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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. And tonight, I have a special treat for you, dear listener.
We travel from the booming corporate town of Houston, Texas, and move south, across the Rio Grande, and enter one of the three largest cities in the world, Mexico City. Here, we are met with a tall woman who sits in prison. Her name is Juana Baradza.
and she is suspected of having killed up to 49 elderly women in cold blood. To inform us of this fascinating case of a female serial killer, I have with me on this show the author of a great book named The Little Old Lady Killer.
Her name is Susanna Vargas Cervantes, and I am honored to have her as a guest on this show. The bonus content of the $10 Plus Club includes an expose into the Norwegian black metal artist, murderer, and Satanist Varg Viknes, a detailed look into the history of the death penalty around the world,
A video movie review of the excellent film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
and an American radio station interviewing your humble host. More bonus features are coming up, with a wide variety of interesting topics. If you have a specific topic you would like to hear me talk about, aside from serial killers, feel free to let me know on facebook.com slash the SK podcast.
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Miss Vargas, welcome so much to the show. I'm very happy to have you as a guest. Before we get started with the interview proper, I would like to make it known that I do not speak Spanish. And as such, I must apologize beforehand for my atrocious pronunciation of Spanish names and places. My podcast is, as you probably know, dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how.
Media often tend to focus a lot on a dozen or so serial killer superstars, mostly British or American serial killers at that. On my show, I make an effort to cover all serial killer cases, both lesser-known ones and those from outside the United States of America.
As such, I am very happy to have you on as your excellent book covers an extremely fascinating case, a female serial killer from Mexico. Before we delve into the meat of the serial killer case, can you tell my dear listeners a bit about yourself, who you are, your background, and your reason for authoring this book?
Sure. Thank you very much for having me on the show. I really enjoy your podcast. My name is Susana. I'm from Mexico City, but spent a lot of time in Montreal. So I consider myself half Mexican and half Canadian. I started to, you know, in Canada, listen to music.
Mexican news. And one morning I heard of a story of a female wrestler serial killer that had been arrested. So that really was never unheard of. I grew up in Mexico City and had never heard of a serial killer in Mexico. I grew up thinking that was something that, as you mentioned, happened in United States or in England.
and never knew it could happen outside. So that was the first thing that I was very curious about. What is it about a serial killer that only happened in these specific countries? And from then on, I started pursuing this investigation. And let's just focus a bit on this serial killer in question, Juana Baradza.
and her childhood. Was there evidence of abuse when she was growing up? Did she experience bullying? Was the household she grew up in a happy one, with both parents present, or did she come from a broken home? Please extrapolate as much as you'd like on Barraza's beginnings. What we know about Barraza's childhood and about her life has been
what news reports have reported on the case after she was arrested, and specifically on two long interviews that a criminologist and police officer, Martin Badron, performed on her, and then also on the director of the neurophysiological department, the National University in Mexico, Frege Ostrosky. So,
When I talked to Barraza, I mostly listened and she focused a lot of her conversation on her children, so not a lot on her childhood. That to say that what I'm about to tell you is what I've learned from these interviews and what news media has reported. So she definitely had a very...
broken childhood. She was a daughter of an alcoholic that when she was only 13 years old, sold her for beers. I don't know if she experienced bullying because I don't think she went to school. When she was arrested, she didn't know how to read or write.
And when she was sold for three beers, she was sold to an older man who was also an alcoholic and who basically had her as a slave in his house for more than five years. She was rescued after that.
by uncles or her stepfather. The stories on her childhood are very contradictory, as in who rescued her, if it was her uncles or her stepfather. But I think it is safe to say that she definitely had a very difficult childhood full with a lot of violence and abuse.
That's very interesting. You said she was sold to a man at the age of 13. Did I hear that right? That's right. That's terrible. As an aside, is child prostitution something that is still prevalent in Mexico or has it been taken care of?
