Introducing RedHanded: Mexico's Notorious 'Little Old Lady Killer’

Today, we are sharing an episode from the award-winning true crime podcast RedHanded, hosted by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire. RedHanded is the UK's #1 True Crime podcast, covering everything from high-profile murders and cults to con artists and cultural catastrophes, always asking not just what happened, but why. In this episode, Suruthi and Hannah investigate the hunt for Mexico City's "Mataviejitas," or Little Old Lady Killer, who terrorized the city's elderly women in the early 2000s and sparked Mexico's first ever serial killer manhunt. The case was plagued by media hysteria, investigative missteps, and one enormous misunderstanding, because the culprit turned out to be Juana Barraza, a middle-aged woman with a sinister lucha libre alter-ego called "The Lady of Silence," the very last person authorities were expecting to unmask. Follow RedHanded wherever you get your podcasts to hear more cases like this one. Follow and listen to more episodes of RedHanded here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redhanded/id1250599915https://link.mgln.ai/iCiwLK

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realise history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, it's Vanessa. Today, we're sharing an episode of the award-winning podcast Red Handed. Hosted by Saruti Bala and Hannah Maguire, Red Handed is the UK's number one true crime podcast. With 4 million monthly listeners, Red Handed blends razor-sharp storytelling and deep cultural analysis to unpack the psychology, systems, and cultural forces that shape crimes of all kinds. The result? A show that's both thought-provoking and addictive. In this episode, Saruti and Hannah dive into one of Mexico City's most shocking criminal cases: the hunt for the so-called Mata Viejitas, or Little Old Lady Killer, who was targeting elderly women across the city in the early 2000s. The case sparked Mexico's first-ever

• 1:46Vanessa Richardson?

  serial killer manhunt, and the culprit turned out to be the very last person authorities expected. It's exactly the kind of gripping, unexpected, and deeply researched investigation that Red Handed does best. If you want to hear more cases like this, make sure to follow Red Handed on your favourite podcast app. And tell them we sent you. Now, here's the episode.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Hola, 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 Pickton'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

• 3:01Speaker 02

  be a straightforward investigation. Featuring terrified grandmas, tabloid hysteria, flamboyant lucha libre wrestlers, controversial death cults, and an inexperienced police force working... From serial killer hunting for dummies, the fierce Mujavijitas had Mexico City in a chokehold for years. And when the killer was ultimately unmasked, it was the last thing anybody was expecting. I'm Hannah.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  And I'm Saruti.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  And this is the bonkers true story of Mexico's Little Old Lady Killer, La Dama del Silencio, The Lady of Silence.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  In 2003, police in Mexico City started to notice a disturbing pattern: old ladies were dying. But not in the peaceful, surrounded-by-their-families 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.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Good luck!

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Oh my god. I was reading this this morning, and I was like, "Why the fuck?" This is just... I practised this, but you're not going to believe me when I read these out, because it's not going to sound like I practised at all. So let's just...

• 4:28Speaker 02

  I feel like... I feel like it's a trip back in time.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  All right. These were the ladies who were murdered. Manuela Torrencias, Guillermo León, Maria Guadalupe Aguiar, Alicia Cota, Maria Guadalupe González, Maria del Cameron Munoz, Gloria Edina Riso, Lucera Calva, Natalia Torres, Maria Eugenia Guzmán, and Luz Estela Vivera.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Arriba, well done. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. She says with no idea.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  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 victims 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 belts of their own dressing gowns. The murder weapons were left around the victims' 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,

• 5:49Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  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 Estados 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

• 6:46Speaker 02

  El Chalequero, after the snazzy vest 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 Cárdenas 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 curiosities than anything that could ever have taken place again. Because as far as the nation was concerned, Mexico

• 7:30Speaker 02

  had already fulfilled its serial killer quota long ago. And that sort of thing just didn't happen here anymore.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  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 Camarena, 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 organisations have famously used torture and murder as tools to flex their power. And then, of course, you have the dreaded Narcosatanistas cult in the 1990s that took

• 8:20Speaker 03

  it a gruesome step further, with drug traffickers engaging in satanic rituals, including human sacrifice, mutilating bodies, and even making grisly jewellery out of their victims' 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 Handed.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think in... 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?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  The content is there. Just, you know, be forgiving.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  A friend of mine is a photographer, and she was like, "Oh, you really need new headshots." And I was like, "I'm still 27. Shut up."

