Casefile True Crime - Case 226: El Mataviejitas

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

In 2003, 12 elderly women were killed in their homes in Mexico City. Most were strangled and robbed. Fears arose that a serial killer was on the loose, with the media dubbing the perpetrator ‘El Mataviejitas’ - The Little Old Lady Killer.  Police initially dismissed the serial killer notion, until the victim count continued to rise and the evidence became too strong to ignore.  --- Narration – Anonymous Host Research & writing – Holly Boyd Creative direction – Milly Raso Production and music – Mike Migas Music – Andrew D.B. Joslyn Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium Spotify Premium Patreon For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-226-el-mataviejitas

Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local Crisis Centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. It was the evening of Tuesday, January 24, 2006, and Mexico City's Arena Coliseo was alive with the thunderous cheers of a 5,000-strong crowd. The venue was hosting Lucha Libre, a traditional form of professional freestyle wrestling celebrated for its high energy and dramatics.

The headline match was an Incredibles event, with the good-guide Technikos and dirty-dealing Rudos mixed together on two teams of three. Each wrestler, referred to as a Luchador, proudly displayed his individual persona in the color and pattern combinations of his lycra costume and mask. Whether Technikos or Rudos, spectators encouraged their favourites and taunted their rivals. The Luchadores put on a show, thrilling the crowd with shooting star-dives over the ropes, flying kicks to the chest, and body slams from atop posts. Then, in a carefully disguised illegal manoeuvre, veteran Rudo wrestler Universo 2000 conducted

a low-blow kick to the groin of rising star Technikos Dos Karas Jr. With lightning-quick reflexes, Dos Karas Jr. caught the kick. In a follow-up move that broke one of the most sacred rules of Lucha Libre, Universo tore away Dos Karas Jr.'s mask, revealing his face. The crowd booed and jeered. Universo and his team were immediately disqualified. The match was over. Just before 2.30 p.m. the following day, and only a few kilometres from the now-dormant

arena Colosseo, Hallel Lopez made his way along Jose Jota Harso Street. The 25-year-old student had just finished his shift awaiting tables, and was heading to the house he shared with his landlady, 82-year-old Ana Marea Reyes. The pair lived independently in separate areas of the building accessed via a communal entry way. Upon entering his home that Wednesday afternoon, Hallel noticed the door to Ana Marea's portion of the house was open, and decided to pop in for a quick hello. But before Hallel could enter, a tall, broad muscular figure suddenly burst out of Ana

Marea's room. Using black pants and a red sweater, the person knocked Hallel aside, then barged down the hallway and out the front door. After pulling himself together, Hallel called out to his landlady. There was no response. He walked cautiously into Ana Marea's living room, then stopped in his tracks. Ana Marea was lying on her back on the tiled floor. Her legs were crossed at the ankles and both her hands were curled into fists.

Blood covered her badly beaten face, and a stethoscope was tightly wrapped around her throat. At first, the numbers were small enough for the authorities to ignore. It started in May 1998 with Marea Salceda. Marea had been found in her home in the Madelo district of Mexico City, strangled to death with a cord. By the end of that year, two more women had been murdered. A further six were killed over the next four years.

As there had been more than 3,300 homicides in Mexico City during that time frame alone, these nine murders failed to raise any alarms. That all changed by the end of 2003. That year, 12 more elderly women were killed. Nearly all had been strangled in their homes with objects such as cables, scarves, telephone cords, and on numerous occasions, a stethoscope. Police had finally noticed the pattern, and on November 5, 2003, they indicated that a serial killer might be on the loose.

The media dubbed this person El Mataviojitas, the little old lady killer. 2004 marked an escalation in the killer's violence. Of the 16 women murdered that year, 12 had also been beaten. One had even been body slammed. All of the victims were middle or lower class women who lived alone and habitually frequented their local park or public garden. It was also discovered that since 2001, they had all registered with the state government's social welfare program for senior citizens, known as CIVALE.

