This one just cried out to be read by my fellow Nomads
When I read this one it started me to thinking about who cares about whom and why! PLease think about it.
December 21, 2006
Editor's Note: Frontera NorteSur will take a winter break
after this story. We will resume publication in early 2007.
On the Cross-Border Femicide Trail: Lawmen Break Jane Doe
Mystery
California lawmen say that a lengthy murder investigation
which began in the San Francisco Bay Area, involved
Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez and finally wound up in
central Mexico is drawing to a close. Sgt. Scott Dudek, an
investigator with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, told
Frontera NorteSur that the identity of a 2003 California
female murder victim was established after lawmen took a
trip this month to Yahualica, a small town located about 72
miles northeast of Guadalajara in the central Mexican state
of Jalisco. Sgt. Dudek identified the victim as 16-year-old
Yesenia Nungaray, a Mexican national.
"We are very ecstatic that part (of the investigation) is
done," Sgt. Dudek said, adding that detectives are now
concentrating on bringing Yesenia's killer to justice.
The slight, young migrant was found suffocated with a rag
in her mouth and stuffed into a canvass bag behind a
Carrow's Restaurant branch in the East Bay community of
Castro Valley on May 1, 2003. Investigators determined that
Yesenia's body had been dumped behind the restaurant about
10 days prior to its discovery, but that the teenager was
likely killed elsewhere.
Financial support from local residents allowed for
Yesenia's burial in a local cemetery, and annual memorials
were held for the long anonymous victim. Emotionally
touching Castro Valley residents, the murder mystery was
covered in national media including People magazine and
CBS' "48 Hours Mystery."
According to Sgt. Dudek, Yesenia left Mexico on March 14,
2003, her 16th birthday, and found work in the United
States as a babysitter. He said investigators discovered
that Yesenia had earlier attended schools in southern
California and Las Vegas, Nevada, during 2001-2002. While
the teenager's last attempt at achieving the American Dream
ended in tragedy, her trek to El Norte was a familiar
tradition in Yahualica: the town is among countless small
ones in Mexico that are almost entirely dependent on
remittances sent from the United States.
The Alameda County Sheriff's Office once explored the
possibility that their Jane Doe was one of the missing
young women from Ciudad Juarez or Chihuahua City,
specifically 18-year-old Minerva Torres of Chihuahua City,
who vanished while looking for a job in March 2001. The Bay
Area Jane Doe investigation turned to the border after
members of the sheriff's office saw a news story photo of
Minerva's mother holding her daughter's picture aloof
during the February 2004 V-Day demonstration in Ciudad
Juarez. Detectives noticed a striking resemblance between
Torres and the Castro Valley victim.
In 2004, Sgt. Dudek and Detective Ed Chicoine, flew to El
Paso, Texas, where they met with the relatives of missing
women, took DNA samples and reviewed other available
evidence. Sgt. Dudek, who was present during the recovery
of Yesenia's body, and Detective Chicoine were already
deeply impacted by their Jane Doe. "We both have kids,"
Sgt. Dudek stressed. "The fact that she was asphyxiated and
stuffed in a bag is bad enough.."
The DNA tests established a negative connection between
Minerva Torres and the Castro Valley victim, but confirmed
the identity of a second set of remains as belonging to
another Chihuahua City murder victim, 20-year-old Neyra
Azucena Cervantes. Surprisingly, the sheriff's department
also reported that photos they saw of Cervantes' remains
revealed that the purported skull of the victim could not
have been the young woman's and was, in fact, that of a
man's.
Little did the Alameda County Sheriff's Department or the
Torres family know at the time of their 2004 encounter
that Minerva's body had long been put away in cold storage
by the Chihuahua State Office of the Attorney General
(PGJE), whose officials did not bother to inform family
members, the media or other interested parties.
In July 2003, Minerva's body was recovered not far from the
PGJE's Chihuahua City headquarters and just yards from
where Neyra Cervante's body was found, though strangely,
the young women disappeared on dates more than two years
apart. The PGJE also concealed the discovery of Torres'
body from the family and lawyers of Neyra's cousin, David
Meza, who was charged with Neyra's murder but eventually
acquitted after spending two years in prison. Meza accused
PGJE officers of torturing him into making a false
confession. No other suspects are in custody for the Torres
and Cervantes murders.
