RedHanded - Juana Barraza: Mexico's Notorious 'Little Old Lady Killer' | #459

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

When elderly women started being murdered around Mexico City in the early 2000s, it sparked the nation’s first ever serial killer manhunt…But the fearsome monster targeting the city’s beloved grandmas? She was actually (gasp!) a woman. The search for the so-called “Mataviejitas” – The Little Old Lady Killer – was hampered by media hysteria, clueless (and maybe corrupt) coppers, and one gigantic misunderstanding.Because Juana Barraza – a middle-aged woman with a sinister lucha libre alter-ego called “The Lady of Silence” – was the very last culprit the authorities were expecting to unmask…--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

An inspirational portrait of a farmer's son who rises from humble beginnings to build a luxury fashion empire. Brunello, the gracious visionary, traces Brunello Cucinelli's life journey, his commitment to craftsmanship, ethical values, and humanistic philosophy. Directed by Academy Award winner Giuseppe Tonatore, the film blends documentary and fiction, an intimate look at the Italian entrepreneur known as the King of Kashmir. See Brunello, the gracious visionary, in Select Theatres, July 24th. Thanks for listening to Red Handed. Make sure to listen to and follow Red Handed on Amazon Music

or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast Red Handed on Amazon Music. And with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audiobooks, all in the Amazon Music app. Ola listeners, I don't know what listeners is in Spanish, but that doesn't matter. Because neither do you, I checked.

As the World Cup final approaches, we at Red Handed are continuing our big North American road trip. It's taken us from Willie Picton's grizzly pig farm up in Canada through memories of our trip to the creepy Lizzie Borden House in four river, Massachusetts, and even into the murky waters of Cajun cryptids in the Louisiana Bayou. And this week, we're travelling south of the border to Mexico, specifically in Mexico City in the early 2000s, when a mysterious predator was stalking some of the capital's most vulnerable residents. elderly women. But this was never going to be a straightforward investigation, featuring terrified grandmas, tabloid hysteria,

flamboyant lucha libreslers, controversial death cults, and an inexperienced police force working from serial killer hunting for dummies, the Fiasem Mahavihitas had Mexico City in a chokehold for years. And when the killer was ultimately unmarked, It was the last thing anybody was expecting. I'm Hannah.

And I'm Saruti. And this is the bonkers true story of Mexico's little old lady killer, La Dama del Silencio, the Lady of Silence. In 2003, police in Mexico City started to notice a disturbing pattern. Old ladies were dying. But not in the peaceful, surrounded by their family's way that you'd hope for. Instead, they were turning up on slabs across the city's morgues as victims of brutal murders, committed in their very own homes. At least 11 elderly women were murdered in the space of just one year. Good luck.

Oh my God. I was reading this this morning and I was like, why the fuck? This is just, I practiced this, but you're not going to believe me when I read these out because it's not going to sound like, practiced at all. So that's just... I feel like... I feel like it's a trip back in time. All right. These were the ladies who were murdered. Manuela Torrenzius.

Giama Leon. Maria Guadalupe Agia. Alicia Cota. Maria Guadalupe Gonzalez. Maria Del Cameron Munoz. Gloria Edina Riso. Lucero Calva. Natalia Torres. Maria Eugenia Guzman. Estella Bivera. Arriba, well done.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. She says with no idea. So yes, these were the women who were found killed, and there were eerie similarities that were beginning to emerge between these crimes. Firstly, the victim were all women aged 68 or over, and they all lived alone. And they'd all been strangled to death

using everyday objects from their own apartments, such as tights, electrical wires, or even the belt of their own dressing gowns. The murder weapons were left around the victim's necks in the same style of knot. Valuables and cash were usually stolen from the scene as well as smaller personal items like trinkets and religious amulets. And while there didn't seem to be any connection between the victims and whoever had killed them, there was also no sign of forced entry at any of the crime scenes, which meant that whoever was responsible wasn't breaking into these homes.

Their vulnerable victims were letting them in. But before you go ahead and say a serial killer was obviously on the prowl targeting pensioners in Mexico City, hold your horses, amigo. When criminologist Patricia Payan first started joining the dots and raised concerns that this could be the work of one twisted individual, her colleagues in the police department just laughed in her face and said that she was watching

too many of those TV shows from the States Unidos because you see Mexico just didn't really do serial killers or at least they hadn't for a very long time back in the 1800s a guy called Francisco Guerrero

nicknamed El Chalachiero after the snazzy vests that he wore brutally murdered at least 20 sex workers in Mexico City. He was later nicknamed the Mexican Jack the Ripper, although his crimes started about eight years before old saucy jacks across the pond. In 1942, another Mexican ripper named Gregorio Cardenas hit headlines for a brief killing spree in the capital, strangling four women and burying them in his garden. These cases became famous as spooky urban legends and were seen more as old-timey-keying-kewarm.

curiosities than anything that could ever have taken place again. Because as far as the nation was concerned, Mexico had already fulfilled its serial killer quota long ago. And that sort of thing just didn't happen here anymore. Now, for a country that's no stranger to violence, that might seem pretty ironic. If you've listened to our episode on the murder of DEA agent Kiki Kamerena, then you'll know that crime in Mexico has been a battleground dominated by bloodthirsty drug trafficking cartels for over half a century. From widespread corruption during the glory days of the immense Guadalajara cartel

to the brutal turf wars between rival groups sparked by its collapse, these organizations have famously used torture and murder as tools to flex their power. And then, of course, you have the dreaded narco-Satanistas cult in the 1990s that took it a gruesome step. further were drug traffickers engaging in satanic rituals, including human sacrifice, mutilating bodies, and even making grisly jewellery out of their victim's bones. And if that sounds familiar, well done, you've been paying attention because we did cover that way, way back in an episode of Red-Hounded. Yeah, I think it's one of our first 20 episodes, I think, so I can't be held responsible for the sound quality. I was a child. What do you want from me? The content is there.

Just, you know, be forgiving. The friend of mine as a photographer, which was like, oh, you really need new headshots. And I was like, I'm still 27. Shut up. Leave us alone. I don't need it. No, thank you.

It's got 10 more years, I reckon, to mock out those. We'll be fine. And then by the millennium, lurid stories about the Los Zetas cartels' brutal methods of torture and execution were regularly splashed across the press. And then in the border city of Ciad Juarez, just a stone's throw from El Paso, Texas, shockingly high numbers of femicides had been recorded since the early 90s.

