Investigators conducting excavation work at the home of a suspected serial killer outside Mexico City revealed on Saturday they have found 3,787 bone fragments, apparently belonging to 17 victims.
Prosecutors in the State of Mexico, adjacent to the Mexican capital, have hinted that the grisly findings may not end there.
Since May 17, the authorities have carried out excavations in the floors of the house where the alleged femicide lived. Now they plan to broaden the search to the floor of other rooms that the man rented in the same property.
WHAT HAVE THE AUTHORITIES FOUND IN THE HOUSE?
In the house, which is full of junk, identification cards and other belongings of women who disappeared years ago were also found, suggesting that the chain of murders could go back years.
The amount of bone fragments found under the concrete floors in the detainee’s house implies that the bodies may have been dismembered. This could make sense: the man, whom prosecutors identify only as “Andrés”, was a butcher and in fact, would have butchered and filleted his latest victim.
“The bone remains, these are in a study stage called lateralization, which consists of the meticulous cleaning of each one of them; subsequently, the part of the body they correspond to is identified and they are placed in an anatomical position, in such a way that it is possible to determine an approximation of the number of victims, ”the prosecution explained in a statement.
“In this sense, these analyzes have so far revealed the possibility that skeletal remains corresponding to 17 people have been found,” according to the text.
Authorities have not released the full name of the 72-year-old detainee, in accordance with Mexican law that protects his identity.
INVESTIGATION STARTS WITH THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE WIFE OF A POLICE COMMANDER
He was set to face trial for the murder of his latest victim, a 34-year-old woman whose corpse he allegedly dismembered with a saw and butcher knives on May 14.
The man was captured, not as a result of intense investigative work, but because his most recent alleged victim was the wife of a police commander who knew him personally.
On the day of his disappearance, the woman had arranged to take him to a wholesale market in the center of the Mexican capital to buy supplies for his store, so her husband became suspicious of him when she did not return home.
The policeman accessed the surveillance cameras, which showed his wife entering, but not leaving, the street where the suspect’s home was located; the policeman went to the house, confronted the man and found what was left of his wife’s body inside.
Later, investigators found women’s shoes, makeup, eight cell phones, lists of names, and audio and video recordings in the house that suggest he may have recorded his victims.
The format of the videotapes found in the house indicates how long the murders date: Authorities found 28 8mm tapes, which were discontinued around 2007, and 25 VHS cassettes, which fell into disuse around 2016.
However, obsolete technological formats tend to continue to be used in Mexico after having been replaced in other countries.
According to the prosecution, a total of 91 photographs have been found, many of them the type that people use to obtain their identification credentials.
Prosecutors say they continue to examine the bone fragments with the intention of extracting DNA to identify the victims.