.

In October 1995, a worker at the factory accused Sharif of raping her repeatedly. She said he warned her not to go to police or he would kill her and dump her body in Lote Bravo, a stretch of desert just south of Juárez where many bodies of young women had already been found.

Although she later dropped her charges, a detective working the case found out that the 48-year-old Sharif had been dating 17-year-old Elizabeth Castro Garcia, whose beaten and raped body had been found in Lote Bravo on August 19. Sharif was arrested, tried and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

But while the media was trumpeting the arrest of the Juárez Ripper—and pointing out, almost boasting, that he was a foreigner brought to Mexico by the Americans—the killings didn't stop. In fact, they increased. Not only were there more bodies, but those that were found were more and more likely to be mutilated in horrific ways. And the press also neglected to mention that the killings had begun at least 15 months before Sharif had moved to the area.

The citizens—particularly young women—of Juárez were growing increasingly frightened and the authorities were at a loss to explain why taking Sharif off the streets didn't do anything to stop the killings. What happened next would have been rejected if it were the plot outline for the cheesiest crime show in television history.

On April 8, 1996, police questioned a man named Hector Olivares Villalba in connection with the rape, mutilation and murder of 18-year-old Rosario Garcia Leal. Under interrogation, Olivares Villalba admitted that he was indeed one of many young men from a Juárez street gang called Los Rebeldes (the Rebels) who had murdered Garcia Leal on December 7, 1995. Police raided a number of nightclubs associated with the gang and rounded up almost 300 people for questioning. That led to the arrest of gang leader Sergio “El Diablo” (the Devil) Armendariz Diaz, Juan “El Grande” (Mr. Big) Contreras Jurado, Carlos Hernandez Molina, Carlos Barrientos Vidales, Romel Cerniceros Garcia, Fernando Guermes Aguirre, Luis Adrade, Jose Juarez Rosales and Erika Fierro, all members of Los Rebeldes.

Eager to pin the murders on Sharif, police accused the nine members of Los Rebeldes of participating in a sinister plot in which Sharif would pay them to commit rapes and murders using the same methods he had in order to make people believe that he was not the culprit and that the real
depredador
was still at large. Police claimed that Contreras Jurado testified that Armendariz Diaz had once ordered him to visit Sharif in prison and bring back an envelope containing $4,000 in U.S. currency. Once it was received, they said, Armendariz Diaz ordered the gang members to kidnap, beat, rape and murder a young woman known to them only as “Lucy.”

All of the accused later recanted their confessions, saying that they were made under torture. They showed reporters burn marks they said came from their interrogators. Charges were later dropped against Ceniceros Garcia, Fierro, Guermes Aguirre, Hernandez Molina and Olivares Villalba. The others—Armendariz Diaz, Contreras Jurado, Carlos Barrientos Vidales, Luis Adrade and Jose Juarez Rosales—went to trial for 17 murders police said were coordinated by Sharif from his prison cell. Armendariz Diaz added some excitement to the proceedings when he pleaded guilty to organizing and participating in the gang rape of a 19-year-old fellow inmate while awaiting trial. Police also said that Armendariz Diaz's teeth were perfect matches to bite marks found on the breasts of at least three victims attributed to Los Rebeldes.

But putting Los Rebeldes in prison didn't do any more to stop the killings than imprisoning Sharif did. The murders continued unabated even though Mexico's own Human Rights Commission openly criticized the state police and their methods, insisting they take the problem more seriously. But still the police and prosecutors clung to the idea that the murders were the work of one extremely proficient serial killer, probably working under the direction of Sharif.

And many in government indicated that the deaths of women on the streets of Juárez were far from a top priority. “Women who have a night life, go out late and come into contact with drinkers are at risk,” Chihuahua's former attorney general Arturo Gonzáles Rascón told
El Diario
in February 1999. “It's hard to go out on the street when it's raining and not get wet.” Although there was no evidence to support it, other authorities had accused the victims of being prostitutes, or in some way provoking their attackers. “Despite the fact that most of the victims were schoolgirls or workers, there's a persistent belief around town that the targeted women somehow invited the attacks,” said American journalist John Burnett. “Nowadays, it's a common joke when two men see a provocatively dressed woman, for one to elbow the other and say: ‘She better watch out or she'll end up in desert.'”

