Juana Barraza: Mexico's Notorious 'Little Old Lady Killer' | #459

**Hannah** (0:00)
Thanks for listening to RedHanded. Make sure to listen to and follow RedHanded on Amazon Music, or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast RedHanded on Amazon Music. And with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music podcasts and audiobooks, all in the Amazon Music app.
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 RedHanded are continuing our big North American road trip. It's taken us from Willie Picton's Grizzly Pig Farm up in Canada, through memories of our trip to the creepy Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Massachusetts, and even into the murky waters of Cajun cryptids in the Louisiana bayou. And this week, we're traveling 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 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 fearsome majaviejitas 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.

**Suruthi** (1:43)
And I'm Suruthi.

**Hannah** (1:44)
And this is the bonkers true story of Mexico's little old lady killer, La Dama del Silencio, The Lady of Silence.

**Suruthi** (1:54)
In 2003, police in Mexico City started to notice a disturbing pattern. Old ladies were dying. But not in the peaceful, surrounded by their family's 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.

**Hannah** (2:23)
Good luck.

**Suruthi** (2:23)
Oh my god. I was reading this this morning and I was like, why the fuck? This is just, I practiced this, but you're not going to believe me when I read these out because it's not going to sound like I practiced at all.

**Hannah** (2:37)
So let's just do it. I feel like it's a trip back in time.

**Suruthi** (2:43)
All right. These were the ladies who were murdered.
Manuela Torrencias, Gia Malion, Maria Guadalupe Aguilla, Alicia Cota, Maria Guadalupe Gonzalez, Maria del Cameron Muñoz, Gloria Edina Rizzo, Lucera Calva, Natalia Torres, Maria Eugenia Guzman, and Luz Estella Bivera.

**Hannah** (3:08)
Arriba. Well done.

**Suruthi** (3:10)
Thank you. Thank you, everybody. She says with no idea.
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 victim 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 belt of their own dressing gowns. The murder weapons were left around the victim's 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, 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.

**Hannah** (4:13)
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 El Chalochiero, 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 Cardenas 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 had already fulfilled its serial killer quota long ago. And that sort of thing just didn't happen here anymore.