Another brutal story that we covered many a year ago on this podcast. If you are interested, please do go check that out. But for now, very long and horrible story short, the bodies of literally hundreds of poor young women were stacking up. At least a third of them having been sexually assaulted. And corrupt law enforcement basically largely just failed to investigate. It got so bad that the United Nations and Amnesty International both publicly slammed the Mexican authorities for failing to acknowledge a famicide epidemic.

All this to say, the Mexican public were used to hearing about death and violence on an epic scale. But no matter how high the body count, these types of crime didn't technically count as serial killing in the traditional sense. That was somewhat narrowly defined by the Mexican authorities, as quote, killing for the pleasure of killing by a lone wolf figure motivated purely by their own homicidal urges. And it was very much considered to be an all-American problem. Yeah, not the only country to think that. Definitely when we've covered like Asian cases, especially and also like Soviet cases, Russian cases, there's this feeling of like, it's an American problem,

it's not a problem that exists here. And I think it's just because, yes, of course, when you pull up the statistics on like which country has the highest rate of serial killing, of course it is the United States, followed closely by us, which is quite alarming, given the population difference. But we have also questioned whether Russia shouldn't be falling much higher in that dubious list. Because if you are like there are no serial killers here and you're not recording it, how reliable is that data as well? And also it's going to be even our definition of serial killer changes all the time. And if it's defined individually by each nation,

we can't put our definition of what it means onto a separate legal system because it's not like the definition of serial killing being about pleasure is not anywhere in our definition, you know? No, it's a very, very niche type of serial killer. It would be a pleasure-seeking serial killer or a lust killer or something like that. You know, they're completely ignoring things like

mission-oriented to killers and whatnot from that entire definition. So again, that's going to skew the numbers. I think it's that mentality of like, we don't have people that kill for pleasure. Our cartel killers are all just doing it because, you know, that's just, that's just business. It's economics. Yeah. Business is business, said no one ever after doing something nice, like saving someone from drowning.

Anyway, the stereotypical image of a serial killer was a lonely white male stalking his victims in a society where people were increasingly isolated from one another. Like the classic Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer type. It was the sort of crime that people associated with the USA and its individualistic ethos rather than Mexico's close-knit family first culture. Yeah, again, something that that's like the argument that's always wheeled out when it's other countries saying like, oh, we don't have that because it's like a completely different culture here. It wouldn't make sense. But as we talked about in our book, because people always tend to say like, oh, serial killing is like a very white pursuit.

And that's just not true. Like there is no, like, ethnic component to serial killing that any study I have seen, any serious study I've seen has ever shown, it seems that serial killers are as diverse as the populations that they operate within. And serial killers do tend to kill, like, a racial match for themselves. So white serial killers tend to kill white people, etc. But all races are in on the serial killing game. And I also think it's funny that in Mexico, they're, like, saying, we don't have serial killers. anymore because they've had a history of them, but they're like, no, we solved that problem. That's gone now, so don't worry about it.

It's something out of a horror movie because you see her go in and you want to tell her, don't go, because you know what's going to happen. In 2016, the killing of Missy Beavers shook the Dallas metro area. Police are trying to figure out why somebody dressed as a police officer ambushed and murdered, a fitness instructor. Mother and fitness trainer, Terry Missy Beavers, was murdered inside a Middleothian church. She was a great woman, a great wife, a great mother, a great friend. Security cameras at the church captured Missy's murder in terrifying detail. But 10 years later, police still don't have a suspect. Rumors are flying, and people are still demanding answers. I don't give a crap if she had 15

affairs with 15 different men. That is not an open invitation to murder someone. Somebody needs to pay for it. This is the Unforgotten. Who Killed Missy Beaver's? Listen wherever you get your podcasts. So, when rumors started to circulate in 2003 about a lone killer targeting old ladies in Mexico City, nobody could quite fathom how this would translate south of the border. Even the city's deputy prosecutor Renata Salas Herrera described the idea of a serial killer as something that did not happen to us before. It happened

in movies, in the United States. Because, unlike those selfish Yankees, in Mexico, even murder was a team sport. Still, by late 2003, Mexico City Police could not deny the telltale signs any longer.

Searching past records, investigators found unresolved homicides of elderly women dating back to the late 1990s. The first official victim was named as Maria Amparo, who died in 1998, with the killer striking again several months later, with the murder of Concepcion Caranza. Then Regina Jimenez and Consuelo Ote's came next in 1999. The killer then seemed to take a break in 2000, before returning from their hiatus to murder Victoria Dominguez and Margarita Margulies in 2001.

And then Maria del Carmen Matarvlo and Maria de la Luz Gonzalez in 2002. These homicides all shared a signature style that clearly pointed to one single culprit. And with such a large spike in their activity across 2003, police believed the killer was growing in confidence and gearing up to claim even more victims. Unless they could catch them first, that is. That November, Chief Prosecutor Bernardo Batis publicly announced that the city's police force were officially on the hunt

for the individual responsible for all of these murders. It was the first and only time in Mexican history, even since, that a task force was launched, solely devoted to tracking and catching one unidentified serial killer. And to mark the occasion, they even had their very own nickname for him, the Marta Vihitas, or in English, the little old lady killer. And I think we've done our fair share of serial killer episodes.

I'm writing one right now. No police force anywhere in the whole world wants to admit they've got a serial killer on their hands in the first instance. It takes them years, which is another reason they get away with it for so long. Yeah, I actually realised this is not only our big North American road trip, but also our big like North American serial killer road trip. Because yeah, Willie Picton, this one, which obviously you're going to hear more about, and then the one that you're currently writing to end our time over in the USA.

Not to give too much away. But it takes quite a lot to get to me. But this one has given me sleep paralysis. Oh, God. Okay. Well, everyone struck in then for next week. You better be grateful because it's nearly killing me! Anyway, let's leave that story for next week when you can find out what it is.