More light was shed on the hundreds of rapes and murders on March 18, 1999, when a badly injured 14-year-old girl named Nancy Gonzalez started banging on a stranger's door in Juárez, screaming and begging for help. When police arrived, she told them that she had been repeatedly raped, beaten, suffocated and left for dead by a man named Jesus Guardado Márquez, known locally as “El Tolteca” (the Toltec), because he looked like he was from that indigenous group. He was a
maquiladora
bus driver, who picked up women from their homes and dropped them off at factories, returning when their shifts were over. The concept behind the buses (which the factories paid for) was to keep the women safe from the predators on the streets. But when Gonzalez—who had falsified her birth date to get her job—finished her shift at 1:00 a.m., she found that she was the last passenger on the bus and that it had taken a turn into the desert. Guardado Márquez then assaulted her and tried to choke her to death.

Upon hearing that Gonzalez was still alive, Guardado Márquez (who had been found guilty of sexual assault once before) fled Juárez with his pregnant wife, but was arrested on April 1 in Durango. Under interrogation, Guardado Márquez admitted to his crimes against Gonzalez and named four other bus drivers—Victor “El Narco” (the Narc) Moreno Rivera; Augustin “El Kiani” (the Persian) Toribio Castillo; Bernardo “El Samber” Hernando Fernandez; and Jose Gaspar “El Gaspy” Cerballos Chavez—who raped and murdered their passengers as a gang called Los Choferes (the Chauffeurs).

Incredibly, state police claimed that their leader, Moreno Rivera, had been hired by Sharif in an effort to clear his name, just as they alleged Los Rebeldes had. They said Sharif had paid the bus drivers $1,200 per murder and that he demanded the victims' underwear as proof.

A British reporter tracked down Sharif in prison (he was in solitary confinement and said he was frequently denied access to his lawyer) and asked him what he thought of the government's story. “They accuse me of everything. They always said I was a genius and very intelligent. How come a genius would make the same mistake twice?” he said. “If I did it with Los Rebeldes, why would I do the same thing the same way? Paying people to kill women outside [prison] is very stupid.” Police could provide no evidence of cash transactions, phone conversations or visits to Sharif in prison.

The accused claimed they did not know Sharif and that their confessions were the result of torture. Authorities blamed them for a total of 211 murders, including a ludicrous 191 by Guardado Márquez alone. Media had started calling him “El Dracula.” He and the other bus drivers recanted their confessions. Motores Electricos de Juárez, Gonzalez's employer, fired her and sued her for taking a job she was too young for. Sharif's sentence was reduced from 30 years to 20 after the prosecution admitted it had “problems with evidence,” and both sides promised to appeal. He died—of what officials called “natural causes”—in prison in 2006.

Not surprisingly, the killings did not stop. By the end of 1999, the phenomenon was making international news. The victims, known as
Las Desaparecidos
(the Disappeared) were drawing a great deal of interest in the United States, including some celebrities who championed their cause and protested what they saw as poor efforts by police and government to stop the killings. Canadian Candice Skrapec, an instructor of criminology at the University of California, Fresno, told newspapers that the killings were likely the work of American Angel Resendez Ramirez, better known as “the Railway Killer.” She was wrong. When he was arrested, Resendez Ramirez admitted to a number of murders, but none in Mexico.

When the skeletal remains of eight more victims were uncovered in a vacant lot just a block away from the Maquiladoras Association headquarters on November 5, 2001, police announced the creation of a new task force to investigate the crimes and offered a reward of $21,500 for information leading to an arrest. The area, known as “El Campo Algodonero” (the Cotton Field), had been the site where so many bodies have been buried over the years that it led to a commonly used threat, “I'll leave your body in the Cotton Field.”