Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - Claudia Mijangos The Shocking Filicide and Tragic Night of April 24, 1989 PART2 #72

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #truecrime #filicide #psychologicalhorror #tragiccrime #realhorrorstories  “Claudia Mijangos: The Shocking Filicide and Tragic Night of April 24, 1989 PART 2” delves deeper into the horrifying events and Claudia’s mental state leading up to the tragedy. This part explores the chaos of that night, the reactions of family members, and the immediate aftermath that left the community in shock. It highlights the disturbing intersection of psychological illness and uncontrollable violence.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, truecrime, realhorror, filicidecase, tragiccrime, claudiamijangos, psychologicalhorror, shockingevents, familytragedy, darkpsychology, basedontrueevents, disturbingcrime, chillingtruecrime, infamouscases, crimehistory

The Claudia Mahongos case, madness, tragedy, and the question that never fades. It's hard to imagine anything darker than what happened in the early hours of April 24, 1989, in Quaritaro, Mexico. A story that began with an unsettling phone call ended in what the press would later call La Casa del Terror, the House of Horror. And at the center of it all was Claudia Mahongos, a woman whose mind had been unraveling for years until it finally snapped. dragging three innocent lives with it. Let's go back to where we left off. The night of the attack. According to investigators, sometime after three in the morning,

Claudia's mental breakdown reached its terrifying climax. First came her youngest child, Alfredo, barely six years old. His screams pierced the silence, likely waking up his two sisters. Claudia Maria, the eldest, came running from her room. She saw the unthinkable, her mother stabbing her little brother. Shocked and desperate, the girl shouted, Not me, Mom. Please, not me. Her cries echoed through the house.

Witnesses later said that neighbors heard the little girl's voice that night. One neighbor recalled clearly hearing a child's desperate scream that cut off suddenly. Claudia, in a state of psychotic frenzy, turned on her eldest daughter. She chased her down the hallway, and the walls, the stairs, the very floor of that once peaceful home became soaked in blood. The second victim, Claudia Maria, tried to resist, maybe even tried to fight her mother off, but she didn't stand a chance against the knife. Her cries faded, replaced by silence. Then came the third child, Annable, the middle daughter. She was still in her bed when it happened.

Too terrified to move, too frozen by fear, she curled up beneath her covers, perhaps hoping her mother wouldn't notice her. But Claudia did. And when she was done, she carried all three children to the main bedroom. She laid them out on the bed as if arranging them for one final, twisted display of control. When it was all over, Claudia turned the blade on herself. She slashed at her wrists, but the cuts were shallow, hesitant, not deep enough to end her life. Whether it was fear, instinct, or sheer exhaustion that stopped her, we'll never know.

The morning after. By 8 a.m., the house that had once been filled with children's laughter was silent. It was Veronica Vasquez, Claudia's friend, the same one who had gotten the bisoner. our midnight call, who showed up at the Mahongo's home to check on her. Veronica knocked, called Claudia's name, and stepped inside. What she saw was straight out of a nightmare, pools of blood on the floor, crimson streaks marking the stairs, and silence heavy as stone. Terrified, Veronica ran back outside and dialed the authorities. When police officers arrived, they searched the home. Upstairs, they found

Claudia. She was lying on the bed, knife still clutched in her hand, next to the lifeless body of little Annable. Claudia wasn't fully conscious, she was in shock, barely responsive. They rushed her to the local hospital. The forensic team combed through the house. More than eight liters of blood were splattered and pooled across the rooms. At first, investigators considered whether an intruder might have broken in. But there was no forced entry, and the murder weapon was right there in Claudia's possession. Three knives were missing from the kitchen block, but it was clear no outsider had been involved. Naturally, suspicion fell first on Alfredo Castanos, Claudia's estranged husband. He had dropped the children off the night before, and neighbors

reported hearing him arguing with Claudia. Police questioned him immediately, but his alibi checked out, he'd left the house hours before the killings, and witnesses confirmed it. The truth was undeniable, Claudia herself was the only one who could have committed the murders. Claudia's state of mind. When Claudia finally woke up in the hospital, authorities tried to question her. She was disoriented, confused. Over and over, she repeated the same phrases. I have to pick up my kids from school. I need to wake them up for breakfast. It was as if she truly believed her children were still alive.