We're going to stick to this one for now. And to say that this story went wild in Mexico, would be putting it very mildly. The case became an overnight media sensation sparking national outrage of a kind rarely seen before in Mexico. And you might be wondering, in a country so desensitized, by violent crime, why did the matter of vejitas trigger such an intense reaction? Well, if there is one thing that Mexicans agree on, it's that they're better at football than America and Canada are, and also, they bloody love their grandmas, abuelitas, they love them. The abuelita is a beloved cultural icon, symbolizing a warm matriarchal figure whose pure love and

sacrifice for her family is at the heart of Mexican society. They say that even the most hardened narco will listen to what his abulita tells him, or at least they're used to. Prosecutor Bernard Batisse explained his shock at the killer's choice of victims in a press conference where he described them as a helpless, very vulnerable sector of society, which before was respected, even among delinquents. So not only was Mexico City grappling with its first serial killer in over 50 years, but there was the added outrage that they had somehow crossed an invisible line.

And this pointed towards what politicians like Batisse called a phrase we so often hear in our line of work, a society in decay. I feel like people have been saying that forever, though. We've always been decaying like carbon. In other words, endemic violence against poor young women in places like Ciudad Juarez might just be an unfortunate part of life, but someone going around killing little old cute grandmas in Mexico City hold our tequila because that fucker had gone too far. So with all this emotion swirling around, Mexico City police were naturally under a hell

of a lot of pressure not to fuck up on their very first, very important, big boy serial killer investigation. But it was not going to be easy. Investigators face challenges from the start, like the victim's families, obviously cleaning up crime scenes to hold wakes. Yeah, yeah, they're just like, it's gone, it's gone. It meant that, obviously, police struggled to retrieve any sort of sort of real forensic evidence that they'd have needed to crack this case, and they actually ended up salvaging just one complete fingerprint from all of these multiple crime scenes. And just to make things harder, of course, there were no matches in the DNA database.

So instead of focusing solely on what the killer had already done, investigators began trying to predict what they might do next. And that meant dipping their toes into the uncharted waters of criminal profiling. Analyzing the victimology and methodology, investigators began piecing together a picture of how this phantom murderer might be operating. A consistent detail was a lack of forced entry, which indicated that somehow they had been invited in by each of their victims. How would they manage it?

Well, several witnesses reported seeing the victims interacting with a large woman, who seemed to be a nurse or government worker shortly before their debts. This person claimed to be working for a recently launched public welfare program called C-Ballet. That was aimed at pensioners, basically offering ID cards to access health benefits. And this became a crucial clue to how police theorized the killer had been able to win the victim's trust and gain access to their homes. Investigators built a physical profile that they shared with the media, warning citizens to keep their eyes peeled for someone matching this description.

Which was, a robust woman, or man, dressed as a woman, Mrs. Doubtfire style, aged about 45 years old, between 1.7 and 1.75 metres in height, which is me, with short-died blonde hair, not me, well-defined eyebrows, yes me, light brown skin, not me, mole on the cheek and a straight nose. They will thick makeup, possibly wigs, and possibly dressed in a female nurse's uniform or disguised themselves as a social worker. Okay, I have to say, I know this is also becoming a running theme in our North American trip episodes, is that there is also a criminal minds episode on this case, which I would highly recommend.

Season 1, episode 19, machismo. And it is when the BAU travel to a small town in Mexico, though that doesn't happen here, they don't reach out to the FBI, even though the FBI are like nailing and like, basically creating everything around criminal profile. Like they go to the French instead, as we'll learn later. They don't go to the US. But in the criminal minds episode, they do go to BAU, they fly over. And yeah, it's exactly the same story, basically. And the way they figure out who it is is like the type of drink that's being offered to the killer when they come. And I was like, very interesting, very culturally apropos. It's a tamarin drink. And they were like a man

They would never offer that to a man. Spoilers. To go with this profile, tamarind or not, forensic artists produce multiple composite sketches of the potential killer that were distributed widely in the media and on posters around the city. The only problem was that the sketches looked a little bit too familiar. Within weeks, 46 separate people were taken in for questioning

based on their apparent resemblance to the Mahavajitas. 46 in a city like Mexico City, I would argue, is not that many. I was going to say, after the fucking Willie Picton shenanigans last week where they're just like, oh, everyone's a fucking rapist. And like we've just got this endless list in the pervert haystack. I feel like that's kind of not that bad. No, I don't think so. But what do I know? I'm just an idiot. The first high-profile arrest came in January 2004, when two beat calls.

detained a nurse named Matilda Sanchez at a bank. Purely because she looked uncannily like the sketch in the newspaper, they happened to be reading while standing in the queue. So any big tall women are basically getting, like, harassed by this? In classic Mexican media fashion, the police immediately spilled the beans to the press. Before she'd even been questioned, Matilda's name and face were splashed across the papers

and gleefully identified as the one and only, Marta Vihitas. And, to top it all off, she was a nurse. Whilst detectives conducted a grueling 15-hour-long interrogation, Matilda's colleagues feared that she'd become a scapegoat and took to the streets to protest her detention. But when no witnesses could identify Matilda and her fingerprints weren't a match either,

the cops ended up releasing her without child. A sheepish Bernardo Batisse offered a public apology with his tail between his legs, whilst insisting law enforcement, were doing all they could to catch the real killer. And just a few months later, there was another apparent breakthrough. In March 2004, police arrested a woman named Aricelli Vasquez on suspicion of at least two of the murders, plus a string of robberies targeting elderly victims. Unlike Matilda Sanchez, Aricelli looked nothing like the physical profile that police had spent months pasting all over Mexico City. Hey man, neither did Robin Williams before the wig.

This is true. Like, yeah, basically they're looking at this woman and they're like, the profile of the Matavajitas was a tall, fair-skinned and slightly muscular, robust woman or man-dressed as a woman. But Ariseli was short, dark and plump, basically the total opposite. But police insisted that Aricelli's capture was more than just skin-deep. They made a bombshell declaration that her fingerprints were a match to those found on a drinking glass belonging to victim Gloria Rizzo back in October 2003. We don't know whether there was tamarind water in there or not, but possibly. And they also said that her prints were a match for a partial set of prints that were found at the murder of Margarita Aceves in early 2004.

Rizzo's family members also reportedly recognised jewellery found at Aricelli's home. The triumphant cops paraded Aricelli in front of the press at the police station and made her pose for photos in a white coat and wig that they claim to have found at her house. But this is where things get a little bit iffy if they weren't already for you. Despite the supposedly matching prints, not one of the witnesses could identify Ariseli. While she admitted that she was a serial burglar who targeted elderly people's apartments, she vehemently denied being a serial killer and insisted that she was being stitched up. Was this a case of a petty thief being pinned unfairly for the murders?