Unfortunately, it is something that happens a lot in Mexico still to this day, specifically in a province outside of Mexico City, very close called Tlaxcala. It actually has been the capital of trafficking. It focuses mostly on young girls. And as I trace in the book, it is also what happened to
Malitzin, she is an indigenous woman from Mexico who is, according to official narrative stories of how Mexico was constructed as a nation, the first woman to betray the people, her people. Although there were many different communities of indigenous peoples in Mexico, and they all were against the Aztecs.
So they allied with the Spanish to be against the Aztecs, many of them. And La Malitzin has been blamed historically for being the only responsible for betraying the nation, even though there was not a nation yet. She was sold also by her mother when she was very young.
when she was probably also no more than 13 years old, and she was sold by her mother as a slave. So unfortunately, that is the story that originates nation like Mexico. And it continues to happen for many young girls in Mexico, including Juana Barraza.
That is such a sad tale and very tragic to hear that it's still going on. I understand that Mexico is in the midst of a crime epidemic and it's very violent due to the various cartels being at war with each other. That's right. And it has been for a while. So many of the tortures and violence that
that these cartels exercise on population are very, very gruesome, very hard to hear, hard to stomach, hard to understand. There's a specific chronicling of violence in Mexico, a news genre, we can say, that is called Nota Roja. Maybe sort of like yellow journalism. And there's a lot of true crime stories
that photographs don't have any censorship. And we can say that since 2006 to date, there's a lot of reporting on the crimes that cartels have done. That includes dismembering, torturing bodies. Unfortunately, this is the case too for criminals.
victims of feminicides in Mexico. Many of the women are found after having suffered a lot of torture with a lot of their body parts mutilated. Many of them have been found in mix in really huge barrels of cement. It is really terrible what happens in terms of
violence in Mexico. And that is also what called my attention for this research. When it was first announced that there was a serial killer in Mexico, the chief prosecutor stated that what happened, I'm going to cite him, what happened to us today didn't happen to us before. It only happened in movies and in the United States.
But unfortunately, crime has been globalized. So we are living in a very dehumanized society. That caught my attention because in Mexico, there are stories of narcos satánicos, that is, drug traffickers who...
kill bodies to perform satanic rituals. There are the multiple thousands of feminicides of young brown women in Mexico. There's also the violence explicit in Nobda Roja. Yet serial killing was an unknown phenomenon and it seemed for chief prosecutor, for police, for news media to be more horrible than any of the other crimes.
So I was interested in understanding why serial killing that is normally talked as killing for the pleasure of killing was worse than narcosatánicos, than feminicides, and why it was worse, this understanding of killing for the pleasure of killing when there's drug cartels that one can argue very easily also kill for the pleasure of killing.
That's a very good point of view, and it's problematic, to say the least, that they frame the case as they do, when, as you say, there are such brutal and gruesome and extensive and prolific murders going on every day, simply because those murders are committed by narcos rather than criminals.
psychopathic serial killers. But let us move a bit on in the interview here. And we've talked about Barazza's background as a child and young woman. Let us move on to her adult life, aside from her brutal crimes. I read that Barazza was a professional wrestler.
Please elaborate on this and also please tell us about her day-to-day life in Mexico. For example, where she lived, was she poor, wealthy, middle class? What car did she have, her children, etc.? Let me start from telling you about where she lived. She lived outside of Mexico City, a state called Estado de Mexico.
At the time of her detention in 2006, there were other very horrific crimes happening in that same state. Actually, in Estado de Mexico, more feminicides have occurred than in Ciudad Juarez, that is known internationally because of the killing of women.
It is thanks to the work of activists, feminist activists and academics that we know about feminicide in Ciudad Juarez. But the ones in Estado de Mexico had been kept on the radar. But there's some researchers and academics that state that feminicides in Estado de Mexico happened before.
at a more alarming rate than those in Ciudad de Mexico. And they happened at the same time that Juana Barraza's crimes were discovered in the same state. That caught my attention too. Why you see that the killings of an alleged serial killer count more for media and press than the killings of indigenous women or mestizo women in Estado de Mexico?
