Aug 10, 12:10 AM EDT

Mexico Slayings Suspect to Be Extradited
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By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A federal judge Thursday ordered the extradition of a man who reportedly confessed to more than 10 killings in Mexico, but it was unclear how soon he would be released from a federal prison.

U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Andrew Smyser said there was probable cause to extradite Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz to Mexico, who has about two years left to serve on a U.S. sentence for an immigration violation.

Granados de la Paz, 29, a Mexican citizen, allegedly admitted to Mexican and Texas authorities last year that he killed women in Mexico.

The U.S. attorney's office in Texas could petition a judge to have him returned before his current sentence ends, said William Behe, a federal prosecutor in Harrisburg.

"When they return him, whether they reduce his sentence to get him back there more quickly, I don't know," Behe said. "That's what I would do, because time certainly affects the witness memory and preservation of evidence."

James Wade, the suspect's federal public defender, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment Thursday.

The extradition request focused on Granados de la Paz's alleged confession to stabbing Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis in June 2001. Her body, and the remains of four other women, were found five months later in a canal in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Last year, construction worker Edgar Alvarez Cruz was arrested in Denver on charges he killed Reyes Solis. Another man, Alejandro Delgado Valles, allegedly admitted helping kidnap some of the women but claimed not to have participated in killing them.

During the decade that ended in 2003, more than 100 women disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, their bodies often dumped in the desert nearby.