Well, the judge certainly didn't think so. Keen to lock up, the infamous Matavitas, they sentenced Ariselli Vasquez to over 20 years in prison. Goodbye, see you next week. Yeah, we're done. Everything's a short hand now. Kidding. This story is nowhere near over. In September 2004, police captured yet another Matavahita suspect. And this time, it was a bloke.

In a case of deja vu from Areceli Vasquez's arrest just months earlier, Jorge Tablas was posing in a white coat and wig, supposedly taken from his house, and declared to be the culprit targeting elderly women in Mexico City. Tablas was arrested for the murders of two victims, with police again claiming that partial fingerprints from at least one crime scene matched his. They presented evidence in the form of creepy notebooks and annotated Bibles, where he had scribbled about carrying out murders in the name of a spirit he called El Malingo the evil,

suggesting that religious delusions spurred his crimes. But hang on, then we do this one already, minus the demons. For some reason, not wanting to dwell too much on the fact that they had supposedly already caught the Mahalvejitas, the justice system nevertheless convicted Jorge Tablas for the 2003 murders of Maria Eugenia Guzman and Lu Cistella Veras. And he was sentenced over 70 years behind bars. This is an absolute prosecutorial nightmare. They're just like absolutely saying from the off we have this singular task force that we never ever do in the country, but we have this task force to catch this one single killer because we have said that all

of these crimes are linked because of the startling similarities between them. But we're just going to go around and convict a bunch of different people for the various murders that fall within this umbrella. Like, can you imagine, can you imagine how quickly all these people would be removed from prison on appeal in a different country? This is wild. And if that's not like wild enough, here's the awkward part because even with Aricelli Vasquez and Orge Tablas in custody, guess what? The murders kept on going.

A further 16 elderly women were killed across 2004. Alicia Gonzalez, Andrea Descartes, Carmen Cardona, Scorora Martinez, Guadalupe Gonzalez, Estella Contora Delphina Gonzalez, Maria

Virginia, Shalwansee, Delos Angeles Cortez, Carmen Gonzalez, Margarita Martel Simone Badola Anna Raina Rantaria Maria Dora Oh my God

My mom is screaming If you guys don't remember My mom's like Maybe you should have read out the names of people On the episode Because it makes you sound stupid I'm nearly done Maria Dolores Martinez

Margarita Arandondo And Maria Imelda Estrada Well done Thank you the more bodies that piled up, the more the authorities found themselves completely perplexed by what was going on. Were Aricelli and Tablis just copycats while the OG killer remained on the loose? Probably not. But that's what they were thinking.

One thing was horribly clear. Regardless of who was sitting in the cells, there was still someone out there hunting elderly women in Mexico City. And it was obvious that they were one step ahead of the police. But we have got a confession to make. We've been keeping a secret. We have nefariously, deliberately been holding something back. It's called storytelling, look it up. But now is the time we're going to reveal our hand.

So far, we have been referring to the Matavajitas in bog standard, gender neutral, English. Because we don't have gender endings. But in Spatnish, the police and the press had always called the killer El Mahavahitas, as in a presumed male assassin. And this seemingly insignificant little linguistic detail would end up almost derailing the entire investigation. Let's cast our minds back to the police profile that was published describing a robust woman or man dressed. as a woman. Well, it might have seemed like they were keeping their options open, but with the constant repetition of El Mahavayetas, it was in fact much more apparent that they were really searching for a male offender in this case. And honestly, we can sort of see why the Mexican

authorities went down this path. Firstly, the descriptions were of a woman with more stereotypically masculine features, broad shoulders, large hands, tall, stature, robust frame, I'm right here, so rude. Who wore thick makeup and wigs to present a gaudy sort of femininity. The forceful method of killing also seemed to imply a high level of physical strength, even when it came to subduing frail older women. And as relative newbies to the world of serial killer investigation, it's possible the Mexico City Police just weren't expecting to be chasing a female murderer. Due to a lack of confidence in these kinds of cases,

the investigators leaned heavily on knowledge gathered from other serial killing cases from around the world to guide them. And the global literature on serial killers indicates that it is an overwhelmingly male crime with men responsible for around 90% of cases. And this was Baby's first serial killer hunt. what to expect when you're expecting a serial killer? So, with their noses firmly in their textbooks and learning as they went, naturally, the Mexico City Police assumed that they were looking for a man.

But you know what they say happens when you make assumptions. By 2005, Mexican police were firmly running with the theory that the Matta Vigitas was a man who committed his crimes in nurse and spurs. by a drag. And they didn't just come up with the idea out of the blue. Instead, they had been clearly inspired by the notorious French case Tieri Paulin, the so-called monster of Mamma Té, who savagely murdered over 20 elderly women in Paris across the 1980s, whilst cross-dressing and doing a shit ton of drugs. He was a young gay man originally from Martinique, and Pauline apparently harboured some sort of resentment

towards his neglect for grandmother who had raised him. After consulting with the more experienced French officers who'd worked on the Paulin case, Mexico City Police released a psychological profile announcing that they were looking for a man with homosexual preferences, who was likely raised by his grandmother or grew up surrounded by older women,

where he'd been subjected to childhood physical abuse. In other words, they basically just took Tierra we pull in, but made a Mexican. For their debut serial killer investigation, the Mexico City police force weren't exactly scoring high with their originality points. And this tendency to copy other countries' homework was going to land them in some real hot water.

In late 2005, investigators had become increasingly convinced that the killer might be what was known in Mexico City as a travesty. This term doesn't quite translate neatly into English, but we'll try our best. Travesties live as full-time women, but they wouldn't necessarily identify as transgender in the way the term is generally understood in modern English-speaking countries. Instead, it refers to a distinct gender identity and social category with its own history in Latin America. It's heavily associated with marginalised sex worker communities and urban hubs like Mexico City

who live in poverty and experience discrimination. By turning the spotlight on the travesty community, the police weren't just looking for a man wearing women's clothes. They were deliberately targeting members of a specific, highly marginalised social group. And in October 2005, they took action. Police swooped in and arrested between 38 and 49 travesties in an unexpected raid using tear gas and forcing them into patrol car. They were interrogated for hours at the police station and forced to give fingerprints.

