Missing U.S. teen among 3 found dead in Mexico

Missing U.S. teen among 3 found dead in Mexico

May. 5, 2010 01:22 PM
Associated Press

MONTERREY, Mexico - The body of a Texas high school student reported missing by her mother has been found in Mexico and police are investigating her death as a homicide, authorities said Wednesday.

Elisabeth Mandala, 18, and two Mexican men were found dead Saturday in a crashed pickup truck near Mina, a town in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon.

Autopsies revealed that all three died from severe blows to the head and body, according to a spokeswoman from the Nuevo Leon state Attorney General's Office.

Investigators believe the accident was staged, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with agency policy.

The motive for the killing was unknown. The relationship between Mandala and the two Mexican men was also unclear.

Mandala, a senior at Kempner High School in Sugar Land, Texas, was last seen April 27 leaving her mother's home. The mother reported her missing around midday Saturday, Houston police spokesman Victor Senties said.

The three victims were found in a truck with Texas license plates. It had been hit by another vehicle, but the accident was considered too minor to have caused the deaths, according to the Nuevo Leon attorney general's spokeswoman.

The two men killed were taxi driver Luis Angel Estrella Mondragon, 44, and merchant Dante Ruiz Siller, 38. The spokeswoman said the two were friends from Cuauhtitlan, near Mexico City, but police did not know why they were in Monterrey with Mandala.

A representative of the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey reclaimed Mandala's body with authorization from her father, the spokeswoman said.

Kempner High School principal Troy Mooney wrote a letter to parents saying Mandala had died while traveling in Mexico over the weekend, but it did not contain further details.

A Fort Bend Independent School District spokeswoman did not immediately return a message Wednesday from The Associated Press.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z0n5coYdgw

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... exico.html

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Kempner High School principal Troy Mooney wrote a letter to parents saying Mandala had died while traveling in Mexico over the weekend, but it did not contain further details.

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How does a high school principal find out before the parents?

This is a truly bizarre report...just the kind of thing one would expect when dealing with the general lawlessness in Mexico.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A local high school student has been found murdered in Mexico, after her mother told police she went down there to learn how to transport illegal immigrants across the border.

On Tuesday night, friends and family gathered at the teen's Sugar Land home. Cars lined the driveway, people spilled outside.

And at Kempner High School, the loss of one the school's brightest students has been tough enough.

"You know, you want to see everybody happy," said student Shaina Ituah. "We don't want violence. We don't want sad faces."

In the school's parking lot, Mandala's parking spot is filled with short eulogies and sweet goodbyes, but now students wonder whether the high school senior who loved Justin Beiber and riding horses at her family's stables led a double life.

"I've heard a whole bunch of rumors," said student Tamara Awofeso. "At first, I didn't believe it because it sounded like something out of a movie theater."

According to a Mexican newspaper, Elisabeth Mandala, 18, was found dead this past Saturday in the small Mexican town of Mina. Her body, along with those of two Mexican men, was found in a Dodge truck which appeared to have wrecked. But, according to the newspaper, authorities suspected the wreck was merely a cover-up for murder, believing the victims had been beaten to death hours before.

"It's horrible. It really is," said close family friend Sheila Mayo. "It's such a loss, such a loss. She just didn't have a chance to live her life."

Mandala, we have learned, was reported missing to Houston police on May 1. Her mother told authorities she had rented a car a few days earlier to go to Mexico to meet up with someone.

According to missing persons, her mother told police that she wanted to be a coyote -- a human smuggler. Her mother also told police Elisabeth was an exotic dancer.

We attempted to reach her mother at her home and by cell phonem, but we have yet to get a response.

"It just shows that you're not guaranteed tomorrow," Awofeso said.

At Kempner High School, where Mandala was just weeks from graduating, counselors are on hand to help classmates cope with the devastating news.

Student Megen Cates said, "Everyone just feels like there was something they could have done to help her."


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=7421853

Slain teen wanted to be coyote, worked as stripper
BY PEGGY O'HARE and LISE OLSEN HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 5, 2010, 4:31PM


Sugar Land high school senior found beaten to death in Mexico last weekend wanted to be a coyote who smuggled illegal immigrants across the border and also worked as a stripper, according to her mother’s statement to police, a Houston Police Department missing persons report reveals.

Elisabeth Mandala, 18, a Kempner High School senior in the Fort Bend Independent School District, was found dead Saturday along with the bodies of two other men on the highway to Monclova, just west of Mina, a town of 6,000 near Monterrey. The pickup had been staged to look as if it had been involved in an accident, but investigators found evidence the truck’s accelerator may have been jammed with a rock, according to the Monterrey newspapers, Milenio and El Norte.

Mandala’s family has declined to comment on the case or the mother’s statement to police, calling the investigation into the teen’s slaying "a very sensitive situation." They have also asked the media to stay off their property. A phone call to their home went unanswered Wednesday.

Mandala’s mother did not contact Houston police to report her daughter was missing until after the teen had already been found dead Saturday in Mexico.

Paula Benitez Mandala, 47, told Houston police her daughter was driving a rental car when the teen left Houston last week because the girl had wrecked her own car. The mother, however, could not provide Houston police a description of the rental car her daughter was driving.

