Sharif's talents led an upstate New York-based building materials company called Cercoa (now part of the giant Ferro Corporation) to create a department specifically for him in Florida in 1981. The job paid him well enough that he could afford to live in Palm Beach. On May 2, 1981, he invited a 23-year-old woman named Molly Fleming, whom he met in a bar, to his house where he beat and raped her repeatedly. When he was finished, he offered to take her to a hospital where he was promptly arrested.
Cercoa bailed him out and paid for his legal defense, which was further complicated in August after he sexually assaulted another woman he met in West Palm Beach. He was sentenced to probation for the first rape and 45 days in prison for the second.
After his release, Cercoa fired him and Sharif moved to Gainesville, a city dominated by the University of Florida. He was married briefly. His wife, Joanne Collins Podlesnik, divorced him after he beat her unconscious. On March 17, 1983, Sharif placed an ad in The Gainesville Daily Register looking for a live-in housekeeper. He beat and raped a woman who answered the ad and threatened her by saying: “I will bury you out back in the woods. I've done it before, and I'll do it again.” After he was arrested, he escaped from jail, but was quickly apprehended. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison with the understanding that when his sentence was over, Sharif would “be met at the prison gates and escorted to the airport” for deportation to Egypt.
But it didn't work out that way. He was paroled in October 1989 and soon hired by Midland, Texas-based Benchmark Research & Technology, where his work in nonflammable, hydrocarbon-free well drilling materials received praise from the U.S. Department of Energy and influential Senator Phil Gramm. It also earned Sharif a consistent income from patents he registered while working there. But he was arrested again in 1991, this time for driving under the influence. A former co-worker from Florida who had coincidentally moved to Midland saw his name in the paper and called Immigration to investigate Sharif's deportation order.
The case dragged on, and in May 1994, a judge agreed to a deal in which the prosecution would drop all charges if Sharif would voluntarily leave the U.S., never to return. Benchmark then transferred him to one of their maquiladora factories in Juárez and rented him a large house in the city's posh Rincones de San Marcos neighborhood.
In October 1995, a worker at the factory accused Sharif of raping her repeatedly. She said he warned her not to go to police or he would kill her and dump her body in Lote Bravo, a stretch of desert just south of Juárez where many bodies of young women had already been found.
Although she later dropped her charges, a detective working the case found out that the 48-year-old Sharif had been dating 17-year-old Elizabeth Castro Garcia, whose beaten and raped body had been found in Lote Bravo on August 19. Sharif was arrested, tried and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
But while the media was trumpeting the arrest of the Juárez Ripper—and pointing out, almost boasting, that he was a foreigner brought to Mexico by the Americans—the killings didn't stop. In fact, they increased. Not only were there more bodies, but those that were found were more and more likely to be mutilated in horrific ways. And the press also neglected to mention that the killings had begun at least 15 months before Sharif had moved to the area.
The citizens—particularly young women—of Juárez were growing increasingly frightened and the authorities were at a loss to explain why taking Sharif off the streets didn't do anything to stop the killings. What happened next would have been rejected if it were the plot outline for the cheesiest crime show in television history.
On April 8, 1996, police questioned a man named Hector Olivares Villalba in connection with the rape, mutilation and murder of 18-year-old Rosario Garcia Leal. Under interrogation, Olivares Villalba admitted that he was indeed one of many young men from a Juárez street gang called Los Rebeldes (the Rebels) who had murdered Garcia Leal on December 7, 1995. Police raided a number of nightclubs associated with the gang and rounded up almost 300 people for questioning. That led to the arrest of gang leader Sergio “El Diablo” (the Devil) Armendariz Diaz, Juan “El Grande” (Mr. Big) Contreras Jurado, Carlos Hernandez Molina, Carlos Barrientos Vidales, Romel Cerniceros Garcia, Fernando Guermes Aguirre, Luis Adrade, Jose Juarez Rosales and Erika Fierro, all members of Los Rebeldes.