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Leave us alone.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I don't need it.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Leave us alone.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  No, thank you.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  You've got ten more years, I reckon, to milk out those. We'll be fine.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  And then by the millennium, lurid stories about the Los Etats Cartel's brutal methods of torture and execution were regularly splashed across the press. And then in the border city of Ciudad 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.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  It got so bad that the United Nations and Amnesty International both publicly slammed the Mexican authorities for failing to acknowledge a femicide epidemic.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  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 a 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."

• 10:29Speaker 02

  And it was very much considered to be an all-American problem.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  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, 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?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And also, it's all, it's going to be, even our definition of serial killer changes all the time. And if it's, 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?

• 11:34Speaker 03

  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 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.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  It's economics.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  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.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  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, 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, et cetera. But all races are in on the serial killing game. And I also think it's funny that in Mexico, they're like saying, oh, we don't have serial

• 13:17Speaker 03

  killers anymore because they've had a history of them. But they're like, nah, we solved that problem. That's, that's gone now, so don't worry about it.

• 13:27Speaker 04

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• 13:58Speaker 05

  The police closed my sister's case in 2019. Last month, her killer commented on my post. On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists, it comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  People post the things they'd never say out loud, anonymous, unfiltered and completely real.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  And every Tuesday on Crimes of Reddit, we read them out loud.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  I'm Sabrina Deanna-Roga from Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  And I'm Alexis Linkletter from The First Degree.

• 14:27Speaker 06

  Each week, one of us brings the most unhinged true crime stories the internet has to offer.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  And the other goes in completely blind. No prep, no spoilers, reacting in real time, same as you. And then we swap.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  And we pull every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  It's dark, it's messy. And the scariest part is that these are real stories posted by real people.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:58Vanessa Richardson?

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• 16:16Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  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 Carranza.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Then Regina Jimenez and Consuela Ortiz 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 Margalies in 2001. And then Maria Del Carmen Matavlo 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.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  That November, Chief Prosecutor Bernardo Batiz 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 Mata Víctimas, or in English, the Little Old Lady Killer.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  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.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Not to give too much away, but it takes quite a lot to get to me. But this one has given me sleep paralysis.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Oh, God. Okay. Well, everyone strap in then for next week.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  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 desensitised by violent crime, why did the Mata Viejas 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, symbolising a warm matriarchal figure whose pure love and sacrifice for her family

• 20:31Speaker 02

  is at the heart of Mexican society. They say that even the most hardened narco will listen to what his abuelita tells him. Or at least, they're used to. Prosecutor Bernardo Batiz 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

• 21:10Speaker 02

  invisible line. And this pointed towards what politicians like Batiz 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.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  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 faced challenges from the start, like the victims' 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 real forensic evidence that they'd have needed to crack this case. And they actually ended up salvaging just one complete

• 22:34Speaker 03

  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. Analysing 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.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  How had they managed 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 deaths. This person claimed to be working for a recently launched public welfare programme called Cbale. That was aimed at pensioners, basically offering ID cards to access health benefits. And this became a crucial clue to how police theorised the killer had been able to win the victims' trust and gain access to their homes.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  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 dyed blonde hair, not me, well-defined eyebrows, yes me, light brown skin, not me, mole on the cheek and a straight nose.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  They wore thick makeup, possibly wigs, and possibly dressed in a female nurse's uniform, or disguised themselves as a social worker.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  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 one, 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 profiling. 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

• 25:12Speaker 03

  it is, is like the type of drink that's being offered to the killer when they come. And I was like, oh, very interesting, very culturally apropos to tamarind drink. And they were like, a man would, they would never offer that to a man. Spoilers.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  To go with this profile, tamarind or not, forensic artists produced 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 Mata Viejas. Forty-six. In a city like Mexico City, I would argue is not that many.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  I was gonna 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.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  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 cops 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.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  So many big, tall women are basically getting, like, harassed by this.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  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 Mata Viejas. 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 charge. A sheepish Bernardo Batiz