Created by the left-leaning governor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, this program afforded free healthcare and public transport to those aged over 70, as well as a stipend which was the equivalent of about 70 US dollars a month. It was believed that El Mataviojitas had followed each of these women home from the park and monitored their movements to determine if they lived alone. Based on papers found at some of the crime scenes and the use of a stethoscope as a ligature, police deduced that the killer had pretended to be a medical representative of CIVALE. This ruse led to the women willingly letting him into their homes.

Once inside, he would strangle his victims before rummaging through her house for any jewelry or small valuables. Despite the growing list of victims, Governor Lopez Obrador disagreed with the police and refused to accept that there was a serial killer active in Mexico City. Instead, he claimed that the deaths were a political manoeuvre designed to derail his welfare program for senior citizens and jeopardize his upcoming presidential campaign. The governor's position was publicly supported by Mexico City's attorney and chief prosecutor, Bernardo Batice.

Despite acknowledging that some of the murders were similar, Batice was certain that there was no little old lady killer. The government's denial couldn't be sustained indefinitely. Just 11 days into 2005, another elderly woman was strangled to death. This time with a white scarf. Between February and July, a further eight women were murdered, the majority beaten and strangled. This prompted the state prosecutor's office via the deputy prosecutor to finally confirm

the indisputable existence of El Mataviojitas. By October 2005, seven more elderly women had lost their lives. Now accepting the danger, chief prosecutor Batice was outraged that someone was targeting such vulnerable members of society, claiming that even criminals and delinquents respected their grandmothers. Despite the growing threat, investigative efforts lagged until 82-year-old Maria Gonzalez was found deceased on her living room floor, lying on her back with her legs crossed at the ankles.

Maria had been beaten and strangled, becoming the 44th elderly woman killed in this manner since 1998. Her son was a renowned Mexican criminologist, and as she was a family member of one of their own, police were finally compelled to increase their efforts to hunt down El Mataviojitas. They launched a specialized task force named Operation Parks and Gardens to investigate the killings, and distributed 70,000 flyers warning the community of the danger. Based on witness reports, El Mataviojitas was approximately 45 years old, between 170 and 175 cm tall, with a robust muscular physique, light brown complexion, wide oval face, and

short hair. Police produced a total of 64 sketches of the possible killer. They also increased their patrols in neighborhoods previously targeted, and reportedly paid elderly women to sit in parks as bait. Investigators struggled to formulate a list of suspects, as the perpetrator didn't leave behind any major clues that could lead to his identity. Chief prosecutor Bernardo Batis described the killer as a criminal who acts alone, takes a lot of care, and has brilliant intelligence.

Police weren't at a complete loss, however, as unidentified partial fingerprints had been found at ten of the crime scenes. In an effort to better understand the person they sought, officers for Operation Parks and Gardens participated in a week-long course on serial killers. It was taught by the French police, who had previously tracked down a serial killer named Thierry Paulin. Dubbed the monster of Monmartre, Paulin's crimes shared notable similarities to those committed by El Mataviojitas.

He had murdered up to 21 elderly women, and his slayings were characterized by beatings, robberies and strangulations. As described by author Susanna Vargas-Serventes, the Paris police inspector who conducted the training, told the Mexican police officers that the arrest of Paulin had not been due to, quote, chance or luck, because that does not exist. Less than three weeks later, Joelle Lopez discovered the brutalized body of his landlady, Anna Maria Reyes on her living room floor. Quickly snapping out of the shock, Joelle spun around and ran back out of the house to catch

up with the person who'd fled the building the moment he arrived. Looking up and down the street, he caught sight of the muscular figure in black pants and a red sweater fleeing north. By chance, two policemen were on patrol only meters away. They heard her well shouting for their attention, ordering them to pursue the person up ahead. The officers took off and cornered the individual, who swung two bags at their heads in a failed attempt to avoid capture. A search of these bags uncovered a folder that contained the details of several women

registered with the government's elderly assistance program. There was also a Civalé identification badge and several medical instruments. The officers considered what they had before them. An elderly woman had just been murdered, and the suspect in custody was tall, muscular, with short hair, and was in possession of Civalé paraphernalia. Realization dawned. They had just apprehended El Matavilla-Hitas. Within minutes, the area was swarming with additional police, as well as chief prosecutor

