The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border Read Online Free PDF Page A

visibly shaken woman blurted out. "She said she was going to school to take a test, and then she was going to the shoe store to work. She'd be home some time between nine and nine twenty."
     
     
"Does she have a boyfriend?" the officer asked.
     
     
Ramona didn't like the officer's attitude. But eager to get help, she provided the name of the young man from the neighborhood whom Silvia had been dating.
     
     
"Does she go to bars frequently?"
     
     
"No. Not my Silvia. She is a good girl. She is a girl who goes from her school to home. She is a very happy girl."
     
     
"How does she dress? Does she wear miniskirts?"
     
     
Ramona was growing angry at the officer's derisiveness. "My daughter was wearing jeans, a rose-colored blouse, and white tennis shoes when she left the house on Tuesday morning."
     
     
"She probably went with some cholo, some guy, a boyfriend," the policeman snickered.
     
     
Neighbors and friends had told Ramona about the offensive, obnoxious attitude of the state police. While its officers were better educated than those of the local Juárez force— a high school degree was mandatory— their salaries were still considered low on the pay scale, and corruption was rumored to be rampant among their ranks.
     
     
Women's rights activists had begun voicing their outrage that detectives were faulting the victims, implying that they willingly went off with a man or were leading double lives, sneaking off after work to dance at the city's bars and discos. In fact, a majority of the dead girls had disappeared on their way to or from work and were wearing long pants and sneakers, not miniskirts and spiked heels, as police were insinuating.
     
     
In this male-oriented culture, girls out on their own were frowned upon and often assumed to be promiscuous. Activists believed it was this mind-set that had prompted officials to overlook the growing number of poor Mexican girls whose violated, butchered bodies had been turning up in the desert.
     
     
There was growing speculation among residents of Juárez that officers from both the state and municipal police forces were somehow involved in the murders— or that they were covering up for the guilty party or parties.
     
     
Ramona watched as the uniformed policeman slid her a form and instructed her to fill it out. With Sandra's help, she completed the paperwork, believing it was a preliminary step to a meeting with detectives from the Chihuahua State Police Department, which carried out all investigations of a criminal nature. Instead, they told her to commence an investigation and keep them apprised of any new developments.
     
     
"Perhaps she has run away with her boyfriend, or maybe she is with some friend," the officer suggested. "Wait to see if she returns."
     
     
"That's not the kind of girl my daughter is!" Ramona snapped, her voice rising as she glared at the man behind the window. "My daughter would never do that. She would have told me, 'I'm gonna stay with a friend.' She's not like that. She's a good girl.
     
     
"Silvia only went to school, and from there she went to work. From her home to school and from school to work," she said over and over in a tearful mantra.
     
     
Frustrated, confused, and worried about her daughter's whereabouts, Ramona left the police station with no help and no answers.
     
     
In the days that followed, there were more anonymous calls to the Morales home. One male caller claimed to know where Silvia was being held and provided Ramona with an address. Jumping into a car, she and her husband, along with her son and daughter-in-law, raced to the residence. Domingo went inside but found only an elderly couple who knew nothing of Silvia. The family reported the lead to police, along with a second tip from a man claiming that a factory worker named Alejandro knew the teen's location.
     
     
Police assured the family they were following these and several other, more promising leads. But as the days turned into weeks,