Estado de Mexico is a state that is one of the poorest of all Mexico. There is no infrastructure that supports the state, the city. The governor in turn at that time was Enrique Peña Nieto, who then later became the president of Estado de Mexico. Where she lived, where Barraza lived, she had her own house.
She started wrestling out of love for Lucha Libre. In Lucha Libre, there's two different type of wrestlers. Those that are called roots and those that are called technical.
The technical wrestlers went to proper schooling and they always play by the rules. And the roots, they never play by the rules and they will use any tactic in a wrestling match in order to win. So normally when a wrestling match happens, you have technicals against roots.
Juana Barraza's name for her wrestling persona was La Dama del Silencio, that is the Lady of Silence. And she fought as a ruda. And as she said in a TV interview on national TV just a week before she was arrested as the alleged serial killer of old women, she said she was a ruda from the bottom of her heart.
that she loved wrestling and she was portrayed as a really fan of wrestling, of lucha libre. When she was arrested and named to be the serial killer, La Mata Viejitas, her wrestling practice became another evidence of her alleged pathological criminality.
I argue in the book that it was more actually the Lady of Silence who is being criminalized, more so than the woman, Juana Barraza, because it is her body described as muscular, her body described as very strong, and then becoming evidence of her criminality.
She's talked as muscular, as masculine. And actually, it is reported that when she was 35 years old, due to a spinal injury, she stopped wrestling. And for criminologists, this became evidence that how it is normally believed for serial killers that they kill out of a need for excitement, that the need for excitement that
The wrestling was in her life and she could not perform anymore because of her spinal injury, then laid the weight to her killings. It was that same need for excitement that serial killers have that first she satisfied with wrestling matches that then she could not satisfy anymore and then she had to kill.
In most of the evidence of her being the serial killer police were struggling to find for over two years, they normally cite the wrestling persona she had, La Dama del Silencio. It is as if La Dama del Silencio became La Mata Viejitas.
And it is this merging of personas that criminalizes Juana Barraza, but doesn't end up making her responsible for her crimes. I don't know if that's been made clear. That was excellent. I don't know much about her day to day when she was not arrested. But in prison, I found very interesting when I met her that she
When we met, she was coming back from her activity. Every Friday, she walks elderly women in prison. That is her activity. And that is something that she chose to do and that she's responsible for elderly women having walks at the prison where she is currently living.
And other days she sells quesadillas. She's also known for being a good cook. But when she was out, I don't know really how her every day went. Can you tell me a bit about her children? Yes. When...
I met with her. It really gained my attention that she focused the conversation and we spoke for more than two hours on her children. She told me that exactly the day that I visited her, her daughter had finished university. She
took pride on being a good mother. She actually told me that she can be anything that you or I or any media criminologist wanted, but I'm a bad mother that she was not. She has three children.
Two boys and a girl. When she was kidnapped, we can say, or when she was living with the man that she was sold to when she was 13, she had an abortion and then she had another kid, a son, but he was killed in a beating in front of her when he was only 12 years old. It's very sad. She has also grandkids. She seems to take a lot of pleasure on them visiting her in prison.
You mentioned that she has a daughter, but I think I read that she had more than one kid. What were the other children? So Barraza had in total three children, a 16-year-old daughter and two sons. I don't know exactly what these two sons do. Barraza is very private about her personal life, a traditional or an international narrative.
on serial killing is that serial killers crave fame. They want to be known and they give a lot of interviews or they want to become like celebrities. But unlike this international narrative, Juana Barraza doesn't like to give interviews and she doesn't like to talk about her private life. So when I met her, I asked her why she had agreed to talk with me.
and she said that she was not scared anymore. But before, she had been threatened with the life of her children and now she didn't have anything else to lose.
