Juarez

. . . it was a common fate -- scores of other girls and young women had been snatched away into the desert in the past six years, raped, tortured and killed. Their bodies had been dumped amid the cactus, their bones picked clean by the coyotes, and bleached white by the sun. Almost all the victims were poor. Maquiladora smocks often turned up with their remains.

Few things convene American journalists like the prospect of a serial killer, and as such crime sprees go, the numbers from Juarez are staggering. Since 1993, Mexican authorities say, 174 Juarez women have been slain, many of them by husbands or boyfriends, pimps or drug dealers. But police categorize about a third of the killings as sexual homicides, crimes typically committed at random, therefore making leads scarce, the type of deeds attributed to the Theodore Bundys of the criminal universe. The Juarez victims range in age from pre-teens to late 20s. Many other girls and young women are missing. From Who is Killing the Women of Juarez

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Juarez