procuraduría.
Many of the relatives and friends of the slain women were again charging that officials were not doing enough to quell the serial killings in Ciudad Juárez. The number of homicides against women had now topped three hundred.
Scores of demonstrators from Juárez and El Paso took to the streets that day, clutching wooden crosses and waving life-size photos of their lost loved ones. Others carried banners that read, "Not another one!" "Enough!" "No more corruption, no more ineptness!" "Out with Suly!" For nearly two years, the mothers of the victims had waited for justice from the brash woman appointed to head the investigation and prosecute those responsible for the crimes. But Ponce had failed to fulfill their hopes, and now they were insisting she be ousted.
En masse the protestors descended on Ponce's office, where they called for her resignation. "There were two crosses, one that the families carried, and one that we had ourselves," Esther Chávez wrote in an e-mail to Univision. "One we planted right in front of the
procuraduría,
where Suly Ponce was, and the other
the families took to the place where they found Lilia Alejandra García
. We also had other placards that read:
"If Suly is the best of the procuraduría, we don't want to see the worst."
Esther described how Ponce finally stepped out of the building, howling at the gathered crowd,
"ĄNo me griten!"
"Stop shouting at me!"
"Just a day earlier, the Chihuahua DA had stated that Suly Ponce was 'unmovable.' On this day, at least, we moved and shook her
tapete
[security blanket]," Chávez wrote.
Ponce had drawn a lot of criticism after attempting to tie Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif to all the crimes, alleging that while in prison the foreign-born scientist had paid, first, members of Los Rebeldes, and then several
ruteros,
or bus drivers, to kill the women in copycat fashion to exonerate himself.
"Perhaps the bad fortune that we had in Juárez was to attract an individual who never deserved to step on Mexican soil," Ponce insisted.
But her office had never been able to produce any proof that the Egyptian had been working from inside the jail since his arrest in 1995, or that he had paid members of either group to commit the murders.
Prosecutor Ponce tried to ally herself to the women of Juárez, telling them, "I'm a woman like you!"
She insisted that great strides had been made during her tenure, referring to the addition of new computers and state-of-the-art DNA testing equipment for the state's forensic specialist, Irma Rodríguez.
While the special prosecutor appeared anxious to tout her accomplishments, the angry women standing outside of her office that day dismissed her declarations; they were now convinced that she was a puppet who had been sent to patronize them. The protestors believed that Suly Ponce had no real intention of helping them in their calls to stop the violence.
In a bizarre twist, Esther Chávez came under verbal attack herself that morning from Guillermina González and members of Voices Without Echo. "They said vile things about me to the press, and they rejected my presence," Esther noted. González and members of her group were charging that journalists and nongovernmental organizations such as Casa Amiga, under the direction of Esther Chávez, were profiting from the murders. Now it seemed as if, aside from the crimes and the apparent cover-ups and botched investigations, the seed of discord had been planted in Ciudad Juárez, causing dissension in the already bleeding and broken heart of the city.
Chávez's Casa Amiga had been receiving donations from the community and using them to run the shelter. Now some members of other nongovernmental organizations, as well as employees of the attorney general's office, were charging that the donations had been intended for the victims' families and not for Chávez. Esther contended that she had used the funds properly.
Bereaved mothers including Irma Pérez and Paula Flores joined Guillermina González in accusing Esther of exploiting the deaths of their loved ones, charging that she was using the tragedies as a way to gain media attention and raise funds for her abuse and rape crisis center. Guillmerina also complained that Esther was giving out private phone numbers of members of Voices Without Echo without permission.
Chávez maintained that she was helping the cause. She contended that she had only given out the group's main number.
The activist said the attack by Guillermina's group hurt. "It's something that affects me deeply, because they're people I tried to protect and help
. I love them a lot, their suffering has touched me
I've helped them and I'm ready to help them again, whenever they need me. I won't attack them. I respect them, and all society should respect them
. I'm not spiteful because they're victims and they feel pain."
* * *
It is not clear what finally prompted government officials to remove Suly Ponce from her role as special prosecutor, or whether the mounting protests by the women of Juárez played any role. Whatever the reason, word came in April of 2001 that she had been promoted to the role of regional coordinator of the North Zone and a new Juárez-based special prosecutor had been named Zulema Bolívar, a former sex-crimes special investigator for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office.
In an article that appeared in the city's
El Norte
newspaper, Attorney General Arturo González Rascón acknowledged that Ponce had come under harsh attack from the families of the victims and many of the women's organizations. Still, he had nothing but praise for the auburn-haired lawyer and said that she had completed "very successful and very special investigations." Ponce was transferred to a position with the Chihuahua state governor's office in Juárez in which she was to oversee the investigations of the state police, and while not in the public eye, she was still reportedly keeping tabs on the investigation into the city's murdered women as part of her new, elevated post.
In the days and months ahead, an FBI leak had linked drug dealers to Lilia García's death. Ponce dismissed the notion that drug dealers had anything to do with the teen's murder and labeled the report as misinformation. Instead according to an article published in Salon.com, a respected online magazine, Ponce hinted that circus workers performing across the street from García's place of employment may have been to blame. But when a circus manager came forward alleging that she had "tried to bribe" them to finger coworkers as the perpetrators, the article reported that Ponce backed off.
Ponce vehemently denied the allegations of the circus manager, and the claims were never substantiated.