I think she has suffered a lot of stigma being called the first serial killer in Mexico City. And her children suffer a lot of bullying in school and a lot of stigmatization in school from being the kids of Juana Barraza. So she was very careful of not talking much about them because she didn't want to put them in danger.
or she didn't want them to suffer. She told me that they have destroyed her life and that they have destroyed the life of her children. So she was very careful about and very private about her personal life. And she told me she didn't like when news media talk about a lot of her personal life.
I see. That's very interesting, because it is, as you say, quite normal for serial killers to crave attention. And even though most of them try to avoid being captured, a lot of them crave attention by going to the media and taunting the police and public with letters and posing of bodies and such.
But Barraza didn't do that. And before we go into the grisly details of the murders, I'd like to ask you one thing based on what you have told me so far. Barraza, she's a very fascinating person. I mean, she's colorful, she's complex, a very tragic background. She's a wrestler, serial killer.
But I had never heard of her, and coverage of her in the West is very limited. I'm guessing she is quite extensively covered in Mexico, but why do you think the West has ignored such a massive serial killer case?
that the West, if it is not written in English, ignores a lot of things about not only Mexico, but other countries. I think that is as simple as a language barrier, but also as complicated as colonialism. There's not much written on Barraza in English. And I think that is also why
In the West, we don't know much about her. I see. That sounds like a plausible explanation. I cover a lot of international serial killers on my show and Google Translate is my very, very good personal friend. That's great. It really works well.
Yes, so let's move on to what many of my listeners probably are waiting for, and that is the killings.
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How did Barraza begin killing? What triggered it? And tell us about her first murder, if you can. And do not be shy about details. I think it's very important that we never shy away from the true horror of the acts committed by serial killers.
There are very contradicting stories about when was her first kill and how is she being classified as a psychopath or not a psychopath. For example, when this is the very first time in Mexico that there is a task force for a specific serial killer. It is the first time that a serial killer is...
has a nickname, is being profiled, then caught, sentenced, trialed, and is now in prison. It has not happened outside of Guanabarraza in Mexican history before or to date. When police first announced the possibility of a serial killer and had a profile on him, they said that, of course, it was a he. They didn't think that a woman could do those murders.
Then following international narratives and serial killing, they said that he was brilliant, that he acted so smartly to not leave any fingerprints, that maybe they were even going to take 20 years to catch him. The police in France actually came to Mexico to give a training on serial killing to the police in Mexico. And they were...
following all the international narratives of Zillian killing as a species of person. Juana Barraza was caught red-handed after she had strangled an elderly woman with a stethoscope. She doesn't talk much about her crimes, but all the crimes that are attributed to her
the little old lady killer are 49. When 49 elderly women were missing, that's when police decided there was a serial killer on the loose and profiled him. Witnesses kept on saying that he had a wig, makeup, was very tall, was a woman, but police could not conceptualize of a woman serial killer. So they
then decided that it was a man dressed in women's clothing and then arrested
A lot of sex workers transvestized in Mexico, and after none of them matched their fingerprints, they were released, and chief police officer said, well, it might not be a transvestite, but we are sure it's a transgender. And when finally, Juana Barraza was arrested red-handed out of luck, and just really a fortuitous encounter, then the whole narrative changed.
News headlines read, the little old lady killer is caught. She is a woman. And that's the very first time that she's been called a woman. And it is her wrestling practice what gave media the perfect sensation of the story. She was exiting a house where an 82-year-old woman had been strangled and left on the floor. And a renter was coming home to find her.
Barraza has only confessed to that crime, but that
But that was the modus operandi of the serial killer, the little old lady killer. And I say this because there's been other two people who are now also in prison, one woman and one man, also for killing elderly women with the same pattern. The pattern was suffocating elderly women with anesthetoscope, with the tight of her robe, with tights.
But the modus operandi was suffocation. When police found out that Juana Barraza was a wrestler as La Dama del Silencio, then they also thought that she might use wrestling match keys. That's how they are called. You know, the movements that the wrestler makes to defeat their opponent.