Bernardo Bates and a crowd of reporters. To their astonishment, the killer before them was a woman. The little old lady killer was 48-year-old Juana Baraza. What struck most people when they first said eyes on Juana Baraza was her size. She was taller than the average Mexican man and towered over almost every woman. Juana was also broad-shouldered, robustly athletic, and wore her hair short. Consequently, she was often described as masculine in appearance. Her physicality was intentional, something she had worked to increase over the years.

Since her 30s, Juana Baraza had trained at least twice a week doing sit-ups, running stairs and lifting weights, all in support of her career as a lucha libre wrestler. Inside the ring, Juana had fashioned herself into one of the villains of wrestling, opting to embody a rule-breaking ruta instead of a straight-shooting technique. Her chosen stage name was Ladama del Silencio, the silent lady, which she claimed reflected her quiet nature and isolated lifestyle. As the silent lady, Juana Baraza wore a short-sleeved pink, gold, and silver unitard, cinched at the waist with a large silver butterfly belt buckle.

She matched it with a pair of pink and gold calf-high boots and a pink and silver butterfly mask. Juana Baraza spent her wrestling career performing on weekends in the smaller regional areas across Mexico. On average, she earned the equivalent of about $25 per match, which was generally not enough to support herself and her family. To supplement her income, she performed domestic services such as cleaning, washing, and ironing around her neighborhood.

During particularly harsh times, Juana also resorted to petty theft. She stole from shops and markets and eventually graduated to home burglaries. Juana Baraza performed as the silent lady for 10 years, until one day in 2001 when she injured her spine during a match. Doctors gave her a choice, give up wrestling, or become paralyzed. Juana reluctantly retired from the ring. She remained connected to the industry by becoming a lucha libre promoter. Only one week before her capture, Juana was interviewed live on national television by

Mexican station TV Azteca. She was standing inside the arena Colosseo wearing a red shirt and speaking about her time as a former lucha dora. A smiling Juana told the interviewer that she was a ruder, both in the ring and at home. A ruder from the bottom of her heart. Two days after Juana Baraza's arrest, the president of the National Center for Criminal Investigation admitted that her capture was a result of good luck, rather than good police work.

The public would soon discover exactly how ineffective the authorities had been in their investigations. In the year prior to Juana Baraza's capture, police had received numerous sightings of a tall broad-shouldered woman near multiple crime scenes. Months earlier in July 2005, 83-year-old Ignacio Puebla had answered her door to a tall broad-shouldered woman with short hair, who identified herself as being from the government's elderly assistance program. After she entered the home, the woman realized that Ignacio was not alone.

Her son was staying there recovering from a broken leg. The woman offered to look at an x-ray of the leg and even checked Ignacio's blood pressure. At that point, another of Ignacio's children arrived at her home, and the woman hastily made her exit. Ignacio and her children didn't realize until some time later that the woman had stolen some of Ignacio's belongings. A partial fingerprint lifted from the x-ray handled by the woman was considered a very close match to Juana Baraza.

Her fingerprints were also notably similar to partial prints uncovered at ten of the murder scenes. Despite growing indications that El Mateviahitas was a woman, police had been reluctant to pursue this line of investigation. Instead, they reconciled the witness accounts by assuming the killer must have been a man dressed in women's clothing. They were convinced that a woman would not have the requisite strength to beat and strangle these elderly victims.