On April 27th, three days after the killings, she gave her first formal statement. Her words chilled everyone in the room. For about a week before, I felt strange, like I wasn't myself. I'd look in the mirror and see my face rotting, my flesh falling apart. I'd look out the window and see that Quirotaro was filled only with spirits, with walking corpses. I believe my children were possessed, that they were going to become monsters. I thought that if I killed them, everything would go back to normal. Later statements contradicted that first one.

Sometimes she spoke as if her children were still alive. Sometimes she talked about demons, angels, and voices commanding her. Clearly, Claudia was not in her right mind. The Psychiatric Evaluation A team of five psychiatrists, including Dr. Arnaldo Fonseca and court expert Ector Rocha, ran neurological tests on Claudia. The results were shocking. She suffered from an organic mental disorder, specifically. assist in the right temporal lobe of her brain. That part of the brain controls emotions,

and in her case, it triggered epileptic episodes. Symptoms included disorientation, hallucinations, violent outbursts, and paranoia. On top of that, she displayed traits of paranoid personality disorder. Combined this with her history, an emotionally distant childhood, a domineering mother, marital troubles, rumors of infidelity, and the grief for her of losing her own mother just months earlier, and the perfect storm had been building for years. Dr. Fonseca later explained, at the time of the crime, Claudia was not in her senses. She was legally insane. Because of this diagnosis, the court ruled her inimputable, not criminally responsible due to insanity. The trial and sentence. Claudia's trial was unusual.

She faced charges for the triple-filicide, but the ordinary criminal process was suspended. Instead, she was sentenced to 30 years of security measures, essentially, psychiatric incarceration. In September 1991, she was transferred to the psychiatric annex of the women's prison in Teppapan, Mexico City. There, she would remain for the next 28 years. Release after 30 years Exactly 30 years later, on April 24, 2019, Claudia Mahongos walked out of Teppapan at age 63. She had served her full sentence. But freedom wasn't really freedom.

The president of the Superior Court of Justice of Quaritaro, Jose Antonio Ortega Serban, confirmed that Claudia still required constant medication, medical supervision, and close monitoring. Her mental damage was permanent. Leaving her entirely unsupervised would be risky. Her relatives decided to place her in a private clinic in Mexico City, where she could continue receiving care. Could it have been prevented? Here's where the story turns into an open wound that will never fully heal. Claudia had a long history of mental instability.

Episodes of aggression against her husband. Psychotic crises were she accused neighbors of witchcraft. Hallucinations of angels and demons. Even physical attacks, once chasing her husband with a machete, another time stabbing at him with scissors. And yet, after her divorce, she was granted full custody of her three children. How? Why? It's hard not to feel that the system failed. Maybe mental health wasn't taken as seriously in the 1980s as it is today.

Maybe the courts underestimated her instability. But in hindsight, it feels like a tragic, preventable mistake. The paranormal angle When people talk about the Mahongos case, there's often a tendency to focus on the paranormal. Claudia herself claimed to see spirits, hear voices, and believe her children were possessed. Some locals even say the house remains haunted to this day. But the truth is far more tragic than supernatural. Doctors confirmed her hallucinations were symptoms of her brain disorder.

There were no demons, no angels, no paranormal forces at play, only a sick mind that spiraled out of control. Still, for the people who live near the house in Jardines de la Hacienda, the legend persists. They whisper about strange noises at night, about shadows moving behind the windows, about the spirits of the three children who never got to grow up. Reflections on Responsibility So, is Claudia to blame? That's the hardest question. On one hand, the crime was unspeakable. Three innocent children lost their lives at the hands of their own mother.

On the other hand, Claudia's mind was. deeply broken. She wasn't fully aware of what she was doing. Was the 30-year psychiatric sentence fair? Many think so. She wasn't executed. She wasn't locked away forever. She received treatment, served her full measure of security, and was eventually released under supervision. But the unease remains. Knowing she is out, even under care, still unsettles many people. Final Thoughts The story of Claudia Mahongos is a reminder of how fragile the human mind can be, and how devastating the consequences are when mental illness goes untreated, or worse, when it's ignored. It wasn't demons.

It wasn't angels. It wasn't possession. It was tragedy born of untreated mental illness, personal loss, and a broken system. three children lost their futures a mother lost her sanity and an entire country was left with one haunting question could this have been stopped the end