The story behind the California murder investigation,
Minerva Torres' disappearance and Neyra Cervantes's murder
was recounted by Minerva's teenage sister, Lourdes Torres,
and Neyra's mother, Patricia Cervantes, during a public
forum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last month. Lourdes
Torres explained how her family buried Minerva on June 29,
2005- more than four years after emotional turmoil tore at
the family.
"I was very angry," said Lourdes Torres in a separate
interview with Frontera NorteSur. "How is it possible that
with all we were suffering, my mother and the whole family,
and with the anxiety of wanting to know how and where she
was, that the authorities really had Minerva's body hidden
away..?."
Later parading in Albuquerque's annual Day of the Dead
celebration with her sister's picture, Lourdes Torres
joined other relatives' victims to demand justice for their
loved ones. In 2005, the Torres family filed criminal
charges against former Governor Patricio Martinez and
former State Attorney General Chito Solis for allegedly
concealing Minerva's body.
Torres wasn't the only suspected sex-murder victim from
Ciudad Juarez or Chihuahua City whose body was concealed by
the PGJE. Several similar cases have been exposed since the
world renowned Argentine Anthropological Forensic Team
began examining and identifying the remains of supposedly
unidentified victims of suspected serial killers.
The latest case exposed involves 23-year-old Rosa Velia
Cordero, who disappeared in downtown Ciudad Juarez in May
1999. Although Cordero's body was soon located and stored
in a state government facility, the Office of the Special
Prosecutor for Women's Homicides, then headed by Suly
Ponce, did not inform Cordero's family members. Instead,
Cordero's body was buried in a common grave for more than 7
years. Cordero's name then stayed on an official list
of "at risk" disappeared women.
Last week, Cordero's relatives were finally notified by
officials that the long missing woman had been buried in
the common grave. Years after her untimely death, Cordero
was given a proper burial.
Meanwhile, running up against a false lead in Chihuahua,
Sgt. Dudek and his colleagues nevertheless kept their noses
on the Jane Doe case. Finally, about 8 months ago, an
anonymous tip led the lawmen in the right direction. A
former Carrow's dishwasher, 27-year-old Miguel Nunez
Castaneda, emerged as a "person of interest."
Nunez was briefly interviewed by investigators about two
months ago but suspiciously vanished within 24 hours after
his first contact with law enforcement authorities,
according to Sgt. Dudek. Like Yesenia Nungaray, Nunez is
also from the Yahualica area. Nunez has been located around
Yahualica, and local Mexican law enforcement officials are
being "very cooperative" in keeping an eye on the man, Sgt.
Dudek said.
In December 2006, Sgt. Dudek and other members the Alameda
County Sheriff's Office traveled to Yahuliaca, where they
passed out fliers with pictures of Nungaray and Nunez and
installed a bust that resembled the murder victim in the
small town's central plaza. A meeting with high school
students led the investigators to a woman who turned out to
be the victim's mother, Sgt. Dudek confirmed. One news
story described the woman as a single mom who works 18
hours a day to support her two surviving children.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the woman last
heard from her daughter shortly after she arrived in the
United States.
Sgt. Dudek said the California lawmen then stayed up all
night with Yesenia's mother on the evening of December 7-8
to confirm the victim's identity. "It was very, very
traumatic for all of us," he said. "It was very emotional."
DNA samples drawn from Yesenia's mother were quickly
processed by a California state crime lab that worked
through last weekend to return a positive match with "Jane
Doe" by the beginning of this week.
Sgt. Dudek said he expects a $2,500 reward to go to the
Yahualica high school for school supplies. The Bank of the
West is accepting financial contributions made out to
Yesenia Nungaray Memorial Burial Fund to pay for costs
related to shipping the young woman's remains back to
Mexico. "We're requesting donations to bring her back to
her mother," Sgt. Dudek said. "We'll go back for the
funeral, about 6 weeks from now."
Additional sources: San Francisco Chronicle, December 9 and
12, 2006. Articles by Henry K. Lee and Carolyn Jones. KTVU-
Oakland, December 10 and 11, 2006. La Jornada, December 15,
2006. Article by Ruben Villalpando. Frontenet.com.mx,
December 14, 2006. Article by Sergio Valdez. Contra Costa
Times, December 4 and 9, 2006. Articles by Sophia Kazmi.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico
State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
My smidgen of a claim to fame is that I have had so many really good friends. By Bernie Swaim December 2007
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