They said that she also used many of these to kill elderly women. We don't know if this is true or not, but the modus operandi of this specific alleged little old lady killer is through suffocation, sometimes with bare hands. Juana Barraza also doesn't talk about her crimes. When I met with her, she...
said that she was only in prison for one crime. She has been sentenced for 16 and other people have been arrested for other crimes, also of elderly women, also through suffocation. And there's more than 33 unresolved cases.
They always were murdered inside their homes. This was the other MO attributed to the Mataviejitas because these elderly women live alone and they were registered to a program of
aid, social aid for elderly people in Mexico City. This only happened in Mexico City and this program of social aid only was taking place at the time in Mexico City. And so apparently the serial killer had a list of all the elderly women registered in this program. Well, these guys as a nurse working for this program, and then we'll go and find them in a park and
or as close to a park or a garden. And then when they found out that she lived alone, will go to their house under the pretext of giving them money or signing them to this program or something that had to do with the social aid program. And once there,
They will suffocate them and take very little of their belongings. Really, they were not killing for money or for robbery because, and I say they because there's at least three people in prison that had the same, that followed the same pattern. They took very petty cash and all the women were murdered and suffocated.
Some reports said that Juana Barraza killed them with her bare hands and that she killed out of rage against her mother or out of rage because they treat her really badly. Because she then was the narrative change from the serial killer as brilliant to once Barraza was arrested as an unalphabet and pathological killer.
The way that her murders are described by news media and criminologists is as a born serial killer. She killed out of this necessity to feed this insatiable need to kill with her bare hands.
This is what criminologists have reported, but she doesn't talk much about those specific crimes or how she did it. When I talked to her, she was, she struck me as, or I don't know if this is manipulative or, you know, her sincerity can be questioned, but she was very like sensitive and she
did tell me that she would never take someone's life because that would be mediocre. She also said that she could alleviate someone from their suffering. As you say, I don't think there is one specific answer to your questions, but many different things that play into why she killed or how she killed. I see.
That was a very good description and explanation of her case. And I was very surprised to learn that there might be more than just one killer. So thank you for that information. Let us keep focus on Barraza for now.
You mention in your excellent book that Barraza is the first recognized female serial killer in Mexico. You also mention that aside from Barraza, there are only a very few cases of serial murder in Mexican history. You mention two Mexican Ripper cases of El Chalakero and Gregorio Cardenas.
But those were active respectively 131 and 77 years ago. On this show, I have previously covered the case of the Godfather of Matamoros, which occurred quite recently, and surely can be considered a serial murder case.
Do you think that there are no other known cases in Mexico than Barraza and the ones I've just mentioned? Well, to clarify, there have been many serial killers in Mexico.
Well, not many, as in other countries, but there have been the ones you mentioned, that both of them, El Chalequero and Goyo Cárdenas, have been dubbed the Mexican Jack the Rippers. When they were arrested, especially El Chalequero, who was around the same time as Jack the Ripper in London, the way this serial killer was talked about in media was
was as an accolade, a sign of progress for Mexico. It is as if, okay, now Mexico has serial killers. We are a nation that is civilized and we are modernized. We're not anymore a country that had just recently gained independence from Spain. Now we are a modern country. And
It is after Goyo Cárdenas, who, as you also said, was more than 70 years ago, 77 years ago, it is as if Mexico had covered its quota for serial killers. And that was like now a nation in progress, society that suffered the same maladies as industrialized societies like Anomi.
But there were, like you said, also matamoros. Actually, the same day that they arrested Juana Barraza and named her the serial killer of elderly women, the little old lady killer, they also arrested another guy. His name is Raul Osequiel Marroquin, and he was then called
the matagueis, the gay killer or the sadistic, because he actually was even more sadistic in his killings than Juan Abarraza. He took seduced men from the Zona Rosa, that will be the gay village in Mexico City, will take them to a hotel.
will have sexual encounters with them and then will kill them, dismember them, stuff their bodies in suitcases and leave them in different parts of Mexico City. He had done that at least with four people and no one was looking for a serial killer of homosexuals in Mexico City. There was no profile, no posters, no task force.