After their fingerprints were processed and no matches were found to the Matavahita's crime scenes, they were all released. The police issued a vague apology whilst defending that they were acting in good faith as a part of their efforts to nab the Matavahitas. And even after this epic failure, the authorities still weren't letting go of their pet theory that easily. In November 2005, Bernad de Batis declared at a press conference that, quote, the killer might not be a travesty, but we are certain it is a transgendered person. It is just so shambolic watching this investigation unfold. You're just like, what are you doing Mexico City?

I get it, they're under so much pressure. This is a case where it's just like so many women are turning. up dead. And unlike with the Sidad Juarez case, like people actually care because they're elderly women, as we've talked about culturally. And I get it. I get that the police are taking on board, like the witness accounts of this tall person, woman, possibly a man dressed as a woman, because of the masculine features, the broad shoulders, the height, the strength to commit these crimes, all of that. But like, this kind of random swaying around that they're doing, where they're just like, they speak to the French and they're like, oh, it's got to be a gay man.

And then they're like, oh, it's somebody dressed as a woman. Let's, let's like, you know, tear gas this group of people and then pull them all in and take their fingerprints. I understand, like, why they're trying to go down this road because of what the witnesses have told them. But there seems to be, like, absolutely no logic to how they're trying to narrow down this list of people. And they're just drawing so much and more attention to, like, their ineptitude. It's really quite, quite staggering. And this is in the 2000s. It's also conducting raids.

They know how to do those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Still, if they wanted to actually find the killer, the police were going to need to apply a little bit more logic than randomly just throwing dots at various people. A slightly more robust line of inquiry would be required that involved analysing the geographic locations of the murders

and trying to pinpoint where the culprit might target next. officers poured over maps of Mexico City and reckoned that they were onto something. Most of the victims lived fairly close to green spaces in the city, which led investigators to theorise that this could be how the killer was identifying and stalking them. The Mexico City Department of Justice launched a whole arse task force named Parks and Gardens, dedicated to this theory, which just sounds like, what? Are you talking to the Future Planning Committee? Parks and Gardens?

Okay. So yeah, basically what they did in the Parks and Gardens Department of the Police Force was that undercover cops were placed in parks and gardens along with a huge increase in patrol car circling blocks near Parkland in a bid to scare off the killer. But I'm like, why are you scaring off the killer? Do we not want to catch the killer?

Like, you're just going to push them somewhere else. They also distributed thousands of posters, leaflets and information brochures for elderly people explaining the merger's suspected MO, urging them not to let anyone into their homes and providing emergency contact numbers. It was more of a prevention strategy than anything else, with the authorities hoping this would reduce the number of potential victims

by educating the naively trusting older population of Mexico City, basically telling grandma or abuela not to talk to strangers. But still, the victim count just kept on climbing. saw the murders of Julia Vera Duplan, Maria Elisa Perez, Anna Maria Vescales, Celia Bilalis, Maria Guadalupe Nunez, Emma Armenta, Emma Reyes, Dolores, Concepcion Silva, Maria Deloitte Olibella, and Maria de Los Angeles Repair. Whatever the Mexico City police were doing, it was not working. As the investigation dragged on, Mexico City's Department of Justice came under fire for failing to apprehend the monster terrorising the city for years.

With investigators now clutching at straws, they found themselves drowning in theories with very few credible leads, and more than a few red herrings. One of these was the rumour that the so-called Matavietas could even be an organised smear campaign by political rivals attempting to discredit the city's government's controversial welfare scheme, that old chestnut. So that one is, we're going to go.

Full tinfoil hat there. It's usually the government's fault. But basically, then-governor of Mexico City, a guy called Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who represented the liberal-leaning PRD party, had got a lot of flack for introducing the C-Valle scheme that extended free health benefits to seniors. C-Valle means like, yeah, okay.

Inspiring. Yeah, okay, I have some health. Thanks. Sure thing. Thanks, pal. Yeah, literally, pretty much. And that led some to speculate that perhaps the Matafietas was a hoax orchestrated by the rival Conservative Party P-A-N to discredit the scheme by linking it to the murders of elderly people, as well as using the killings as a political chess piece to slag off the current regime for not taking care of its vulnerable older citizens. Needless to say, that was a bit of a reach. But then there were other even weirder coincidences that police in their desperate state couldn't ignore, just in case they were significant, like the fact that several of the

victims were of Spanish descent. Or, even stranger still, that at least three of the victims had owned a copy of the exact same 18th century painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste Grieus called a boy in a red waistcoat. Did any of this mean anything? That is quite weird. Is it or is it going to turn out to be one of those paintings that like everyone's grandma has in their house? You know, like the one of the guy and the horse? Maybe. Maybe it's like that generation everyone just had this painting.

What would it be if our generation we're old ladies and we're being murdered that everybody's got in their house? Oh, it will be that fucking painting of like a Japanese woman with a bluefin. face that's in everybody's house. Do you know which one I mean? I know exactly what you mean. Or that one IKEA lamp that's like a donor. Yeah. Every fucking house I remember looking at when we were like, oh, she's Chinese.

It's called the Chinese lady. But yeah, every house we were looking at on right, me, and you're like, there it is. There it is. There it is. Or, or, or, or the one that's wiggly lines that's a joy. division t-shirt that everyone's got on the wall. Classic. The classics. And I think the generation before us, it would have been what was at the house of the staircase.

It would have been that Le Chanois cat poster. Oh, yeah, totally. Totally, totally. But did any of it really mean anything? Or were investigators just desperate to find links where they didn't exist? The latter. Definitely. By December 2005, the police had started to feel like they were searching for a ghost. And then amid a small lull with no killings, they began to wonder, what if they were?

Actually, looking for a ghost. Criminologists working on the case noted that in other cases around the world, serial killers are taken their own lives after a cycle of homicides. The investigation therefore shifted from parks and gardens to hospitals and mortuaries, with investigators taking fingerprints from recently deceased bodies in the desperate hope of finding a match for the matter how he does for Christmas. But just like all of the other leads, this led nowhere. And look, I know I've sounded quite unfair on the Mexico City Police Department.

