Monsters of Ecatepec

11/5/2024

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 2018, a couple is arrested transporting plastic-wrapped body parts in a baby carriage. Further investigation, found they were responsible for at least 20 other murders of mostly single mothers.

Hillside memorial for the murdered woman of Ecatepec

According to Mexico's state prosecutor, Alejandro Gomez, during interrogation the man admitted to raping and sexually torturing the victims before killing them. He also said that he sold some of the body parts. The man said that he had also ground the bones to be used as fertilizer and the flesh chopped up to be used as pet food. He also implicated his wife as committing the murders as well, even though it's believed she was used to lure the victims with the promise of baby clothes into situations, where they could be kidnapped and killed.

During a news interview, Gomez described when the man spoke of the incidents in a totally natural way. He said:

I would say he actually seemed happy to have done this. He wants people to see his picture, to know his name. I would obviously classify this person as a murderer, a serial killer. He has a mental disturbance consistent with psychosis and a personality disorder, while she has been mentally disabled since birth, and also has acquired induced delirium. But both can distinguish between right and wrong.

Street in the neighborhood of Ecatepec, Mexico which is known for its high murder rates especially of women

The killers named, Juan Carlos Hernandez Bejal and his wife Patricia Martinez Bernal had met in 2008. They were both born in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán. A psychiatric examination was completed before they appeared in court.

Hernandez was born to a single mother, who he said often dressed him as a girl, and forced him to watch her have sexual encounters with different men. He was also sexually abused by a female caretaker. When he was 10 years old he fell from the stairs, and suffered some type of brain injury.

Hernandez said that he hated women because of his mother, but also claimed that he was a demon and that he needed to drink human blood at least every three months.

Martinez was poor, but manipulative despite being diagnosed with a borderline intelligence disorder linked to intellectual disability. She said she was physically and sexually abused since the age of 6. There was a time she was prostituting herself since she was living on the streets.

When they met she worked as a prostitute at a bar he would frequent. Despite Hernandez bragging to her he was an "assassin" she moved in with him. During their 10 year relationship, they had four children, and opened a small business where they sold perfumes, cell phones and clothing.

Hernandez and Martinez pushing the stroller with body parts c.2018

Martinez confessed they started the murders in 2012, and their first victim was a 22-year-old woman, who her husband lured with a promise of a job. He took her to the bathroom where he raped her, then beheaded and dismembered her. Martinez kept their children outside the house located in Jardines de Morelos, while he committed the murder. Afterward Martinez cooked the body and ate it with her husband.

Their second victim was a teenage neighbor who was addicted to inhalants. Her name was Luz del Carmen Miranda, 13, who disappeared on April 12, 2012. Like the other victim, they lured her with the promise of money. She was raped, beheaded and dismembered. Her flesh was cooked by Patricia with oil and salt.

Like other cold-hearted killers Hernandez helped the girl's father in trying to locate her, knowing full well that he had murdered her.

Hernandez's Facebook page was full of bizarre satanic images in the form of Santa Muerte

The remaining body parts were fed to their dogs. Hernandez said he sold the bones to a man which he refused to name. The man was a santero. The couple also dabbled in dark practices since they promised their last four victims' hearts as offering to Santa Muerte.

One of their dogs had eaten one of the promised hearts, which they attributed to the reason they were caught.

The couple who bought the child were arrested and the baby was recovered. They had paid 15,000 pesos for her. She was returned to her maternal grandmother. Most disturbing of all is that the couple were living with their three children, one of which was a baby during the time that they were committing the murders.

The couple were discovered after they were put under surveillance in an effort to locate three missing women, Arlet Samanta Olguin, Evelyn Rojas Matus and Nancy Noemí Huitrón — all who had the number of Patricia Martínez Bernal on their phone records. Also missing was the 2-month old daughter of one of the women.

When police saw the couple pushing a baby stroller they were arrested, only to find there was no baby in the stroller but a human torso wrapped in a black plastic bag.

Police searched two houses the couple used, and they found eight, cement-filled buckets with human remains buried in them. In a refrigerator, more body parts were found wrapped in plastic. Later it would be determined that the remains belonged to eight different women, though DNA tests would identify only four of them.

Clothing found scattered about was suspected to belong to the victims.

Other body parts were found in the vacant lot where the couple was arrested. Apparently this was a dumping ground they used on previous occasions to dispose of the women. The remains were in such bad condition that identification could only be made forensically.

Their youngest victim was the daughter of Guadalupe Castillo. The girl was seven years old when they took her and her mother. Hernandez said his original plan was only to kill Castillo, and kept the girl hidden for a week before he suffocated her to death.

During police questioning, Hernandez bragged about feeding the hearts of his victims to his dogs

Interview of neighbors indicated the couple moved to the neighborhood only a year before.

Ecatepec has a history of violence against women and girls, and hundreds of residents in the area have protested to the police. Candles and white flowers were brought to the area where the crimes were committed.

Mexico State where Ecatepec is located recorded the murder of 301 women and girls, possibly more if one includes those that have not been discovered. In 2017, 28,702 murders were recorded, a surge since 2006 when the government started using the military to combat the drug cartels. It has the most femicides in the entire country.