• 27:28Speaker 02

  offered a public apology with his tail between his legs whilst insisting law enforcement were doing all they could to catch the real killer.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  And just a few months later, there was another apparent breakthrough. In March 2004, police arrested a woman named Araceli Vazquez on suspicion of at least two of the murders, plus a string of robberies targeting elderly victims. Unlike Matilda Sanchez, Araceli looked nothing like the physical profile that police had spent months pasting all over Mexico City.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Hey, man, neither did Robin Williams before the wig.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  This is true. Like, yeah, basically, they're looking at this woman and they're like, the profile of the Mata Viejas was a tall, fair-skinned and slightly muscular, robust woman, or man dressed as a woman. But Araceli was short, dark and plump, basically the total opposite. But police insisted that Araceli'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

• 28:47Speaker 03

  of Margarita Aceves in early 2004. Rizzo's family members also reportedly recognised jewellery found at Araceli's home. The triumphant cops paraded Araceli in front of the press at the police station and made her pose for photos in a white coat and wig that they claimed 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 Araceli. 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

• 29:32Speaker 03

  unfairly for the murders? Well, the judge certainly didn't think so. Keen to lock up the infamous Mata Viejas, they sentenced Araceli Vazquez to over 20 years in prison.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Goodbye, see you next week.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're done.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Everything's a shorthand now. Kidding. This story is nowhere near over. In September 2004, police captured yet another Mata Vehitas suspect. And this time, it was a bloke. In a case of déjà vu from Araceli Vázquez'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,

• 30:34Speaker 02

  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, didn't 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 Mata Vehitas, the justice system nevertheless convicted Jorge Tablas for the 2003 murders of Maria Eugenia Guzmán and Luis Estela Deveras. And he was sentenced over 70 years behind bars.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  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 this 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 gonna 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 Araceli Vázquez and Jorge Tablas in custody,

• 31:54Speaker 03

  guess what? The murders kept on going. A further 16 elderly women were killed across 2004. Alicia González, Andrea de Cart, Carmen Cardona, Scora Martinez, Guadalupe González, Estela Contura, Delfina González, Maria Virginia Chelwancy, De Los Angeles Cortés, Carmen González, Margarita Mattel, Simona Badola, Anna Reyna Renteria, Maria Dora... Oh my god. My mom is screaming. She's...

• 32:30Speaker 03

  If you guys don't remember, my mom was like, "Maybe you should have read out the names of people on the episode because it makes you sound stupid."

• 32:40Speaker 03

  I'm nearly done. Maria Dolores Martinez, Margarita Arandondo, and Maria Imelda Estrada.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Thank you. The more bodies that piled up, the more the authorities found themselves completely perplexed by what was going on. Were Araceli and Tablas 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.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  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 Mata Vehitas in bog-standard, gender-neutral inglés.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Because we don't have gender endings. But in Spanish, the police and the press had always called the killer "El Mata Vehitas", 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 Mata Vehitas",

• 34:28Speaker 02

  it was in fact much more apparent that they were really searching for a male offender in this case.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  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

• 35:22Speaker 02

  from other serial killing cases from around the world to guide them. And the global literature on serial killers

• 35:31Speaker 02

  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?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  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?

• 36:03Speaker 03

  By 2005, Mexican police were firmly running with the theory that the Mata Vehitas was a man who committed his crimes in nurse-inspired drag. And they didn't just come up with the idea out of the blue. Instead, they'd been clearly inspired by the notorious French case Thierry Paulin, the so-called "Monster of Mamate", 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 Paulin apparently harbored 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,

• 36:47Speaker 03

  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 Thierry Paulin, but made him Mexican.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  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 gonna land them in some real hot water.

• 38:26Speaker 06

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• 39:23Speaker 05

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• 39:30Speaker 02

  In late 2005, investigators had become increasingly convinced that the killer might be what was known in Mexico City as a travesti.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  This term doesn't quite translate neatly into English, but we'll try our best. Travestis 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 marginalized sex worker communities in urban hubs like Mexico City, who live in poverty and experience discrimination. By turning the spotlight on the travesti community, the police weren't just looking for a man wearing women's clothes. They were deliberately targeting members of a specific, highly marginalized social group.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  And in October 2005, they took action. Police swooped in and arrested between 38 and 49 travestis in an unexpected raid using tear gas and forcing them into patrol cars. 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 Mata Viejas 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 Mata Viejas. And even after this epic failure, the authorities still weren't letting go of their pet theory that easily.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  In November 2005, Bernardo Batiste declared at a press conference that, quote, "The killer might not be a travesti, but we are certain it is a transgendered person."