Former FBI agent Robert Ressler expressed disappointment in the turn of events in Juárez. In a telephone interview in September of 2001, the profiler, who had been so optimistic about the work of police and prosecutors in the border city, sounded weary and disgusted.
"I got caught up in the politics of the place," he said. "Everything that I did during one party was sort of scrapped completely by the next. I did one week of training, set up a task force with the El Paso police, and the new party disrupted everything we did."
* * *
In the late summer of 2001, an article appeared in
El Diario de Juárez
in which Norma Andrade de García expressed outrage that after nine months, police still had no leads in her daughter's rape and murder.
"We're talking about nine months during which they cannot give me a single answer. They tell me they're closing lines of investigation, that they're working, but they have nothing, there is nothing," Andrade told the newspaper. She went on to denounce authorities for their derogatory comments and the utter lack of respect shown by one municipal police officer.
"They told me that for the time being they were bogged down in the investigation, and when my eldest daughter got angry and told them not to throw away my daughter's file, the agent said to her in a very mocking manner as he threw it away,
'Mira, mira, mira, mira
,' "
Andrade recounted. "These expressions are inappropriate. We deserve at least respect. Besides our being hurt and indignant, they have to be made to understand that sometimes we are very depressed, very sad, that we are filled with anger and that this anger may be against them, because they don't investigate properly."
According to the newspaper, Norma Andrade had found several irregularities in the investigation of her daughter's case including an autopsy report that revealed a great quantity of semen present in the young woman's body. Despite the autopsy findings, authorities informed her that they didn't have the sperm that would help them find the perpetrator, or perpetrators, of Lilia's murder.
The bereaved mother was certain her daughter had been kept alive for several days while she was the victim of multiple rapes and tortured repeatedly until her death.
"According to the autopsy, my daughter passed away on February 19, which means she was held captive for five days," Norma said, weeping.
No one knows what horrors the seventeen-year-old suffered until she was, perhaps mercifully, killed. One state official who spoke to Univision on the condition of anonymity revealed that partially digested food had been found in the young woman's stomach. The autopsy suggested that Lilia García had eaten a meal approximately two hours before her murder, the official said.
What is significant about this finding is that it indicates that Lilia García did not feel threatened or afraid when she ate that meal, evidenced by the fact that her body was secreting stomach enzymes to digest the food. According to forensic experts, when a person is in fear or experiencing trauma, the body shuts down and will not produce these enzymes. This clue led some close to the investigation to theorize that García had felt safe with the person who had served her that last meal and had had no inkling she would soon be killed.
It also pointed to the possibility of a network of perpetrators and suggested that the person who was caring for Lilia while in captivity may not have been her killer.
Even more startling were the contents of a report written by the forensics experts who had examined García's body. In a lengthy article that appeared on Salon.com, freelance journalist Max Blumenthal reported that marks identical to those made by police handcuffs were found on García's wrists.
"Someone rich and powerful has to be involved in my daughter's murder," Norma told the
El Paso Times
in response to the finding. "I'm not an investigator, but only someone like that can keep getting away with this."
* * *
Three months after Suly Ponce's departure, Guillermina González announced the disbanding of her grassroots group Voices Without Echo. While many theorized that the rift between Guillermina's organization and the powerful activist Esther Chávez had prompted the young woman's decision to cease operations, others claimed the decision was totally unrelated to the angry disagreement. Guillermina was getting married to a man she'd met at a protest rally.
Her fiancé, Felipe Nava, had also lost a loved one to a violent death. His daughter by a previous marriage, seventeen-year-old María Isabel, had been abducted in January of 2000. Her ravaged and incinerated body was found three weeks later in a valley southeast of the city.
When María Isabel did not return home on January 4, her mother immediately reported her missing to municipal police. But like many of the relatives of the missing women, she was told her daughter had probably just run off with a boyfriend.
On January 28, more than three weeks after her disappearance, María's mother and father got the news that every parent dreads. Their daughter's charred remains had been located. An autopsy revealed that the teen had been held in captivity for two weeks before she was savagely killed and set ablaze.
The circumstances of her death seemed to mirror those of Lilia García, but officials failed to make the connection.
Guillermina had worked hard to keep the stories in the media. But in order to effectively run her small organization, she needed money. The mailings, the cell phone bills, and even the searches required some funding. In spite of promises of help from journalists and TV producers if she allowed them to tell her story, the much-needed funding never materialized and Guillermina finally decided to close down the organization.
At a news conference that summer, Guillermina's mother, Paula González, pointed to the strides her daughter's group had made during its brief undertaking.
"We lost our fear of authorities," she told members of the press on July 18, the day the group officially ceased operations. "We used to sit for three hours before they would talk to us. Now we walk into the investigators' office as if it were our home."
Even more significant, Paula noted, was that members of Voices Without Echo had won their fight allowing victims' families to view their daughters' bodies before an autopsy could be performed.
Still, with all their efforts, Paula and her family were no closer to finding out what had happened to their beloved Sagrario. Remarkably, Suly Ponce had ordered Sagrario's body exhumed and retested after an initial DNA test had returned negative results. Paula and her husband were devastated when they opened the official document stating that the body they had buried was likely not that of Sagrario. A second DNA test was quickly ordered and, as unbelievable as it sounds, it also returned negative results, prompting Guillermina González to take a closer look at the official paperwork. The young woman discovered that authorities had exhumed the wrong body. They had mistakenly taken the corpse that lay next to Sagrario in an apparent mix-up over the grave numbers.
