Mother Of Murdered Girl Gunned Down While Seeking Justice

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Anger over Mexico's creaky, inefficient justice system boiled over after a mother who waged a two-year battle to bring her daughter's killer to justice was herself shot to death, possibly by the same man suspected of murdering the teenager.

A security video recording shows masked men pulling up in a car in front of the governor's office in the northern city of Chihuahua. One appeared to exchange words with anti-crime crusader Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, who was holding a vigil outside.

She tried to flee by running across the street, but the gunman chased her down and shot her in the head late Thursday, said Jorge Gonzalez, special state prosecutor for crime prevention.

Escobedo was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she died within minutes.
[...]

Escobedo's daughter, Rubi Frayre Escobedo, disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, in 2008.

After the body was discovered last year, the mother launched a campaign pressing for a conviction in the case. Escobedo staged numerous marches, once wearing no clothes, wrapped only in a banner with her daughter's photograph.

"This struggle is not only for my daughter," Escobedo said through a megaphone at that march, her voice breaking. "Let's not allow one more young woman to be killed in this city."

Three days ago, she planted herself in front of the offices of Gov. Cesar Duarte and vowed not to move until investigators showed progress in the case. In an interview with the newspaper El Diario on Sunday, Escobedo said she had received death threats from Barraza's family.

Duarte said state security officials had been assigned to guard Escobedo, although from a distance. He said their failure to protect her Thursday would be investigated.
[...]

Prosecutors said Barraza, Frayre's live-in boyfriend, admitted murdering her and led police to the body. But at trial he proclaimed his innocence and claimed he had been tortured into confessing. The judges ruled in April that prosecutors failed to present material evidence against him.

The case exemplifies the problems of the judicial system in Chihuahua state, one of the first to adopt oral trials instead of the closed-door interrogations and filings of documents used for most Mexican trials.

Despite training, Chihuahua police and prosecutors have struggled to adapt to a system that puts the burden of proof on prosecutors. Many homicide cases have been thrown out for lack of evidence or never make it to trial.

Often, police rely solely on confessions that suspects later claim were made under duress. Newly captured suspects in much of Mexico are often displayed to the press with bruised faces.

Police in Ciudad Juarez have been overwhelmed by drug gang battles that have made the city one of the world's deadliest. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the city of 1.3 million this year alone.
[...]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40717987...news-americas/

A closed-circuit camera captured the 20 seconds or so at 8:10 p.m. when a man got out of a white Volkswagen Jetta and approached Escobedo in the square. Frightened by him, Escobedo ran across the street, dodging busy traffic, the assailant only footsteps behind her.

He shot her with a 9 mm pistol in the head at the entrance to the governor's palace.

The video shows the killer running back across the street and getting into the waiting car, which pulled away.

The brazen hit of a grieving mother – in the capital of a state notorious for hundreds of murders of women and girls – sparked condemnation from within Mexico and from abroad.
[...]

After Escobedo's daughter disappeared in August 2008, her live-in boyfriend fled the state. Nearly a year later, the mother located the boyfriend, Sergio Rafael Barraza, in nearby Zacatecas state, leading investigators to him. Barraza later confessed and identified the site where he'd buried the girl after killing her.

In April, a three-judge panel acquitted Barraza of the murder despite his confession, freeing him. After complaints from then-Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza, an appeals court overturned the verdict and reinstated a 50-year jail term.

Prosecutors made little effort to find the fugitive, leaving Escobedo herself to track him down once again. She did so and led a law enforcement unit in July to Zacatecas.

But Barraza escaped again.

Gov. Cesar Duarte, who succeeded Reyes Baeza, told reporters Friday that Barraza had joined the criminal syndicate known as Los Zetas. Duarte said he is "absolutely sure" that Barraza was behind the killing of the mother.

The 52-year-old Escobedo had grown so deeply distrustful of authorities to bring Barraza to justice that she refused to accept bodyguards offered to her.
[...]

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/18/326...ls-mother.html

You do not need to understand Spanish to understand this video. It shows the mother's reaction to the court verdict as well as the surveillance video of her murder (from a high vantage - not graphic)

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Daughter slaughtered and dismembered. Mom executed and her brother-in-law dumped in the street like garbage. Just another day in Mexico.

Mexican authorities say a relative of an anti-crime crusader gunned down last week as she tried to seek justice for her slain daughter also has been found dead.

The Chihuahua state attorney general's office says the body of Manuel Monge Amparan was identified Sunday after being dumped on a street in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

The body was found Saturday after Monge's lumber business was set on fire, prosecutors said.

Monge was the brother of Jose Monge, whose partner, Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, was shot to death Thursday outside the offices of Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Duarte.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122003838.html

[62julietandvoid]

It ain't no wonder there is so much violence down there. God damn that's scary, our "justice" system ain't much better. I hope Karma catches up to the killer and those bitch ass "judges".

[Dakota Valkyrie]

A 4-year-old Mexican girl whose mother and grandmother were murdered south of the border has received asylum in the United States, her uncle said Friday.

Heidi Rubi Frayre is already living with relatives in the United States, Juan Frayre Escobedo told Efe.

"She's fine and she's even already going to school, but her adaptation will take time because she has gone through very tough situations, such as the loss of her mother and later of her grandmother," he said.

Heidi's mother, Rubi Marisol Frayre, was slain in 2008 in Ciudad Juárez, the gritty border metropolis just across the Rio Grande from El Paso that is Mexico's murder capital.

She was 16.

Though boyfriend Sergio Rafael Barraza Bocanegra was ultimately arrested and charged with the crime, his 2010 trial ended in an acquittal, with judges citing a lack of evidence.

An appellate court subsequently overturned that decision and found Barraza guilty, but he remains at large.

Incensed at seeing her daughter's killer go unpunished, Marisela Escobedo led marches and protests to demand justice until she was gunned down on Dec. 16, 2010, while picketing in front of government offices in Chihuahua city, capital of the like-named state.

Several members of the extended family subsequently fled to the United States after receiving death threats.

Heidi Rubi was brought across the border by four uncles and other kin days after her grandmother's slaying.

While the adults were kept at an immigration detention center in El Paso, the little girl was sent to a special children's facility in Houston, where she spent a little more than a month before authorities placed her in the care of family members.

Monica Arias Hernández, daughter-in-law of Marisela Escobedo, was granted political asylum in the United States last year.

The 34-year-old Arias was a witness at the trial of the suspected killer of Rubi Marisol Frayre.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/new...ma-were-slain/