Eager to pin the murders on Sharif, police accused the nine members of Los Rebeldes of participating in a sinister plot in which Sharif would pay them to commit rapes and murders using the same methods he had in order to make people believe that he was not the culprit and that the real depredador was still at large. Police claimed that Contreras Jurado testified that Armendariz Diaz had once ordered him to visit Sharif in prison and bring back an envelope containing $4,000 in U.S. currency. Once it was received, they said, Armendariz Diaz ordered the gang members to kidnap, beat, rape and murder a young woman known to them only as “Lucy.”
All of the accused later recanted their confessions, saying that they were made under torture. They showed reporters burn marks they said came from their interrogators. Charges were later dropped against Ceniceros Garcia, Fierro, Guermes Aguirre, Hernandez Molina and Olivares Villalba. The others—Armendariz Diaz, Contreras Jurado, Carlos Barrientos Vidales, Luis Adrade and Jose Juarez Rosales—went to trial for 17 murders police said were coordinated by Sharif from his prison cell. Armendariz Diaz added some excitement to the proceedings when he pleaded guilty to organizing and participating in the gang rape of a 19-year-old fellow inmate while awaiting trial. Police also said that Armendariz Diaz's teeth were perfect matches to bite marks found on the breasts of at least three victims attributed to Los Rebeldes.
But putting Los Rebeldes in prison didn't do any more to stop the killings than imprisoning Sharif did. The murders continued unabated even though Mexico's own Human Rights Commission openly criticized the state police and their methods, insisting they take the problem more seriously. But still the police and prosecutors clung to the idea that the murders were the work of one extremely proficient serial killer, probably working under the direction of Sharif.
And many in government indicated that the deaths of women on the streets of Juárez were far from a top priority. “Women who have a night life, go out late and come into contact with drinkers are at risk,” Chihuahua's former attorney general Arturo Gonzáles Rascón told El Diario in February 1999. “It's hard to go out on the street when it's raining and not get wet.” Although there was no evidence to support it, other authorities had accused the victims of being prostitutes, or in some way provoking their attackers. “Despite the fact that most of the victims were schoolgirls or workers, there's a persistent belief around town that the targeted women somehow invited the attacks,” said American journalist John Burnett. “Nowadays, it's a common joke when two men see a provocatively dressed woman, for one to elbow the other and say: ‘She better watch out or she'll end up in desert.’”
More light was shed on the hundreds of rapes and murders on March 18, 1999, when a badly injured 14-year-old girl named Nancy Gonzalez started banging on a stranger's door in Juárez, screaming and begging for help. When police arrived, she told them that she had been repeatedly raped, beaten, suffocated and left for dead by a man named Jesus Guardado Márquez, known locally as “El Tolteca” (the Toltec), because he looked like he was from that indigenous group. He was a maquiladora bus driver, who picked up women from their homes and dropped them off at factories, returning when their shifts were over. The concept behind the buses (which the factories paid for) was to keep the women safe from the predators on the streets. But when Gonzalez—who had falsified her birth date to get her job—finished her shift at 1:00 a.m., she found that she was the last passenger on the bus and that it had taken a turn into the desert. Guardado Márquez then assaulted her and tried to choke her to death.
Upon hearing that Gonzalez was still alive, Guardado Márquez (who had been found guilty of sexual assault once before) fled Juárez with his pregnant wife, but was arrested on April 1 in Duran
go. Under interrogation, Guardado Márquez admitted to his crimes against Gonzalez and named four other bus drivers—Victor “El Narco” (the Narc) Moreno Rivera; Augustin “El Kiani” (the Persian) Toribio Castillo; Bernardo “El Samber” Hernando Fernandez; and Jose Gaspar “El Gaspy” Cerballos Chavez—who raped and murdered their passengers as a gang called Los Choferes (the Chauffeurs).
Incredibly, state police claimed that their leader, Moreno Rivera, had been hired by Sharif in an effort to clear his name, just as they alleged Los Rebeldes had. They said Sharif had paid the bus drivers $1,200 per murder and that he demanded the victims' underwear as proof.
