Thread: Suspect in border slayings of women arrested in Colorado

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14399795/

Suspect in border slayings of women arrested
U.S. official calls arrest of man in Colorado ‘major break’ in killings
The Associated Press


Updated: 5:34 p.m. PT Aug 17, 2006
MONTERREY, Mexico - A Mexican man suspected of taking part in the rape and killing of several young women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez has been arrested in Denver, Colorado, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza announced Thursday.

Garza called the Tuesday arrest of Edgar Alvarez Cruz for immigration violations "a major break" in the investigations into the sexually motivated murders of over 100 young women in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, between 1993 and 2003.

In a statement, the embassy said Alvarez Cruz is suspected of taking part in the rape and killing of at least 10 women during that time span.

Most of the victims were dumped in the desert outside of Ciudad Juarez, provoking outrage that reached around the world. They seemed to fit a pattern: Many of the victims were young women last seen in the city's downtown or after taking buses. Their bodies often didn't appear until months later.

Police did arrest several people, including an Egyptian chemist who died in prison last month; a bus driver whose conviction was overturned; and his co-defendant, who died in prison before sentencing. A group of gang members are serving out sentences related to some of the crimes.

Considering Edgar Alvarez Cruz's habits, what job in America is he qualifed for?

Dixie

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercuryn ... 299300.htm

Posted on Thu, Aug. 17, 2006

U.S. arrests man suspected of multiple rapes and murders in Mexico

By SUSAN FERRISS
McClatchy Newspapers

MEXICO CITY - U.S. officials have arrested a man suspected of being part of a gang that raped and murdered at least 10 women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, between 1993 and 2003, the U.S. embassy here announced Thursday.

The embassy hailed the arrest as "a major break" in the investigation into the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of women in and around Juarez, a Mexican industrial city across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The failure of Mexican authorities to solve the crimes has been a major issue for years for human rights groups in both Mexico and the United States and has prompted victims' families to accuse local police of corruption and coverups. Two years ago, Mexican President Vicente Fox appointed a special federal prosecutor to investigate.

The embassy identified the suspect as Edgar Alvarez Cruz and said he'd been arrested on immigration violations Tuesday in Denver, Colo. He'll be returned to Mexico on Friday, the embassy said.

"The United States is deeply committed to helping Mexico find the killers of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez. The arrest of Edgar Alvarez Cruz in Denver is a very important step toward solving several of these horrific crimes," U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said in a statement released Thursday.

The embassy offered no details on Alvarez Cruz's age or occupation and didn't say where he was from in Mexico or why he was in the United States.

The statement also provided little information on how Alvarez Cruz had been linked to the crimes, except to say that U.S. authorities were acting on information from Mexican investigators.

A person familiar with the investigation who declined to be named because of the sensitive nature of the case said Alvarez Cruz's arrest was the result of a joint FBI and Chihuahua State Police investigation. That investigation recently had focused on U.S.-based drug dealers suspected of raping and killing women during parties celebrating successful smuggling operations, the person said.

The investigation came at about the same time that Mexican authorities re-opened a separate probe into mass burials of murdered women at two sites in Juarez. One is known as Cristo Negro, an area near a mountain where four women's bodies were found. The other is known as El Algondonero, which means the cotton field, where eight women's bodies were found.

The human rights group Amnesty International has said that as many as 370 women have been killed in Juarez and the surrounding Mexican state of Chihuahua since 1993. Of those, at least 137 were also sexually assaulted.

(Ricardo Sandoval of The Sacramento Bee contributed to this report.)

But he's just another Bush 'good hearted, law abiding, honest, hard working, salt of the earth, heroic, family values' type person. Why does the racist police have to harass these wonderfully vibrant people like that, just because their customs regarding life and sexual relations don't conform to our values? Don't these ignorant police know that we need to just understand and accept their cultural differences regarding the treatment of women?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 26971.html

Aug. 18, 2006, 4:58PM

Mexican arrested in U.S. suspected in Ciudad Juarez rapes, killings
Associated Press

MONTERREY, Mexico — A Mexican construction worker arrested in the United States for immigration violations is the main suspect in the rapes and killings of eight women found five years ago in a trash-strewn lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexican authorities say.

Relatives and women's rights activists remain skeptical that the women's killer has been caught, given all the mistakes made previously by investigators, such as misidentifying some of the victims.

Chihuahua state Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez, now leading Mexico's investigations into the border slayings, told the Ciudad Juarez daily newspaper El Diario that Edgar Alvarez Cruz, arrested in Denver, is linked to the killings of eight women — ages 15 to 21 — whose remains were found November 2001.

Gonzalez did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press on Friday. But her office said that she's working with U.S. authorities to get custody of Alvarez Cruz sometime next week, prosecutor Maria Teresa Gonzalez said.

Alvarez Cruz flown to El Paso, Texas after his arrest Tuesday at the house where he had been living for at least a month while working at a concrete construction company, said Ken Deal, chief deputy U.S. Marshal for Colorado.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza called the arrest "a major break" in the sexually motivated murders of more than 100 young women just across the border from El Paso, Texas, between 1993 and 2003.

Shortly after the 2001 discovery, state authorities said they had identified the eight bodies and closed the cases after arresting two bus drivers.

But one of the men died while awaiting trial, and the other's conviction was overturned when a judge found key witness testimony to be unreliable. Two of the defense lawyers were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez. And both defendants alleged they had been tortured into making videotaped "confessions" as state officials came under increasing international pressure to solve the crimes.

Relatives and women's rights activists say they have a lot of reasons to be skeptical.

Celia de la Rosa, whose 19-year-old daughter Guadalupe Luna was identified as one of the victims, was told last month that DNA tests conducted on the body didn't match her daughter. "How can they say they've found who did it if they don't even know who the girls are?" she said.

Josefina Gonzalez also had been told her 20-year-old daughter's body was found in the empty lot. She said overalls and two of her daughter's IDs found at the crime scene lead her to believe her daughter, Claudia Ivette, was among the victims. But that identification was also reversed by later DNA tests.

"If he killed my daughter, I want to see proof," she said. "As a mother, I doubt he did it. I just hope he is not another scapegoat."

Most of the Ciudad Juarez victims have been dumped in the desert outside of town. They seemed to fit a pattern: Many were last seen downtown or after taking buses, and their bodies not appearing until months later.

A group of gang members are serving out sentences related to some of the crimes, and the U.S. Embassy said Alvarez Cruz may have been involved in the killings as part of a gang.