We didn't even know there was a serial killer of gays or a sadistic, as he was then named. But when he was arrested, he said that he would do it even more smartly as to not get caught. And he confessed to his murders. And then he was called the sadistic. There's also the poeta canibal, so the canibal poet who killed women also
dismember them and then he many times cooked them and ate them
They were his ex-girlfriends. And when he was arrested, he was then called the poeta caniba, the serial killer. So there's been serial killers that they have been named as such, but after their arrest. There's also the case of Las Poquianches. It's a really sad and horrible case of three sisters that in the state of Guanajuato,
In the 60s, run a brothel. They took many young girls, trafficking young girls, lured them into their brothels, telling them they will be working as prostitutes.
domestic work, doing domestic work in houses, many times taking them from their families, buying them off their families, and they prostitute them in brothels. And when they will get pregnant, they will perform abortions, kill the fetuses and burrow them in the garden. They also many times killed these girls and put their bodies into cement walls. And they had this business of
going on many reports with the complicity of police. And it was because a young girl was able to escape and went to the police station and talked about all these crimes that finally police went and saw everything happening right there in their brothel.
You know, there's many varied definitions of what constitutes a serial killer. So sometimes in some narrations, these three sisters were called Las Boquillantes. They are also named serial killers. In other official accounts of serial killers in Mexico, they don't count because they didn't do it in a period of 72 hours.
But there's definitely been, even in this same case of the little old lady killer, more than one people killing elderly women. So that is exactly what caught my attention. Why you see that this is the very first time in Mexican history that a serial killer is named as such before their arrest. And did you get a conclusive answer to your question? Yes, I did. In my opinion, yes.
This is the only time in Mexican history that a serial killer has been named as such before it's captured because she was killing elderly women. And elderly women are the only ones that have counted as victims for the nation. They are the only ones that have shocked, that their killings have shocked the nation. And they are...
considered vulnerable, not because they are old, but because they live alone. And in a society like Mexico that is centered and grounded and think of itself as founded on moral and family values, when a serial killer that is thought of
emerging in a society that is individualistic, where there are no family values, is what shocked the nation. So why a serial killer that
You know, happens like the chief prosecutor said, happen in movies and happen in the United States, a society that is so individualistic is happening in Mexico, where we have family values. And when we have moral values, where we have, despite narcos satanicos, despite poquianchis, despite the...
Goyo Cárdenas or El Poeta Caníbal or cartels like Los Zetas, we have a society that is humanized that, again, to quote Chief Prosecutor, respects their elderly. If these women were vulnerable, it was because they live alone. And that
To police, it spoke of the humanized society because they were abandoned by their families and they were abandoned by society. To police, it didn't occur to them that these elderly women might have chosen to live alone. For them, they were vulnerable because they live alone out of being abandoned by their family. And this was the MO of the serial killer.
He preyed on them because they were abandoned and they didn't know to do anything other than to mother. And when anyone knocked at their door, of course, these elderly women will open the door and offer them a cup of tea or wanted to be a mother to them because for police, they couldn't think of any other reason why or any other role for women in Mexico except for being a mother.
and very self-abnegating, self-sacrificing mother. So this is what made their modus, defined the modus operandi more so than
investigation on the actual case. So elderly women were desexualized. They were self-abnegating, sacrificing mothers. They were basically the Virgin of Guadalupe that is an institution in Mexico. So they counted as victims. And in turn, they made a criminal. In turn, they defined a criminal. They defined a serial killer.