The girl, a U.S. citizen born in Texas, left her mother’s home in the 10100 block of Synott Road on April 27 to go meet "somebody" and maybe go to Mexico, according to her mother’s statement in the HPD report. The next day, Elisabeth Mandala posted on her Facebook page that she was in Mexico and would be back in Houston the following day. But she did not return.

By noon on Saturday, Paula Mandala had grown worried enough to call Houston police to report her daughter missing. But her daughter’s beaten body had already been found six hours earlier on a Mexican highway in a Dodge Dakota pickup with Texas license plates. It was unclear if that was the same vehicle that Elisabeth Mandala had rented before leaving Houston.

Found beaten to death with her were Dante Ruiz Siller, 38, and Luis Angel Estrella Mondragon, both from Mexico City, but described as having local ties. One Mexican media outlet reported the two men were brothers. Mandala’s relationship with them is unclear.

The Nuevo Leon Ministerio Publico officers also recovered false identification papers in Siller’s possession.

Houston police could not elaborate on Mandala’s desire to be an immigrant smuggler because her mother did not provide them with any additional details, they said.

The U.S. Consulate has filed paperwork on the Mandala family’s behalf to claim the teen’s body, according to a report in El Norte today.

Chronicle reporter Moises Mendoza contributed to this report.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 91536.html

I am sorry that this girl was murdered. But what kind of girl would dream of being a coyote or exotic dancer one day? It doesnt sound like she was raised with any moral dignity. I can almost bet she was an anchor baby.

This story just gets stranger and stranger.

I don't think ateenager cannot rent a car, you have to be at least 21. So it looks like someone here in the USA rented that car for her.

Then her mother only calls police after the body is found in Mexico. Was the mother notified prior to her calling the US police?

Then there are her fellow students who don't express surprise about this girl being in Mexico with two middle age men and getting murdered. Could it be that they have a good idea what she was really up to?

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Originally Posted by MW

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Kempner High School principal Troy Mooney wrote a letter to parents saying Mandala had died while traveling in Mexico over the weekend, but it did not contain further details.

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How does a high school principal find out before the parents?

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Because their parenting skills are sub-par, to say the least.

Remember when Hillary Clinton went to Mexico to promote NAFTA?

Her outlook on record was.."It takes a village to raise a child"

Death in the Fast Lane for Student-Turned-Stripper
Updated: 18 hours 15 minutes ago

AOL News
(May 14) -- From high-school sweetheart, to secret stripper, to would-be smuggler, to victim of a strange and violent end -- the case of one Houston-area teen's fast life and abrupt death is enough to rattle even the most seasoned homicide investigators.

Earlier this month, 18-year-old Elisabeth Mandala was found dead, along with two unidentified Mexican men, in a wrecked pickup truck outside of Monterrey, Mexico. Nobody could say why she was there in the first place or what her relation to the men was.

But what appeared at first to be a case of dangerous driving quickly took on a more sinister turn after police discovered that the accelerator pedal on the car had been jammed down with a rock, the two men were carrying several forms of fake ID and all three of the vehicle's occupants had been beaten to death hours before the car accident. The Nuevo Leon attorney general's office said the accident was too minor to have caused the deaths, reported the The Associated Press.


Handout Photo
Elisabeth Mandala, shown here in an undated photo, was found dead with two unidentified men in a wrecked pickup near Monterrey, Mexico. All three had been beaten to death.


As the investigation into Mandala's death proceeds, details have emerged about her own life that invite comparisons to "Twin Peaks," the early-'90's TV drama about a murdered high school prom queen who was also discovered to be leading a dangerous and seedy double life.

Besides being a beloved friend and aspiring graduate and prom queen, Mandala was also apparently moonlighting as an exotic dancer at a cabaret club in nearby Pasadena, Texas. The club's manager told the Houston Chronicle that the teen, who stripped under the name "Lovely," was such a popular hit with customers that her photo was featured in a guide to Houston-area nightlife. And all of it unbeknownst to her family and friends.

Yet Mandala's mother did tell police she was aware of another troubling ambition her daughter had: to become a smuggler of illegal Mexican immigrants into the U.S., or a "coyote," the Chronicle said. It is unknown how far down that path Mandala went, but the website TrueCrimeReport suggests she was headed to Mexico on the weekend of her death to learn the ropes in the illicit business.

Mandala's Facebook page has yielded scant clues to her disappearance, outside of a status update she made on April 28, the last day she was seen alive. She wrote, "Im in Mexico :) ill be back thursday," according to the Chronicle.

Meanwhile, the blog CBS News Crimeinsider obtained photos from the teen's Facebook account that it says "hint at a different side of her -- one that may have gotten her killed." Her friends have used the social network to set up a page in her honor, "Rest in Peace Elisabeth Mandala."

But with the case still open, peace is unlikely to come anytime soon for Mandala's close friends and family. "It affected everyone. There were people crying in the middle of class, in almost every single class I went to," a classmate, Jillian Thompson, told KHOU.

http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/de ... a/19477885