Without any evidence pointing to such a conclusion, the police then decided that the killer must either be a gay man or a trans woman. Based on this assumption, in October 2005, about three months prior to the capture of Juana Baraza, police arrested nearly 50 trans sex workers as murder suspects, despite none matching any description of El Mateviahitas. When none of their fingerprints matched those found at any of the crime scenes, all of these trans women were released. Despite this, chief prosecutor Bernardo Bates remained convinced that the killer had to

be a gay man or a trans woman. Some speculated that Bates was blindly aligning his theory to the French experience with the monster of Monmartre, Thierry Paulin. Paulin was a gay man and a drag queen who had disguised himself in women's clothes when committing his murders. In any case, now that the authorities had Juana Baraza in custody, they were intent on proving that she was the killer of Mexico City's grandmothers. Back in November 2005, a three-dimensional bust was constructed out of modelling clay

and plasticine in the likeness of the unidentified El Mateviahitas. This bust was wheeled out during the press conference held on the day of Juana Baraza's arrest and the similarities were clear. The media noted that the bust, like Juana, was also wearing a red sweater. This sweater shaped theories around a possible motive for the slayings, with some speculating that its colour was a testament to Juana's aggressive nature. A department of justice officer determined that Juana was menstruating at the time of her capture and claimed that this, combined with the full moon, had led her to kill.

Another theory was put forward by consultant criminologist Martin Baran and Dr Feggy Ostrowski, the neuropsychologist who assessed Juana Baraza post-arrest. They believed that Juana had been driven to kill after being deprived of her previous outlet for aggression. Once she could no longer perform as a luchadora due to her injury, she resorted to committing murder for emotional release. The truth behind Juana's actions came from the woman herself. Almost immediately after her arrest, she confessed to murdering Ana Maria Reyes and in doing

so, revealed her true feelings towards elderly women in general. She told homicide detectives that she hated old women, quote, I know it's not an excuse that I do not deserve forgiveness from God or from anyone. When I saw the old ladies, I felt a lot of anger and more when they shared superiority or believed that they could humiliate me for their money. According to Juana, her hatred was fueled by her relationship with her mother. Juana Baraza was born in 1957 in a rural town north of Mexico City. Her mother, Husta, was an alcoholic teenager who worked as a domestic cleaner and occasional

sex worker. Her father, Trinidad, was a truck driver and sheep farmer who abandoned his family when Juana was only a few months old. Husta relocated herself and baby Juana to Mexico City, where she eventually married a man named Horado Hernandez, who by all accounts was a loving parent to Juana and the two children he and Husta had together. Her finances were very tight and the family could barely afford to eat. Juana and her siblings slept on the ground each night with only bags of cement to keep

them warm. Husta and Horado were absent from the home much of the time. Consequently, Juana cooked, cleaned and raised her younger siblings. Horado did not think education was important for girls, whom he believed were only destined to become housewives, and so Juana never learned to read or write. She was also not permitted to attend school, play in the streets or socialise with children her own age. Juana felt little support from her mother Husta, who constantly verbally and physically abused

her. Their relationship reached its lowest point when Husta traded 13-year-old Juana to a 62-year-old man named Jose Lugo in exchange for three beers. Lugo told Juana that she would never see her family again. Unable to believe that her mother could do such a horrible thing, Juana thought it must have been a joke and that her mother would return to collect her momentarily. When that did not happen, Juana held out hope that her stepfather Horado would rescue her. Unbeknown to Juana, Husta had told her husband that Juana had run away.

She insisted that he shouldn't try to find her. On the first night of her enslavement, Juana was beaten, tied to the bed by her wrists and raped. She wasn't permitted to leave Lugo's house and was forced to do all his domestic work. Juana was repeatedly raped and beaten by Lugo and other men, even after she became pregnant. She miscarried her first pregnancy. Her second, at age 16, resulted in the birth of a son. It was not until Juana was 18 years old that she was rescued by her stepfather.

Horado never believed Husta's story that Juana had run away and had looked for her. Shortly after Juana's rescue, Husta died from cirrhosis of the liver. In the years that followed her mother's death, Juana married and had a daughter with an abusive man. She escaped this relationship, entered another, and had two more children. This relationship also eventually turned abusive, so Juana left to raise her children as a single mother. When Juana was 30 years old her stepfather Horado passed away from heart complications.