• 41:27Speaker 02

  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 Ciudad 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 gotta be a gay man. And then they like, they're like, oh, it's somebody dressed as a woman.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  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 more attention to like, their ineptitude. It's really quite, quite staggering. And this is in the 2000s.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  It's also conducting raids. They know how to do those.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  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 darts at various people. A slightly more robust line of inquiry would be required that involved analyzing the geographic locations of the murders and trying to pinpoint where the culprit might target next. Officers pored over maps of Mexico City and reckoned that they were on to something. Most of the victims lived fairly close to green spaces in the city, which led investigators to theorize that this could be how the killer was identifying and stalking them.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  The Mexico City Department of Justice launched a whole-ass 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 the undercover cops were placed in Parks and Gardens, along with a huge increase in patrol cars 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 gonna push them somewhere else. They also distributed thousands of posters, leaflets, and information brochures

• 44:08Speaker 02

  for elderly people explaining the murder 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.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  2005 saw the murders of Julia Vera Duplan, Maria Elisa Perez, Anna Maria Vescales, Celia Bilalys, Maria Guadalupe Nunez, Emma Armenta, Emma Reyes, Dolores Concepcion Silva, Maria Del Carmen Gonzalez, Guadalupe Oliveira, and Maria de los Angeles Reped. Whatever the Mexico City police were doing, it was not working.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  As the investigation dragged on, Mexico City's Department of Justice came under fire for failing to apprehend the monster terrorizing 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 rumor that the so-called Mata Viejas could even be an organized smear campaign by political rivals attempting to discredit the city's government's controversial welfare scheme. That old chestnut. So, that one is, uh, we're gonna go full tinfoil hat there. It's usually the government's fault.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  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 flak for introducing the Cibale scheme that extended free health benefits to seniors. Cibale means like, yeah, okay.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Inspiring.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, I'll have some health, thanks.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Sure thing. Thanks, pal.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  And that led some to speculate that perhaps the Mata Viejas was a hoax orchestrated by the rival conservative party PAN 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,

• 46:55Speaker 02

  that at least three of the victims had owned a copy of the exact same 18th-century painting by French artist Jean Baptiste Gries called A Boy in a Red Waistcoat. Did any of this mean anything?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  That is quite weird.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Is it, or is it gonna turn out as 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?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  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 would be that fucking painting of like, a Japanese woman with a blue face that's in everybody's house. Do you know which one I mean?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  I know exactly which one you mean. Or that one Ikea lamp that's like a donut.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  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 a right movie like, there it is. There it is. There it is.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Or, or, or, or the one that's uh wiggly lines. That's a Joy Division T-shirt that everyone's got on the wall.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  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.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, totally, totally, totally.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  But did any of it really mean anything? Or were investigators just desperate to find links where they didn't exist?

• 48:23Speaker 03

  The latter, definitely. By December two thousand and five, 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 taking 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 mata vijitas for Christmas. But just like all of the other leads, this led nowhere. And look, I, I know I, I've sounded quite like unfair on the Mexico City Police Department.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  It's not easy. We've said this many, many times before on the show. Serial killer 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 mortuaries. I'm like, why is that? He could also be locked up. Like, you know, it, 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, they're very, very inexperienced in this as well.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  So as two thousand and six 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 Batiz declared that he'd be leaving his role that year. But before he did, he publicly vowed to catch the mata vijitas. Now it was personal. So in January two thousand and six, Mexico City Police officially called in the big dogs. Or should we say, la gran chiens.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  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 one O one.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  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.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  On the twenty fifth of January two thousand and six, a young man named Joel Lopez returned to his landlady's house in the Veneciana Coranza area of the city, only to find her lying lifeless on the floor with a stethoscope still around her neck.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  She wasn't playing doctors. The eighty-two-year-old Anna Maria de los Reyes had been strangled.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  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, Joel 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. Si vale, indeed. She was tall, physically strong, and matched the descriptions of the mata vijitas up to a T.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  After years of investigation and resources, could it be that the notorious Mahatevitas had been captured by sheer dumb luck, a sausage joll and good timing?