The couple stood trial separately for the murder of 8 women between April and October, 2019. They were also charged with hiding human remains for the purpose of concealing a crime, and human trafficking (selling the baby). They were sentenced to 327 years each.

Andres Filomeno Mendoza Celis c.2021

Even when authorities think they've landed the largest shark, such as The Butchers of Ecatepec, there's always a larger predator hunting the waters. Such is the case of Andres Filomeno Mendoza Celis, 74, who was arrested in May, 2021 in his home in the Mexican municipality of Atizapan de Zaragoza.

Like the Ecatepec investigation, what turns out to be a search for one woman, unraveled to expose a multitude of victims. Reyna Gonzalez Amador, a mother of two had disappeared. Her husband Bruno Angel Portillo who was serving as a police officer forced his way into Mendoza's home located on Margaritas Street in the Lomas de San Miguel neighborhood. He found her mutilated body on a table. The woman had gone to Mendoza's house, who unbelievably was a family friend to buy a part for her cell phone.

It's rumored that Mendoza drew inspiration from the film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which is the year he committed his first murder, but this has not been verified.

The voter identification cards of Flor Vizcaino (L), 38, who was last seen October 16, 2016 and Rubicela Castillo (R), 32, who was reported missing July 20, 2019.

It was noted that Mendoza like other serial killers presented a harmless façade to those around him. He was the former President of the Lomas de San Miguel Neighborhood Advisory Council. Most of his life he had been employed as a butcher in a slaughterhouse in Tlalnepanthla, which many account for his expertise in preserving the skinned faces of the victims he kept.

During questioning Mendoza confessed to killing about 30 women during a 20 year span. He kept a roster of their names in a notebook found at the premises. He not only killed them, he also cannibalized parts of their bodies. In true serial killer style he recorded the mutilation and murders of the crime. He peeled off the women's faces and scalps.

Cadaver dogs were brought in to find human body parts. The flooring of his house was drilled into, where human remains and hair of several women were found. The killer also kept the victims' clothing and shoes. The skeletal remains of up to five victims were found, as well as knives believed to have been used to kill and dismember the women.

Initially it was reported Mendoza could not bear the rejection of young and pretty women. A neighbor of the killer said:

He always bothered women, his gaze travelled over their bodies and fixed on their buttocks, legs and breasts… They always said he looked perverted. When they found him drunk on the street, they preferred to turn around. He drank too much and made them uncomfortable by comments he made to 30-40-year-old women.

Workers excavate in Mendoza's home looking for human remains c.2021

As the investigation progressed it was found the 74-year-old had murdered at least 30 women, and more than 4,000 skeletal remains belonging to his victims were found in his home. The majority were women, but eventually the bones belonging to a man and child were also identified.

A fire chief who responded to the crime scene found "perfect cuts of meat" ready for consumption, as well as kitchen tools, anatomy books, murder films, bloodstained knives, cooked meat and hanging pieces of skin.

In the diary he kept of his victims were noted the date they were taken, as well as the weight of each body part from that woman. There was a list of about 30 to 40 women. This is the type of information kept by a butcher's office to determine how much will be paid for each section of meat. For example he noted on a sheet where the breasts weighed approximately 4 pounds, and a leg weighed 8 pounds.

In the basement reached via an overlapping wooden staircase, there was a table full of blood and various knives, an apron, a Hannibal Lecter-style muzzle and a recording camera. The worse was the horrible stench in the place.

Authorities discovered a room under his bedroom where he buried the corpses. The floor had to be removed to get the remains of the victims.

It turned out that this monster used his crime to commend himself to his neighbors by distributing meat to them. He even invited several police officers from the area to a meal, mostly made of carnitas. He also sold the human remains as enchilada meat, which he said was wild boar meat.

Mendoza was originally from Oaxaca. Once per year he would visit his home town located in San Sebastián Río Dulce, Municipality of Zimatlán. He would bring meat in coolers that he said was pig. He would distribute the meat to the neighbors. He also gave away clothing, which now many believe belonged to his victims.

In March, 2022 the murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment on the charges of just one of the murders. He was also fined to pay reparations, but in truth due to his age, the victims' family will never see a nickel of this money.

Mendoza would go on to receive a sentence of 55 years, 92 years, and in February, 2024 he was sentenced for the 8th time for the murder of a woman who disappeared in April, 2012 in Coacalco. Her remains were identified in Mendoza's home.

The elderly man who was originally known by the moniker of "El Chino" has now been renamed to the "Cannibal of Atizapan." One has to wonder if any of his neighbors suspected he was killing and eating women for about 30 years.

Mendoza would on occasion rent out rooms in his house. A man who was once stayed there was interviewed during the production of a documentary titled Caníbal, indignación total, and he confirmed that the killer would share his victims' flesh with the neighbors, as well as sell it.

Since Mendoza had always worked as a butcher this lent him some credibility. When he was in his neighborhood, he would say the meat was from a boar taken in Oaxaca, when he visiting Oaxaca he would claim the pig was from the Mexico state.

A psychologist who was interviewed during the documentary, noted that Mendoza saw the women as animals instead of human beings.