It's not easy. We've said this many, many times before on this show. Serical investigations are not easy. I think my problem with the way they're investigating this is that they're trying to do like a paint-by-number situation with like cases from around the world, rather than just like using information from cases around the world to actually apply to their own specific case. They're like, well, sometimes serial killers die.

So maybe we should spend loads of resource like fingerprinting all of the dead people in our mortuary. I'm like, why is that? He could also be locked up. Like, you know, it's just, yeah, it just seems so desperate and like ill-conceived. But like, like we said, from the start, they're very, very, very inexperienced in this as well. So as 2006 rolled around, something had to give. It was a big year for Mexico, with the upcoming elections potentially spelling a huge political regime change in the capital. Old Bernie Bates declared that he'd be leaving his role that year.

But before he did, he publicly vowed to catch the Mahavitas. Now it was personal. So in January 2006, Mexico City Police officially called in the big dogs. Or should we say, Le Grand Chien. Several French. police officers who'd been consulting on the case flew in to give a special week-long course for the police department, outlining profiling, methodology and various investigative techniques. It was essentially how to catch serial killer 101.

But while the Mexican officers might have been pumped up and excited to put their brand new skills to good use, as it turned out, they wouldn't actually need to. On the 25th of January 2006, a young man named Joelle Lopez. returned to his landlady's house in the Venetianca Carranza area of the city, only to find her lying lifeless on the floor, with a stethoscope still around her neck. She wasn't playing doctors. The 82-year-old Anna Maria de Los Reyes had been strangled.

That's when Joel made eye-contact with a tall, stocky woman in a red blouse and realized that he was face to face with Anna Maria's killer. As the woman left the house, Joelle followed her out onto the street and yelled for two passing police officers to stop her. They chased her to a nearby subway station and apprehended her, finding that she was carrying a stethoscope, pension forms,

a card identifying her as a social worker plus social welfare ID cards for multiple elderly ladies, see ballet indeed. She was tall, physically strong, and matched the descriptions of the Matavihitas up to a tea. With short, cropped dyed red hair, a mole on her cheek, strong brows and thick makeup. The officers would later claim that they knew straight away that this was their serial killer, the one they had been hunting for years and that they had already identified twice. After years of investigation and resources, could it be that the notorious Mahatavitas had been captured by sheer dumb luck, a sausage troll and good timing. You know the drill by now. The Justice Department paraded their latest catch to the media in a feating frenzy, boasting how their excellent detective work had led to her capture.

because despite the fact that her arrest had been just a random stroke of luck, the police were feeling pretty damn smug about how much this woman resembled their composite sketches. Their crown jewels, a plasticine bust made by criminologist Patricia Payne, which they gleefully got their arrestee to pose next to for photographs. And to be fair. To be fair, the similarity was pretty striking right down to. the coincidental red shirt.

But the woman they had arrested seemed calm, giving a half smile to the sea of cameras and saying, yes, I did it. Or si balet, maybe. When asked if she killed Anna Maria de los Reyes earlier that day, she said yes. She's like the lady in butter. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're right. Mexican. Mexican butter. Mexican butter. Oh, delicious. When asked why she did it, the woman shrugged that she just lost it during a dispute over pay for domestic work and strangled the elderly woman in front of her in the heat of the moment. The police even got her to recreate how she did it using the chief forensic officer's tie on him in front of the media.

Which, like, is that necessary? But I believe it. I believe it. I think we have seen. serial killers in the past who aren't necessarily like fantasizing about it for a very long time they end up acting in a moment of like rage or haste carry out a kill and then they're like oh that was great

I loved that I'm going to have some more of that please John Wayne Gacy being a perfect example so it fits it tracks what she's saying one of the things I found really interesting in the research of the thing that's giving me sleep paralysis of men in my room is that one of the investigating officers,

I don't think he actually worked on the case, but it's such a large one. Everyone's got a fucking opinion. But he's like, everyone makes the mistake of being like, looking at the last kill and be like, oh, why did they stop? It's much more useful to look at the first one

because they might not have known they were going to do it and they may have been a lot less careful. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Rather, why did they stop and more, why did they start? Yeah. Yeah, what was the second? of circumstances that precipitated the first kill is often going to help you a lot more than the last one.

Interesting. But back to Our Lady. Now, while she didn't talk much, she showed an unexpected display of emotion suddenly in front of all of these cameras by tearfully saying the following. I hated old ladies because my mum mistreated me. She always cursed me. She gave me away to an old man and I was abused. That's why I hated older women. I know it's not an excuse. that I don't deserve forgiveness from God or anyone. And that was pretty much as close to a confession as anyone could have hoped for. And not only had this woman been literally caught in the act, it also emerged that her fingerprints matched those taken from at least 10 other crime scenes.

Bernardo Batiz confidently declared that there was a 99% probability that she committed 11 homicides plus one attempted homicide. And if she definitely did 11, it was basically confirmation that she did the rest too. There was no doubt in the eyes of the police or the press. They'd finally caught their Mojavitas. And her name was Juana Barraza Semperio. Quick side note before we go on. It's something we've all experienced in a way.

You wait ages for a bus and then two come along at once. Because incredibly, that very same week, Police arrested another serial killer who had been operating in Mexico City. Just two days before the Mahadevita's capture, officers detained 29-year-old former soldier, Raoul Ossiel Marokin, aka, have there ever been two more opposite names for the same man, the rainbow killer or the sadist? What's going on there? I think this next sentence might help.

I see. Apparently, he targeted men at gay bars and kidnapped tortured and murdered at least four of them with an alleged motive of homophobic hatred. Got you. Now, unlike the Mahatavitas case, police hadn't been aware of the serial killer targeting gay men until Ossiel's capture. But if the rainbow killer had been looking for his moment in the spotlight, he couldn't have chosen a worse time to get caught.

because he was enormously upstaged by the Mahatavitas case and the bombshell revelation that she was actually a woman. With Barazza's arrest, El Mahavitas had officially become La Mahavitas, and instead of a male predator, the public were now trying to process that these crimes had been committed by an ordinary 48-year-old single mother. At least she looked ordinary on the outside. But as it turned out, Mexico City's most wanted criminal had an unusual hobby, other than being a serial killer.