• 52:39Speaker 03

  You know the joll by now. The Justice Department paraded their latest catch to the media in a feeding 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 Pean, 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.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  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 vale, maybe.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  When asked if she killed Anna Maria de los Reyes earlier that day, she said yes.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  She's like the lady in butter.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. Mexican.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Mexican butter.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Mexican butter. Oh, delicious.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  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, 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 love that. I'm going to have some more of that, please.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  John Wayne Gacy being a perfect example. So it fits, it tracks what she's saying.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Interesting, interesting. Yeah, rather why did they stop and more, why did they start? Yeah.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, what was the set of circumstances that precipitated the first kill is often going to help you a lot more than the last one.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  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 ten other crime scenes.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Bernardo Batiz confidently declared that there was a ninety-nine percent probability that she committed eleven homicides plus one attempted homicide. And if she definitely did eleven, 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 the mata vijitas. And her name was Juana Barraza Semperio.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Quick side note before we go on. It's uh 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 Mahatevitas capture, officers detained twenty-nine-year-old former soldier Raúl Osiel Marroquín, AKA, have there ever been two more opposite names for the same man? The Rainbow Killer or the Sadist?

• 57:14Speaker 03

  What's going on there?

• 57:17Speaker 02

  I think this next sentence might help.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  I see.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Apparently he targeted men at gay bars and kidnapped, tortured and murdered at least four of them with an alleged motive of homophobic hatred.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Now, unlike the Mahatevitas case, police hadn't been aware of the serial killer targeting gay men until Osiel'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 Mahatevitas case and the bombshell revelation that she was actually a woman.

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• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  Because Juana Barazza 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 Silencio. The Lady of Silence.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  We did actually go to a lucha libre 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 like we got given a mask each. It's just so funny. And I thought we were gonna get there. And honestly, I thought everyone there was gonna be a tourist. But there weren't. There were like, real people there. Like, the families 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.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  Now, to those of you who don't know much about the weird and wonderful world of lucha 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.

• 1:02:33Vanessa Richardson?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Glamorous, can I say that?

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  It's a spectator sport largely based around the idea of heroes called technicos and baddies called rudos, fighting it out in, as I said, very flamboyant masks in a symbolic battle of good versus evil. Juana Barraza 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 Rangers-style Lycra jumpsuit and boots. And while there's been some controversy over whether Juana Barraza

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  actually stepped into the ring as a professional fighter or if she was just some sort of megalomaniac who had her own gear made, she personally described herself as a ruder to the core.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  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 libre 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.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  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 mom and stepdad. By all accounts, her childhood was utterly bleak. Barraza's mother, Justa San Piero, 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 13, her mom sold her to an older man for a pack of beers, like Charles Manson.

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  That man, Jose Lugo, repeatedly raped and abused Barraza 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. Barraza 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.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Although she spent every spare peso on costumes, merch, and posters promoting The Lady of Silence.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:06:03Vanessa Richardson?

  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.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Exactly. Wow, I'm just ever more excited with all your breadcrumbing for next week's episode, Hannah. Strap in. 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 Muerte, 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 here 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.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Santa Muerte 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 Muerte also is a deeply controversial figure. Since the 1990s, Santa Muerte 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 Muerte, calling it a blasphemous cult. When we went to Cuba, we happened upon a Santa Muerte shrine temple situation, did we not, Hannah?

• 1:07:53Vanessa Richardson?

  Santa Maria.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  Ah, was it? Never mind.

• 1:07:56Vanessa Richardson?

  Slightly different, but, you know, big talk coming from the fucking Vatican.

• 1:08:03Vanessa Richardson?

  Especially in the mid-2000s. Okay.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  They're like, "Look over there."