I see. That's a very nuanced perspective and a very interesting one, especially from an academic point of view. Let us talk about something a bit on the side of that theory. I seem to have read somewhere, maybe in your book, maybe on Wikipedia,
that Baraza was accused of worshipping this illegal saint, the Santa de la Muerte or something like that. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. I think you might have read it in the book because there's a whole chapter on her adoration to La Santa Muerte that we can call the Holy Death that is banned from the Catholic religion today.
in Mexico. So the saint that has this holy dead that looks very much like a skeleton,
It is white and it has very elegant gowns. The gowns are white like a bride or sometimes black as if she was grieving. And you can find altars to the holy dead in different street corners in Mexico City, but mostly of very poor neighborhoods.
the neighborhood where Barraza de Ibon is one of the poorest in Mexico. And when they went to her house, they found an altar to La Santa Muerte, to Buddha, a serpent, an apple, dollars, a glass with water. And police focus on, not on the statue of Buddha, but on the statue of holy dead. Because
Both in Mexico and the States, it is believed, oh, and another saint of narcos, Martin Valverde. And both in Mexico and United States, it is believed that it is the saint of drug traffickers, of criminals.
And their adoration is very stigmatized. So for police and criminologists, this became another evidence that Juana Barrasa was indeed that little old lady killer because she had an altar to La Santa Muerte and amulets. There is actually...
literature that the FBI has, you can Google it and find it online, for their police force, in which they state that they do see a lot of drug dealers having
Martin Valverde, the saint of narcs, and that as soon as they see that as a keychain or having it on their car, they have to inspect that car or question that subject that has that keychain because for sure they are going to find drugs. So when police found in Mexico City that Barrasa adorated the Santa Muerte,
that spoke to her criminality because she is doing something that is for working class delinquents. We can say that the Holy Dead is a sinister sister of La Virgen de Guadalupe because according to the people that
play homage to her, you can be more direct with La Santa Muerte. Actually, the
The rise of this cult in Mexico can be traced at the same time as neoliberal economies hit the nation and there was no more protection from the state. There was a real crisis in faith. So Mexico, who had been conceived as a very Catholic, but specifically to the Virgin of Guadalupe,
adoration, then many of their Siddhartha cult believers felt betrayed by her and then went to the holy dead because she's believed to be more fair. You can, you know, she can understand if you have to do some illegal selling of technology, of rob, of things that are, you know, robbed or because she can be more fair.
You're rich, you're poor, you're white or you're brown. She's going to take you anyway. And you can be more straightforward with her. You can say, listen, I'm a drug addict or I'm a drug trafficker or I, you know, traffic with iPhones that are a big commodity in Mexico, but I need to do it for my family or I need to do it because there's no other options. Then she will be more fair and she will, you know,
forgive you for that or understand it. And that's not the case with the version of Guadalupe. So all the cult to La Santa Muerte is a bit, that's why it happens on the streets in poor neighborhoods in Mexico City. And there's the churches are the church or the altars that have just like a clear window in a corner of Guadalupe.
Mexico City, they are attacked a lot. There's one that used to be close to where I lived that I will pass by with my bicycle very often on my way to have a coffee or whatever. And I will see their windows broken very often. And one time I asked and they said that it was...
actually Catholics who they thought were doing that to them because it's very stigmatized to other rate holy dead. And as I said, to police, then this became evidence that Juan Abarraza was a criminal. I see. Thank you so much. That was very enlightening.
And you mentioned earlier in the interview that the number of victims are thought to be 49. How many do you think, in your educated opinion, that Barraza actually killed? It will be very hard for me to say a number because...
There are other people that also killed elderly women. And I'm sure there's also other ones that we don't know about. The case was closed after the arrest of Juana Barraza. And there's more unresolved murders. There's many contradictions with this story. And it's very hard to tell a number for me. I see. And she has only admitted one kill. That's right.
That's right. And she is sentenced for 16. Sentenced for 16. Was there physical evidence for those other 15 murders that she denies having committed?
Well, in the book, at the end, I list all the contradictions that I found in the narratives that criminologists and police officers had. Because when they were looking for the serial killer, they said that they had only fragments of fingerprints in 11 of them on the crime scenes.