She would later tell her court-appointed neuropsychologist Dr. Peggy Ostrowski that contrary to the lack of emotion she felt at her mother's passing, Horado's death had left her feeling helpless and abandoned. Then in 1998, Juana's oldest child was killed at the age of 24 as a result of gang violence. Juana described her son's death to Dr. Ostrowski as the saddest moment of her life. During one of their sessions, Juana Baraza told Dr. Ostrowski that she was sorry for the murder of Ana Maria Reyes, but maintained that she did not kill anyone else. In another session the following month, she recanted her confession and denied murdering

anyone. She then implicated an unknown man in Ana Maria's murder. Ultimately, Juana Baraza was charged with 16 murders, including that of Ana Maria Reyes. As no juries are used in criminal trials in Mexico, Juana Baraza's case was presented to a judge only. In March 2008, they found her guilty of all 16 murders, along with 12 robberies. She was sentenced to a total of 759 years in prison, the longest in Mexican history involving a murder conviction.

However, Mexico's penal code only permits a maximum incarceration term of 50 years. If Juana Baraza is still alive in 2058, she will be released at the age of 100. Until this time, she is not eligible for any reduced sentence or probation, and so she will very likely die in prison. From 1998 until the capture of Juana Baraza in 2006, 56 elderly women were murdered in Mexico City. For as long as possible, Governor Andres Manuel López Obrador and Chief Prosecutor Bernardo Bautiz tried to dismiss public fears that the grandmothers of Mexico City were being

specifically targeted. After 23 women had already been killed, Bautiz announced, What I want to say with all certainty is that there is no serial killer. To the surprise of the community, 9 months and 13 murders later, Bautiz claimed that the threat was over, as the murders had been solved. Somewhat quietly during the course of 2004, police had separately arrested and charged two people for the murders of three victims. They alleged that both suspects had dressed as a nurse, complete with wig and dress, and

had claimed to work for Mexico City's elderly assistance program in order to gain access to their victims' homes. Just to be arrested was housewife Araceli Vazquez. Vazquez was charged for the 2003 murder of Gloria Riso. About six months later, street merchant Jorge Tablas was arrested for the murder of Maria Salceda, the very first victim strangled in May of 1998. Tablas's second victim was said to be Maria Guzman, strangled in 2003 with a pair of tights. Both Vazquez and Tablas denied the allegations against them.

In Tablas's case, Maria's neighbour had identified him after police arranged for Tablas to be dressed in a white coat and positioned on the street outside Maria's house for an in-situ one-person line-up. On Friday, October 22, 2004, a few weeks after the arrest of Tablas, Chief Prosecutor Batis stated confidently, This was despite police only implicating Vazquez and Tablas in just three of the murders out of the 30-odd that had so far taken place, and the fact that murders continued long after their arrests.

In fact, on the very same day that Chief Prosecutor Batis told the grandmothers of Mexico City that they were once again safe, 70-year-old Maria Martinez returned home around 5.30pm. Before she could change out of her crisp white shirt and pressed black trousers into something more comfortable, there was a knock at her door. In the days that followed, Maria failed to show up for a family gathering. When repeated calls to Maria went unanswered, her sister Guadalupe drove to Mexico City to check in on her. It was about four o'clock in the morning when Guadalupe arrived at Maria's apartment.

She opened the door and turned on a light. The living room was a mess, as if someone had furiously rummaged through every drawer. Maria sat unmoving and silent on the sofa, her body bent forward. She had been strangled by a stethoscope so forcefully that her neck had snapped. Guadalupe sat beside her sister's hunched-over frame. Next to Maria were a number of scattered photographs showing her at a ceremony a few months prior, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award for her 50-year service as a schoolteacher. Guadalupe hugged Maria tightly and eased her body back into a more comfortable sitting

position. There was nothing that she could do about the blood on her sister's white shirt, but she did wipe the blood off her sister's face. Juana Baraza would ultimately face justice for the murder of Maria Martinez and 15 other elderly women. However, there is no evidence that investigations continued once she was behind bars. The murders of more than 30 other elderly women attributed to El Mataviojitas remain unsolved.