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  So when the police discovered that Juana Barraza seemed to be one of Santa Muerte's members, well, the press were practically doing backflips. Along with her unfeminine wrestling hobby, it was one more piece of evidence that the Mahavitas wasn't an ordinary woman at all. She was a monster.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  As Juana Barraza 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 root around in her cranium to figure out the causes. Famed neurologist Fege Ostrowski, nope, we don't know what that is short for either, conducted EEG tests on Barraza to analyze her brainwaves. She found that Barraza's frontal cortex was overactive, which neurologists associate with poor impulse control and aggressive tendencies in some violent offenders. Ostrowski also interviewed Barraza for hours, where she initially confessed to all of the murders and said that it was because she

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  wanted to act out some sort of revenge against her abusive mother. Barraza later recanted these claims and insisted that she only killed Ana de los Reyes. Still, Ostrowski concluded that Barraza was a psychopath who knew the difference between right and wrong, but didn't let it stop her. Both Ostrowski and criminologist Martin Baron agreed that Barraza'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.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Baron also argued that her retirement from professional lucha libre 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.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  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 prosecutor's 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 defense lawyers presenting evidence to one judge who ultimately made the call. Not that this mattered much to the people of Mexico City. Thanks to the media, the Mahavitas 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.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Still, the official trial proceedings kicked off in spring 2008. Juana Barraza 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 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.

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  To cut a long story short, this did not work. Juana Barraza was found guilty of 16 murders and 12 aggravated burglary 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 Acatila Prison in Mexico City. She sells tacos to other inmates to make money, which we hear are delicious, and is

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  said to enjoy a celebrity status behind bars as the feared old lady killer. And she actually leads a walking group for elderly inmates.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  Which, and we wish we were joking, at least those old age pensioners are surviving their turnaround the grounds with the notorious Mahavitas. But probably not for long. Nowadays, Barraza 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.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  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 Moonies, it's like, 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.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  After Juana Barraza's trial, Mexico City Police officially closed the Mahavitas case in spite of over 30 cases remaining unsolved. Since the killings stopped after her capture, they said they were confident that Juana Barraza was the sole culprit responsible for all of 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

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  we think that Juana Barraza was framed? Probably not. The MO 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 Barraza's guilt by mistake. And also the fact that the killings 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 Barraza's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is of course extremely dodgy. No matter how much it seems likely, you can't just

• 1:14:53Speaker 03

  shut the casebook and shrug that it was probably one of hers because, you know, she walks and quacks like a luchadora.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  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. Jorge Tablas, 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 Juana Barraza.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  And while a few of the charges were reversed, Jorge Tablas died in prison. And what about Araceli Vázquez, who was slapped with a 23-year sentence for the murder of Margarita Aceves? Like Jorge Tablas, fingerprints originally matched to Araceli from Gloria Rizzo's apartment were later found to belong to Juana Barraza, and witness statements from Margarita Aceves's murder also seemed to match the infamous Lady of Silence. So obviously, Araceli went free after Barraza'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

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  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, Araceli and Juana Barraza are in the same prison and apparently have a cordial relationship, although we cannot confirm whether Araceli 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.

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  I think everyone has a cordial relationship with her. So overall, in this case, I think we're gonna 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

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  of who they expected the Mahavitas to be meant that they were unable to see what was really in front of them. In the end, it was just lucky that Juana Barraza messed up on her final murder and literally ended up getting caught. Red-shirted.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and red-handed. So there you go. But we also know serial killer investigations do need some luck. It just feels like a case of a bit of like trying to squeeze a lot of like round pegs through square holes and it not really working.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. Eventually, just cost two people their lives in prison and also lots of murders, so.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Se vale.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Se vale. A little trip to Mexico City for you on our North American

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  trip, which will be concluding next week. Well, over the next two weeks.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  It might have to be three. I don't know, man.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. We'll see.

• 1:18:25Speaker 03

  Okay, two or three. Stay tuned, guys. It is a big, big, biggie next week kicking off and rounding off at some point. It's the one you've been asking for for a very long time. Stay tuned. We will see you then. Goodbye.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Adios. Buena suerte. Be good, etc.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  All that. Bye.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:18:46Vanessa Richardson?

  Vanessa here again. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Red Handed on your favorite listening platform for more cases just like this one. Follow Red Handed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening now. New episodes are released three times a week.

• 1:19:08Speaker 06

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  New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

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  real cases, real stakes. This is The First 48. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:21:02Vanessa Richardson?

  If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.