And then they also had said that these fragments could not, didn't really were very useful because they didn't have a database which they could match them with. But then when Juana Barraza was arrested, they said, we have enough fragments of these fingerprints to conclude that she is indeed the little old lady killer. She could have done 16. She could have done more.
but we don't know. Interesting. That's always frustrating for especially the ones left behind, the families of the victims and so on, to never know for certain if the right culprits have been caught or not. Yes, I'm sure they are gonna not know because
It is very troubling how the investigation happened, all the contradictions. A lot of it is because they were following international narratives on serial killing more so than looking at the evidence and following witnesses' accounts or focusing on that specific case.
Because serial killing and serial killers are believed to be a species of person that is very particular. And as you said, it's very much a product of United States and England that when it happens outside, it is more professional for police to follow these international narratives of it being a man, middle-aged,
just like you and me, very charismatic, very smart, instead of looking at actual evidence in front of them. Indeed. Now, we are running out of time, but I'd like to wrap this up with your interview with Barraza in prison. How did she present herself today? How does she look? And how would you describe her as a person, knowing what she is and her background?
And if you had met her and didn't know anything about her background, what would you have thought of her then? When I saw her, I bumped into her as I was going to the room where we were going to meet to talk. But she was coming to the office where I was waiting for her. I had to lift my face. I am about 5'5", which...
I thought was normal, but when I'm outside of Mexico, I'm perceived as short. And in Mexico, I'm perceived as average. So when I bump into her, I had to lift my face and really had to look up to be able to see hers. So I followed what news had stated as 175. So that is also very tall.
But actually, just measuring me against her, I think is taller than that. I think she's taller than 175. That is what news reports. So if I had met her on the street, I would be still impressed by her height because that is not average in Mexico. So that calls your attention.
When I met her, I was struck by how healthy she looked. Her skin looked very well taken care of. Her hair was still dyed a sort of copper blonde, as it appeared in the photographs when she was first arrested. She was wearing electric blue eyeliner, so it was very hard not to focus on that and look her directly in the eye.
And she had a perfect set of small white teeth and she was very smiley.
and very endearing. She spoke with a very soft voice and she smiled a lot, even with her eyes. This really called my attention because criminologists had stated that Juana Barraza, like the rest of the serial killers in the world, had a very harsh and calculating look. And I'm sure that
When she perpetrates violence or like, you know, when anyone perpetrates violence might have a very intense look. But when I met her, when I sat in front of her, her look was very soft and she smiled even with her eyes. You can Google now an interview is still up online, an interview with her when she was at a wrestling match, the national TV event.
TV Azteca show, she was being interviewed about wrestling and if she was a fan or not, and if she was a ruda del corazón or not. And when you see that interview, you see a very charismatic, a very charismatic woman. And when that interview broadcast nationally, no one thought that she looked like the sketches that they had put out.
And when she was arrested, they said that she was incredibly similar to the sketches. But you could get a sense of how she looks. She looked, that's what struck, that's what really caught my attention, that she looked very healthy and that she was very charismatic and smiled even with her eyes. I see. Well, thank you so much for your insight.
Can you please tell my dear listeners the full name of your book and how they can purchase it? Yes, the full name is The Little Old Lady Killer, The Sensationalized Crimes of Mexico's First Female Serial Killer. And they can purchase it directly from NYU Press or Amazon. Thank you. I'm sorry, I was so nervous.
That is not a problem at all. I think you did very well. I enjoyed thoroughly talking to you, and it's always a pleasure to get some insight into international cases, not just the cases in North America and Britain. And this case is indeed quite a unique one. And thanks to you, my listeners now have broadened their horizon. So I hope you have a good day, and thank you for coming to the show.
Thank you. Thank you so much. And you too. Hope you have a good day. Goodbye. Goodbye. Need new glasses or want a fresh new style? Warby Parker has you covered. Glasses start at just 95 bucks, including anti-reflective, scratch-resistant prescription lenses that block 100% of UV rays. Every frame's designed in-house with a huge selection of styles for every face shape. And with Warby Parker's free home try-on program, you can order five pairs to try at home for free. Shipping is free both ways too.
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