Mexico police hunt serial killer
Mexico City police are hunting a serial killer thought to be behind the unusual murders of as many as 15 elderly women.
The suspect - nicknamed “Mataviejitas” or the “Little Old Lady Killer” - is thought to be a man dressed in women’s clothes or a well-built woman.
The killer is said to have entered the victims’ homes by winning their trust - possibly by posing as a health worker - before beating and strangling them.
The Mexican capital has one of the highest crime rates in the world.
Bizarre coincidence?
Witnesses in the case of an 85-year-old widow killed last month said they saw a large woman in a red blouse - who may also have been a man disguised as a woman - leaving the victim’s house.
Mexico City chief prosecutor Bernardo Batiz said the killer was “brilliantly clever", acting alone and winning the confidence of old people.
Three of the last four victims of the killer owned a print of an 18th century painting, Boy in Red Waistcoat, by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
Prosecutors say this bizarre link may be mere coincidence.
A government body has distributed thousands of leaflets warning the elderly over the killings.
Mexican authorities have been criticised by the United Nations for failing to solve cases of violence against women.
The unsolved murders of hundreds of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez over the last decade have attracted international attention.
Source: news.bbc.co.uk
Mexican authorities fear serial killer of elderly in Mexico City
Mexican authorities are looking for a possible serial killer in the recent slayings of elderly people in the capital, Mexico City Attorney General Bernardo Batiz said Tuesday.
"We have a serious suspicion that there is a serial killer," Batiz was quoted by the Mexican news media as saying. "We have some cases in which the similarity of behavior and modus operandi would indicate to us that this is feasible."
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At least 24 elderly people have been slain in this capital of 8 million people since mid-2003, many of them inside
Police dumbfounded as serial killer stalks Mexico
This much they know: Someone has been murdering older women in Mexico City, strangling them in their homes, pocketing a keepsake and vanishing into the city's streets.
But investigators do not know whether the killer is a man or a woman, whether there is an accomplice or how the victims are chosen.
After two years and at least 24 unsolved murders, they have one fingerprint that matches partial prints from five other cases, a modus operandi and a police sketch of what appears to be a man made up as a woman.
Investigators pieced together much of
Killings spook Mexico City
This much they know: Someone has been murdering older women in Mexico City, strangling them in their homes, pocketing a keepsake and vanishing into the city's streets.
But investigators do not know whether the killer is a man or a woman, whether there is an accomplice or how the victims are chosen.
After two years and at least 24 unsolved murders, they have one fingerprint that matches partial prints from five other cases, a modus operandi and a police sketch of what appears to be a man made up as a woman.
Investigators pieced together much of the killer's
Mexico charges seven cops with kidnapping
Mexican prosecutors announced Thursday they have filed kidnapping and organize crime charges against seven police officers accused of protecting hit men working for the feared Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel.
The men served in the police department in Ensenada, a tourist town 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of the California border, and they allegedly kidnapped people involved in the drug trade and held them for ransom, the Attorney General's Office said in a press statement.
They also protected members of the "Black Commando," a group of hit men working for the Arellano Felix cartel, authorities said.
They are
Milwaukee cops: Picnic killer may be in Mexico
An illegal immigrant suspected of fatally shooting two picnickers and wounding three others may have fled to Mexico, police said Wednesday.
Police identified the suspect in Mondays shooting as Octaviano Juarez-Corro. He had not been formally charged but police Capt. Timothy Burkee said charges could come this week.
Juarez-Corro, 32, is accused of firing on a group of people at South Shore Park on Memorial Day in what authorities call a domestic dispute possibly related to recently filed divorce papers.
More: suntimes.com
In Mexico's Murders, Fury Is Aimed at Officials
VÃctor Javier GarcÃa still has a dozen marks across his abdomen and genitals from the burning cigarettes the police used to torture him into falsely confessing to being a serial killer.
It made no difference to a lower court judge that the DNA tests on the bodies identified as his victims were not conclusive. Or that a forensics expert testified that he had been ordered by his superiors to plant false evidence. Or even that witnesses retracted their testimony, saying the police had threatened them into making false statements.
Mr. GarcÃa was sentenced to
Drug gangs corrupt Mexico's elite "FBI"
Despite a five-year battle that has put several top Mexican drug capos behind bars, the cartels' power and reach is so great that they can still corrupt elite police at will to stay ahead of the law.
Faced with rampant police graft when he took office in 2000, President Vicente Fox founded a crack unit modeled on the FBI to hunt down ruthless traffickers grown rich hauling cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines over the U.S. border.
This week the attorney general's office released a report showing that far from being incorruptible, 1,493 officers of the new Federal
Mexico: Plainclothes police gunned down
Four plainclothes police officers were shot and killed in the notoriously violent border town Nuevo Laredo by unknown gunmen, El Universal reported Friday.
The officers -- members of the intelligence branch of the Mexican Federal Preventative Police -- had their vehicle sprayed with gunfire, said witnesses.
Nuevo Laredo, along the U.S. border, is a known crossroads for drug smuggling from Mexico into the United States and has been the scene of several police killings in recent months.
More: news.monstersandcritics.com
Police arrest man wanted in Ill., Mexico
A fugitive who is wanted in Illinois, Iowa and Mexico was arrested after forcing his way into an apartment and later falling asleep on the couch.
Juan Javier Tapia, 24, who was been featured on the television show Americas Most Wanted, was arrested Sunday after forcing his way into an apartment and trying to fight with a resident there.
Gwinnett County police arrived to find Tapia had eaten all the residents food and had drunk all of his alcohol, said Darren Moloney, spokesman for the Gwinnett County Police Department. The officers found Tapia
Grenade attack injures 2 police officials in Mexico
A grenade lobbed from a movingcar at a police post injured two officials in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, Mexico, on Sunday.
The attack took place at a police barricade outside Tres Vidas,where conflict between a private hotel and farming interest has sparked a series of conflict.
Farmers who originally lived in the area claimed that they never agreed to sell their territory. Groups of peasants stormed the area in and around Tres Vidas in recent days, seizing land they claim was stolen