A British reporter tracked down Sharif in prison (he was in solitary confinement and said he was frequently denied access to his lawyer) and asked him what he thought of the government's story. “They accuse me of everything. They always said I was a genius and very intelligent. How come a genius would make the same mistake twice?” he said. “If I did it with Los Rebeldes, why would I do the same thing the same way? Paying people to kill women outside [prison] is very stupid.” Police could provide no evidence of cash transactions, phone conversations or visits to Sharif in prison.
The accused claimed they did not know Sharif and that their confessions were the result of torture. Authorities blamed them for a total of 211 murders, including a ludicrous 191 by Guardado Márquez alone. Media had started calling him “El Dracula.” He and the other bus drivers recanted their confessions. Motores Electricos de Juárez, Gonzalez's employer, fired her and sued her for taking a job she was too young for. Sharif's sentence was reduced from 30 years to 20 after the prosecution admitted it had “problems with evidence,” and both sides promised to appeal. He died—of what officials called “natural causes”—in prison in 2006.
Not surprisingly, the killings did not stop. By the end of 1999, the phenomenon was making international news. The victims, known as Las Desaparecidos (the Disappeared) were drawing a great deal of interest in the United States, including some celebrities who championed their cause and protested what they saw as poor efforts by police and government to stop the killings. Canadian Candice Skrapec, an instructor of criminology at the University of California, Fresno, told newspapers that the killings were likely the work of American Angel Resendez Ramirez, better known as “the Railway Killer.” She was wrong. When he was arrested, Resendez Ramirez admitted to a number of murders, but none in Mexico.
When the skeletal remains of eight more victims were uncovered in a vacant lot just a block away from the Maquiladoras Association headquarters on November 5, 2001, police announced the creation of a new task force to investigate the crimes and offered a reward of $21,500 for information leading to an arrest. The area, known as “El Campo Algodonero” (the Cotton Field), had been the site where so many bodies have been buried over the years that it led to a commonly used threat, “I'll leave your body in the Cotton Field.”
On November 10, two more bus drivers—Javier “El Cerillo” (the Match) Garcia Uribe and Gustavo “La Foca” (the Seal) Gonzalez Meza—were arrested for the eight murders discovered a week earlier. Again the men confessed and then recanted, saying the confessions were the results of torture.
One of their defense attorneys, Mario Escobedo Anaya, left work on February 5, 2002. He had received death threats before, and when he noticed he was being followed by a Jeep Cherokee, he fled the scene, stomping on his car's accelerator pedal. The Jeep, police claim, was the personal vehicle of state police commander Roberto Alejandro Castro Valles. The police initially reported that Escobedo Anaya had died when his car crashed, but when the autopsy report showed he had actually died as a result of repeated gunshot wounds, they changed their story to say that an officer killed him in self defense. To prove it, they showed local reporters a Jeep Cherokee full of bullet holes. By the end of 2009, the pair's other two lawyers—including Escobedo's father, Mario Escobedo Salazar—had also been killed in mysterious circumstances.
Over the years, things changed. Celebrities from the U.S. and Mexico did their best to raise awareness. Journalists came from all over the world to spread the word. And, in May 2005, the Chihuahua state police dropped their 72-hour waiting period before they would investigate missing persons. But it didn't help the situation for women that violence from the cartels had exploded in the city. Police—who were already overwhelmed by the crime level in the city and were understaffed due to purges of corrupt officers—were suddenly confronted with 10 or 12 murder investigations a day. The mystery of the missing women of Juárez took a back seat to the drug war.
And the bodies still keep coming. There are lots of theories. People in Juárez like to blame groups like Satanists, organ harvesters, even a cabal of wealthy men who pay huge sums to hunt women on the streets of their city for sport. The common thread is that outsiders are to blame.
Academics on both sides of the border blame the maquiladoras. They point out that the factories attract vulnerable women and force them to travel to and from work in dangerous places and at dangerous times. But the places and times being dangerous are less the fault of the factories than they are of the place itself. The machista culture of many Mexicans has been deeply unnerved by the fact that many women in border areas make more money than their fathers, brothers and husbands. “Women are occupying the space of men in a culture of absolute dominance of men over women,” said Esther Chavez Cano, the best known of all women's right advocates in Juárez. “This has to provoke misogyny.”