Because Juan Araraza was crazy about wrestling. And we're not talking the Olympic kind. She was a full-on sparkly-costumed mask-wearing Lucha Libre fighter who went by the name La Dama del Salencio, the lady of silence. We did actually go to a Lucille-Lubre match when we were in Mexico City.

It was hilarious. It was hilarious. And we definitely did it like the touristy way because obviously we were tourists and we got picked up in this little bus with a bunch of other tourists and we got given a mask geech. It's just so funny.

And I thought we were going to get there. And honestly, I thought everyone there was going to be a tourist. But there weren't. There were like real people there. Like the family sat in front of us were just like an ordinary Mexican family who were just there like full on supporting their fighter. It was honestly like top tier cultural safari moment. Honestly. It was wild. It was wild. And yeah, she's into it. Now to those of you who don't know much about the weird and wonderful world of Luccia Libre and haven't been lucky enough yet to go and witness one of these spectacles.

Basically, we describe it as like WWE on steroids, but also like way more flamboyant, way more sparkly. Yes, yes. Glamorous? Can I say that? It's a spectator sport

largely based around the idea of heroes called Technikos and baddies called Rudo's, fighting it out in, as I said, very flamboyant masks in a symbolic battle of good versus evil. Juanabaraza had her own custom outfit made, which we honestly have to encourage you to Google if you are listening to the audio-only version of the pod,

but just glance your eyes over here, pick up your phone and look at us while we're talking to you if you are listening to the video version but ignoring us. Because she wore a rhinestone butterfly mask and what we can only describe as a pink Power Ranger-style Lycra jumpsuit and boots. And while there's been some controversy over whether Hwana Barraza actually stepped into the ring as a professional fighter

or if she was just some sort of megastan who had her own gear made. She personally described herself as a ruder to the core. And her wrestling persona took on very much the villain role as a fighter without technical training who would fight dirty against the good guys in the ring. And this revelation, come on, it's coming after the fact that, you found out she's a woman. And now this revelation that she's also a Lucha Libra fighter, maybe, or at least has the gear to be one, this was absolute dynamite for the press. And even though her wrestling career hadn't played any role at all in the murders,

the lady of silence swiftly took over the story. But who was the woman behind the mask? And what had happened to her in her life to lead her to become the notorious old lady killer? She was born in 1957, in Hidalgo, a rural area north of Mexico City, and grew up in the capital with her mum and stepdad. By all accounts, her childhood was utterly bleak. Baraza's mother, Justa Sanpiero, was an alcoholic who verbally and physically abused her saying that her birth was a curse. Her only ally was her stepfather, who she described as kind and loving. And when Barraza was just her mum sold her to an older man for a pack of beers like Charles Manson.

That man, Jose Lugo, repeatedly raped and abused Maraza and got her pregnant leading to the birth of her son when she was just a teenager. This son was tragically killed in a mugging with a baseball bat as a young man. But Razza had three more kids, two boys and a girl, who were teenagers by the time of her arrest in 2006. She described herself as a good mother who did everything for her children. Illiterate except for spelling her own name, she scraped a living by selling food and clothes on the street as well as taking on domestic work.

Her pro wrestling career appeared to be more of a hobby, although she spent every spare peso on costumes, merch and posters promoting The Lady of Silence. I mean, in some horrible way, she's quite the inspiration, isn't she? she's got her kids, she's raising them, she's working, she's putting food on the table, she's got a hobby and another hobby. Like, fucking hell lady, you can have it all. Women, we can have it all. To be fair, that is, and I really am blowing my load before these episodes,

I did read something this morning where the sort of the difference between the psychology of a hitman, a contract killer, who could be defined as a serial killer, and what we understand to be a serial killer is the hitman is the employee. The serial killer is the hobbyist. Exactly. Well, I'm just ever more excited with all your breadcrumbing for next week's episode,

Hannah, to drop him. But sticking with today, as if the wrestling angle weren't enough. Reporters quickly discovered another juicy detail that ruffled some feathers. Juana kept a shrine to Santa Muet. the lady of death inside her house. Come the fuck on.

Like, is there anything else the press bloody needs to like come all over themselves with this story? Well, apparently not. And we're right there with you. So, yeah, let's get into it. Now, if you're picturing some kind of secret satanic murder cult here, hold on. Santamerte is a folk saint with millions of followers across Mexico and Latin America, especially in working class communities who feel overlooked by traditional institutions. But Santa Morte also is a deeply controversial figure. Since the 1990s,

Santa Morte has become heavily associated in the public imagination with organized crime, drug traffickers and prison gangs amid rising cartel violence. Vatican bigwigs have publicly condemned the worship of Santa Morte, calling it a blasphemous cult. When we went to Cuba, we happened upon a Santamerte. shrine temple situation, did we not, Hannah? Santa Maria. Ah, was it? Never mind. Slightly different.

But, you know, big talk coming from the fucking Vatican. I know. Especially in the mid-2000s. Okay. They're like, look over there. So when the police discovered that Juanabaraza seemed to be one of Santa Mute's members, well, the press were practically doing backflips.

Along with her unfeminine wrestling hobby, it was one more piece of evidence that the Mahatavitas wasn't an ordinary woman at all. She was a monster. As Juanabarazza awaited trial, questions were swirling about how and why this woman had gone from a luchadora to an assassin. So they let psychologists have a route around in her cranium

to figure out the causes. Famed neurologist Fegi Ostrovsky. Nope, we don't know. what that is short for either, conducted EEG tests on Baraza to analyze her brain waves. She found that Barazza's frontal cortex was overactive, which neurologists associate with poor impulse control and aggressive tendencies in some violent offenders. Ostrovsky also interviewed Barasa for hours, where she initially confessed to all of the murders and said that it was because she wanted to act out some sort of revenge against her

abusive mother. Baraza later recanted these claims and insisted that she only killed Anna de los Reyes. Still, Ostrovsky concluded that Barraza was a psychopath, who knew the difference between right and wrong, but didn't let it stop her. Both Ostrovsky and criminologist Martin Barron agreed that Braza's abusive childhood likely played a major role in her later crimes. Well, duh, am I a psychologist now? newsflash everything we ever do has something to do with our childhoods that's why being a parent is so scary baron also argued that her retirement from professional lucha librae after spinal injury in her 30s was the triggering moment to incursion in the homicidal practice in other words when she couldn't channel

her aggression in the ring that is when she started taking it out on little old ladies So now it was time for justice to be served. But if you're expecting a dramatic televised trial with a jury hanging on the prosecutors every word, that's not quite how the Mexican legal system works. At the time, criminal cases were mostly handled behind closed doors, with prosecutors and defence lawyers presenting evidence to one judge who ultimately made the court.

