Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - Claudia Mijangos The Shocking Filicide and Tragic Night of April 24, 1989 PART1 #71

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #truecrime #filicide #tragiccrime #psychologicalhorror #realhorrorstories  “Claudia Mijangos: The Shocking Filicide and Tragic Night of April 24, 1989 PART 1” recounts the horrifying events of a mother turning on her own children. This first part explores the disturbing circumstances leading to the tragedy, the psychological turmoil behind the crime, and the shockwaves it sent through the family and community. It’s a chilling introduction to one of Mexico’s most infamous true crime cases.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, truecrime, realhorror, filicidecase, tragiccrime, claudiamijangos, psychologicalhorror, shockingevents, familytragedy, darkpsychology, basedontrueevents, disturbingcrime, chillingtruecrime, infamouscases, crimehistory

The Mahungos tragedy. It all started with a phone call that still sounds like something out of a nightmare. The date was April 24, 1989. It was around 4 in the morning when Veronica's phone rang. She woke up groggy, still half asleep, confused why anyone would be calling at that hour. But as soon as she answered, the panic in her friend's voice ripped away any trace of sleep. On the other end was Claudia Mahongos, rambling, crying, talking nonsense. Claudia wasn't making sense, she was mixing fragments of religion, paranoia, and terror.

She kept insisting she was seeing angels and demons, that the city of Mazatlan had fallen, that everyone was dead. Veronica sat upright in bed, clutching the receiver, trying to process the madness spilling out of the line. Claudia, calm down. Breathe. I'll come see you, okay. Veronica said, trying to ground her friend. But Claudia didn't listen. The call ended abruptly with a clatter, leaving Veronica staring at the silent receiver with her heart pounding. Now, imagine yourself in Veronica's place. It's four in the morning, your best friend calls screaming about heaven and hell, claiming the world of has ended and then hangs up. You'd think maybe she's drunk, or maybe she's having some kind of nervous breakdown. You wouldn't, couldn't, imagine the nightmare waiting at sunrise. By the time daylight broke, Veronica couldn't shake her unease. She decided to drive over to

Claudia's house just to check that everything was okay. But what she found when she reached the Mahongo's home would scar her forever. The house looked normal from the outside, eerily calm compared to the storm of Claudia's words hours earlier. Veronica knocked, then cautiously stepped inside. The moment she reached the staircase, her stomach dropped. The steps weren't wood-colored anymore, they were drenched in red. Blood. Everywhere.

Veronica froze, terror seizing her chest. Without thinking twice, she bolted out of the house and ran to call the police. And that's where our story really begins. Who was Claudia Mahongos? Before diving into the horrific events of that April morning, you have to know who Claudia was. Because tragedies like this don't just spring out of thin air, they grow out of years of history, out of personal storms nobody ever managed to calm. Wadia Mahongos Arzac was born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, in 1956.

She was the youngest of seven children, born to Antonio Mahongos and Maria del Carmen Arzac. On paper, the family looked like middle to upper class, comfortable enough, but the emotional reality of her childhood was much colder. Her mother, Maria del Carmen, was famously strict, fanatically religious, and controlling to the point of suffocation. She dominated her husband and all her children, leaving little room for affection. Her father, Antonio, was the opposite, gentle, sensitive, but weak, unable to balance out his wife's iron grip. The result?

A childhood that was calm on the surface but emotionally barren underneath. Still, Claudia grew up sociable and popular. She was known for her beauty, the kind of girl everyone noticed when she walked into a room. Some newspapers later claimed she had even won a beauty pageant as a teenager, though other sources couldn't confirm it. Whether or not that was true, the image stuck. Decades later, tabloids would seize on that angle, branding her with sensational nicknames like The Beauty Queen Killer. As a young woman, Claudia dated a few men, but at 19 she met Alfredo Castanos, a bank employee eight years older than her. By the time she was 21, she married him.

And that's when the cracks began to show. Early Warning Signs At first, Claudia seemed like the perfect picture of a wife and mother. She and Alfredo had three children together, Claudia Maria, Anna Bolin, and Little Alfredo Jr., affectionately called Alfredito. She opened a clothing store, dressed impeccably, and carried herself with the polished air of someone who had everything in control. But beneath the surface, storms brewed. After her parents died in 1983, leaving her a considerable inheritance,

Claudia's behavior shifted dramatically. She became more unstable, more volatile. Episodes of aggression and deep depression started surfacing. There were disturbing incidents. In 1982, during a fight, she chased Alfredo with a machete. On another occasion, she struck him on the head with a pair of scissors. In 1984, Furious after another argument, she slashed his car tires with a knife. The couple tried marriage counseling, meeting with psychologist Jamie Flores, but their sessions quickly devolved into shouting matches.

Flores recalled that the two never stopped bickering, voices raised, insults flying. He eventually advised them to end the marriage altogether. By the late 1980s, Claudia's mental state only worsened. In 1988, just months before the tragedy, her mother died. Claudia became convinced her own siblings had murdered her. That same year, she began speaking openly about witchcraft, visions of angels, and voices telling her she belonged with a local priest named Father Ramon, who worked at her children's school. Rumors swirled about an affair between Claudia and Father Ramon.

Some accounts claim it was real, while others say it was all in Claudia's head. According to the newspaper Diario de Quaritaro, the school director learned of the rumors, and Father Ramon cut off all contact with Claudia, whether to end an actual affair or simply to distance himself from her obsession, nobody knows. Either way, his rejection shattered her fragile mental balance even further. By 1988, Claudia and Alfredo had separated. Their divorce was finalized, and she remained in the large house in Jardines de la Hacienda, Quaritaro, with their three children.

But behind those walls, her mind was fracturing. Family Shadows It's important to note, Claudia's instability didn't come out of nowhere. Mental illness ran in her family like a dark threat. Her oldest brother, Antonio, was an alcoholic and drug-dependent, often hospitalized for psychiatric issues. Another brother, Alberto, lived with cognitive impairments and epileptic seizures. Her youngest brother, Raphael, had Down syndrome. Her sisters also faced troubled marriages, ending in divorce.

So when Claudia herself began to spiral, hearing voices, speaking of demons and conspiracies, it wasn't a complete shock to those who knew the family history. April 23, 1989. Now let's return to the night everything collapsed. On the evening of April 23rd, Alfredo dropped off the three children at Claudia's house after they had attended a school fair with him. Neighbors later reported hearing shouting between the ex-spouses as Alfredo dropped them off. It wasn't unusual, arguments had become part of their routine, but

But this one carried an edge, attention heavy enough to linger in the air even after Alfredo stormed out. Inside, Claudia was unraveling. The voices in her head were louder than ever, whispering, commanding, terrifying her with visions of war between angels and demons. By her twisted logic, the battle had already begun, and she believed her own children were somehow at the center of it. The night turns to horror. Forensic experts later reconstructed the timeline. The attack began around three in the morning, lasting over an hour. The first victim was six-year-old Alfredito, the youngest.

Claudia attacked him viciously, stabbing repeatedly, to the point of severing one of his hands. Psychologists later suggested she targeted him with the most ferocity because he symbolized her husband, her rage toward Alfredo channeled into their son, the only male child. His screams likely woke his sisters. Claudia Maria, the eldest, got out of bed, horrified by what she saw. Imagine the scene, the girls stepping into the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes, only to see her mother covered in blood, striking her little brother. She screamed, maybe tried to intervene. That made her the next target.

To be continued.