Indeed what was happening in Juárez wasn't coming from outside. It was coming from Juárez itself. Although the sheer number of murders and missing women suggests many culprits, there is one group that has been conclusively identified as contributing to the slaughter. The Juárez Cartel employs a number of former and active-duty policemen as an enforcer unit. They are called La Linea (the Line) and are heavily armed and extensively trained in urban warfare. Because so many police in Juárez are involved with La Linea and the cartel, it's difficult for Mexicans to feel safe when the very people employed to protect them are also the most likely to prey upon them. “The Juárez Cartel are the cops,” an informant told U.S. federal officials during an investigation about police corruption in the city. “They've turned Juárez into their deadly playground. They make their own rules.”
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, a former drug trafficker who had worked in cooperation with La Linea said it was not uncommon to see abducted women at the gang's parties. And when he did not see the women again, he simply assumed they had been killed. He explained his logic by telling the reporters: “Sometimes, when you cross a shipment of drugs to the United States, adrenaline is so high that you want to celebrate by killing women.”
While all of the factors that would appear to contribute to the wholesale violence against women in Juárez also occurs in other border cities, the women in them have not be subjected to anywhere near the same amount of terror. Tijuana has more factories, a largely corrupt police force and just as many entrenched gangs. The conditions in places like Nuevo Laredo, Calexico, Matamoros and other cities are much the same as they are in Juárez, but the women there are not nearly as likely to be victims of rape and murder.
I asked the Mexicans I knew if they had a theory. Only one of them—Miguel G, a journalist who has fled Mexico to work in the U.S. as a graphic designer—did. He told me: “Juárez is just a bad place.”
Chapter 2
The Eagle Eats the Snake
Mexico is not like the United States or Canada. Of course, it has a different official language, but it also has a state religion, different legal and political systems, and a much more violent history. It is also what economists refer to as a developing nation, what we used to call a third-world country.
And it has a different way of thinking. When the Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz was asked about the difference between Mexicans and North Americans, he put it bluntly: “The Mexican tells lies because he delights in fantasy, or becaus
e he is desperate, or because he wants to rise above the sordid facts of his life; the North American does not tell lies. The North Americans are credulous.”
More importantly, Mexico has a long history of unstable governments being replaced by periods of corrupt, one-party rule. It has withstood several violent coups, at least one full-scale revolution, been invaded several times by foreign powers and has even had two emperors. From the time the Mexica nation defeated the Azcapotzalco in 1428 (and probably before that) until the election of Vicente Fox as president in 2000, Mexico had not experienced a single transfer of power to the opposition without violence. A knowledge of the Mexican history that helped incubate it is essential to the Mexican Drug War.
The Mexica
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, the territory that now forms Mexico was home to anywhere from 6 million to 25 million people (it is still difficult to estimate populations of pre-contact indigenous people). There were dozens of languages and ethnic groups, but much of the area was dominated by a loose alliance of Nahuatl speakers now referred to as the Aztecs. They arrived in Mexico from the north about 1,500 years ago, pushing the hunter-gatherer Otomanguean people farther south. The Aztecs' advanced agriculture, technology and social structure allowed them to establish a very large territory, spanning much of modern-day Mexico from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast.
One group of Nahuatl speakers who arrived in Aztec territory in the late 14th century and became one of its confederates identified themselves as the Mxihtli, and are known to history as the Mexica. They asked the permission of the area's dominant people, the Azcapotzalco, to settle in the valley surrounding Lake Texcoco in central Mexico. The Azcapotzalco agreed. According to legend, the Mexica saw an eagle eating a snake on a prickly pear cactus, decided it was a message from above telling them where to settle, and set up their homes at the spot. This image is now reproduced on the Mexican flag. On a marshy island in Lake Texcoco, the Mexica founded the city of Tenochtitlan, and the area they dominated was called Mxihco or Mexico.
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