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

the Moraleses heard nothing of Silvia.
     
     
Then, on August 19, Ramona learned that a body had been found not far from her home on Casas Grandes Highway. It was that of a young woman with long dark hair. She had been raped and strangled, her ravaged remains dumped beside the vacant lot that belonged to Pemex.
     
     
Ramona fell to her knees and recited a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, when she learned that it was not Silvia; for a moment she experienced a renewed faith that her daughter was still alive and would be returning home soon.
     
     
    * * *
In early September, nearly two months after Silvia Morales disappeared, a local rancher was scouting a secluded stretch of desert east of the airport called Lote Bravo for wild horses when he stumbled upon the remains of a young woman hidden beneath some brush. She was partially naked; her blouse and bra were pulled up over her head, exposing what remained of her mutilated breasts. Carefully placed just beside the body were a pair of white panties and white tennis shoes, later identified as belonging to the Morales girl.
     
     
Startled, the rancher raced back to his truck and sped off in search of a telephone to notify police.
     
     
Uniformed officers encircled the scene with yellow crime scene tape and began a perfunctory investigation. Already more than forty women had been murdered, many with the same modus operandi. Yet police had few leads and no real suspects.
     
     
Donning a surgical mask, forensic pathologist Irma Rodríguez of the Chihuahua State attorney general's office arrived on the scene to collect evidence from what little was left of the young woman with the cinnamon skin who sang like Selena. Dr. Rodríguez was dismayed by the growing number of young women turning up dead in Juárez. While forensic science enabled her to determine the cause of their deaths, she had been unable to identify their killers.
     
     
"She has several small cuts on her right arm," one uniformed officer standing over the mutilated body remarked. The multiple surface wounds appeared to indicate that the victim had struggled fiercely with one or more assailants.
     
     
Authorities subsequently determined that the remains were those of Silvia Morales. She had been raped and then strangled with her own shoelaces. Her right breast had been severed and her left nipple was bitten off. Sand was found embedded underneath her fingernails, raising the possibility that Silvia had been alive after the attack and was left in the desert to die.
     
     
It was just before 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 2, when Ramona Morales spotted the blue and white patrol car pulling up to her house. She and her husband were outside on the porch, sipping coffee and enjoying some fruit, when two uniformed policemen got out of the vehicle and strode to the chain-link fence that encircled their property.
     
     
"Ma'am, we've found your daughter," one of the men said, pushing open the gate and stepping onto the porch.
     
     
Ramona sprang from the white plastic armchair, overjoyed that Silvia had finally been located. "How did you find her?" she asked the officer. "Tell me, tell me."
     
     
Even after the men asked to see one of Silvia's shoes, she continued to remain optimistic.
     
     
Puzzled, she led the officers inside, leaving them to wait in the small, rectangular living room, hung with ornately framed photographs of Silvia posing in the lacy white quinceańera dress she had worn to mark her fifteenth birthday, as part of the Latin American tradition symbolic of a young woman's coming-of-age.
     
     
The officers stood with their arms folded behind their backs as Ramona disappeared into a back bedroom and then emerged moments later, breathless and clutching a single white shoe. The officers exchanged glances.
     
     
"Ma'am, we need you to come with us," the same officer directed. His response should have telegraphed to Ramona that something was amiss. But her mind was not