Not that this mattered much to the people of Mexico City. Thanks to the media, the Mahatavitas had already been tried by the Court of Public Opinion and been found guilty as hell. Mexico City Human Rights Ombudsman Emilio Alvarez called out how the presumption of innocence is not clearly established here. The media had become the great judge. Still, the official trial proceedings kicked off in spring 2008. Juanabaraza was charged with 17 murders,

although prosecutors made it very clear that they believed she was responsible for all of the unresolved murders of elderly women in Mexico. Mexico City across the past decade, totaling between 42 to 48 victims. After failing to get Barraza declared unfit to stand trial, her defense argued that she was being used as a scapegoat to fill the Mahavita shoes, even though she only committed one singular solitary murder. To cut a long story short, this did not work. Juana Barraza was found guilty of 16 murders and 12 aggravated burglars.

charges and sentenced to a staggering 759 years in prison. This was the longest sentence ever given to a Mexican murderer. But it was more of a symbolic thing, because under Mexican law, the maximum time you can actually serve is 60 years. Juana Barraza could technically get out. She would just be over 100 years when she did. Today, she remains incarcerated at the Santa Martha Akatila Prison in. in Mexico City.

She sells tacos to other inmates to make money, which we hear are delicious, and is said to enjoy a celebrity status behind bars as the feared old lady killer. And she actually leads a walking group for elderly inmates, which, and we wish we were joking, at least those old-age pensioners are surviving their turn around the grounds with the notorious Mahatavithas.

But probably not for long. Nowadays, Baranza suffers from poor health, including diabetes, kidney and liver issues and a worsening back injury that means she sometimes uses a walker or a wheelchair. But still, that didn't stop her from finding love in locker. In 2015, she got married to a 74-year-old convicted murderer called Miguel Angel from the men's section of the same prison. In a mass wedding with 48 other couples, like the movie. I said I'll get them all done at once. But the honeymoon didn't last that long. And Barraza filed for divorce less than a year later.

But we don't know why. After Juanabarazza's trial, Mexico City Police officially closed the Mojavita's case, in spite of over 30 cases remaining unsolved. Since the killing stopped after her capture, they said they were confident that Juanaburaza was the sole culprit responsible for all the murders, even if they hadn't technically proven it. As for Juana Barraza, she has consistently maintained that she is an innocent patsy in the whole thing. She told interviews that she only went along with it because investigators threatened her children, and she felt that she had

nothing left to lose. Now, can we believe that the Mexican authorities would resort to corruption and shady practices to put someone in prison and close a very, very high-profile case? Absolutely. But do we think that Juana Barraza was framed? Probably not. The emo in these killings is so specific. It's hard to believe that she was just having a bad day and got caught killing one old lady in the exact same style as the Mahavitas by accident. By the lack of any real effort to investigate each crime and confirm Barazza's guilt by mistake. And also the fact that the killing stopped after she was arrested, which didn't happen in either of the two previous arrests that the Mexican City Police had made. But of course the lack of any real effort to investigate each crime and confirm Baraz's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is of course extremely dodgy.

No matter how much it seems likely, you can't just shut the casebook and shrug that it was probably one of hers because, you know, she walks and quacks like a luchedora. And remember those other suspects that they arrested during the investigation? Well, the Mexican authorities didn't exactly cover themselves with glory in how they handled those two cases either. The man arrested in 2004 on suspicion of multiple old lady murders was serving a 70-year sentence for two murders when the police eventually admitted

that they'd cocked it all up and misidentified his fingerprints from one of the scenes because they actually belonged to Juan de Barazza. And while a few of the charges were reversed, Jorge Tablas died in prison. And what about Araseli Basquez, who was slapped with a 23-year sentence for the murder?

murder of Margarita Aceves. Like Jorge Tablas, fingerprints originally matched to Aricelli from Gloria Riso's apartment were later found to belong to Guanabaraza and witness statements from Margarita Aceves' murder also seemed to match the infamous Lady of Silence. So obviously, Ariselli went free after Baraz's capture. No, she didn't. She is still in prison after 22 years, far exceeding the 18-year sentence she got for unrelated burglary charges. And despite a Netflix documentary in 2022 bringing awareness to her case,

there seems to be no great rush from the Mexican authorities to get her out. Awkwardly, Araseli and Juanabaraza are in the same prison and apparently have a cordial relationship, although we cannot confirm whether Ariseli goes on her little walkie tours. I probably wouldn't. But I probably would have a cordial relationship with her and just call it a day. I think everyone has a cordial relationship with her. So overall, in this case, I think we're going to have to rate the Mexico City authorities a solid C for their efforts on their very first serial killer investigation. A for effort, kind of, maybe, maybe.

But a definite big fat fail in the execution. While there's no doubt the police force were doing their best to catch the killer and made genuine efforts to profile and track them, the investigation was absolutely littered with mistakes. They relied too much on foreign cases rather than following the actual evidence, which ended up leading them up the garden path on more than one occasion.

And their blinkered pursuit of who they expected the Mahatavitas to be meant that they were unable to see what was really in front of them. In the end, it was just lucky that Juan Abarazza messed up on her final murder and literally ended up getting caught. Redshirted. Yeah. Yeah, and red-handed.

So there you go. But we also know serial investigations do need some luck. It just feels like a case of a bit of trying to squeeze a lot of like round pegs through square holes and it's not really working. Yes. Yeah. Eventually, just cost two people their lives in prison and also lots of murders. So. Cé valet.

A little trip to Mexico City for you on our North American... trip. Which will be concluding next week. Well, over the next two weeks. It might have to be three. I don't know, man. Oh, okay. So stay tuned for that? I don't know. We'll see. Okay. Two or three. Stay tuned, guys. It is a big, biggie next week, kicking off and rounding off at some point. So one you've been asking for for a long time. Stay tuned. We will see you then. Goodbye. Adios. Buena suerte. Be good.

etc all that bye bye