Mexican Murder Mystery/Chihuahua's City of Lost Girls
tinydancer
Jon Tevlin, Star Tribune
Published January 25, 2004
CHIHUAHUA CITY, MEXICO -- It is the image she has when she thinks of the
country she fell in love with during 20 years of family trips: blue skies
holding puffy clouds over the Mexican desert against a backdrop of jagged
slate mountains; families jammed into pickup trucks, their cloth sacks heavy
with food,, as music blares from a passing car.
But as the taxi moves down a dirt road, Carol Kiecker's stomach knots. "This
is the part I hate," she says softly. "Seeing that building."
A large white wall backs up to the Sierra Madres, flanked by turrets and
hung with razor wire. Kiecker, 68, of Bloomington, joins one of two long
lines of people that have formed.
It is family day at Cereso, the maximum-security prison outside Chihuahua
City, and Kiecker is the lone American woman. Some turn and look, then
whisper. Her daughter Cynthia, the one she still calls "Cookie," is famous
here, and so, in a way, is she.
They know Kiecker as the mother of "La Cheyenne," the accused satanic
murderer -- the one prisoner almost no one here believes is guilty.
They all know the story: tales of drug use, "satanic" sacrifice, jealousy
and murder. Then the accusations of torture by police and the recanting of
witnesses. Tying it together is a link to one of Mexico's most disturbing
stories: the unsolved murders of hundreds of young women.
The prison yard fills with inmates and visitors, becoming part sad reunion,
part carnival. Inmates sell shellacked pictures of Jesus, hooting children
run around, and sumptuous picnics are spread on tables beneath a cement
canopy.
"Surreal," Kiecker says.
She is talking about the scene, but she could be talking about the story she
has become part of.
Cynthia Kiecker Perzabal had been selling earrings and bracelets at her
downtown Chihuahua store, Templo Mayor. After years of living a vagabond
life, she and her Mexican husband, Ulises Perzabal, had found a home. They
were selling 3,000 pesos worth of merchandise a day (about $275, a good
living in Mexico), and were considering adopting a child.
Then everything was ruined, Cynthia says.
Of the events that followed, the Perzabals and authorities agree on only one
thing: Cynthia signed a confession saying she killed Viviana Rayas, 16.
Cynthia says she signed three documents -- the confession and two statements
implicating others -- only after she and her husband were tortured by police
over two days. She says they'd never met the victim.
Two acquaintances who signed statements implicating the Perzabals later said
they were tortured into doing so. Another, Eika Perez, says a police officer
held her captive at his home and said she'd never see her daughter again
unless she accused the couple.
Police say that the Perzabals were fleeing the city and that they willingly
confessed, according to court records. The Perzabals tell a different
story -- one that is backed up by neighbors who witnessed police raiding
their home one night last May.
Cynthia's version: It was just before midnight, as she was considering a
setting for a jade butterfly. She heard shouts and pounding. An ax split her
front door. Several men in street clothes stormed in, wrestling the
Perzabals to the ground. The men put plastic bags over their heads.
"I thought we were being kidnapped," Cynthia says in the prison courtyard
where she awaits a judge's decision on her guilt.
She says they were taken to an abandoned police academy and beaten. Police
officers took turns punching and shocking her with a stun gun, she says.
"They threw water on my back and then shocked me, over and over," she says.
"They threatened to put a stick up my [rectum]. I could hear Ulises
screaming in another room."
In court, police denied harming the Perzabals, and a court-appointed doctor
said any wounds appeared self-inflicted. The Perzabals' doctor said both had
bruises and burn marks caused by others, according to court documents. A
police video shows Cynthia with a fat lip and scratches on her face.
Cynthia says authorities tortured her to get her to say this: That the
couple met Rayas in their store and invited her for a party, where they
drank peyote tea and killed chickens. That's when Rayas flirted with Ulises,
Cynthia grabbed a small metal ring-sizer and bludgeoned Rayas to death. (The
autopsy showed Rayas was killed by strangulation.) That the couple dumped
her near the prison.
When Cynthia refused to confess, they took her to see Ulises. "He was naked
and sitting on a crate," she says. "There were bruises all over his stomach.
They were shocking him all over, on his testicles. I would have signed
anything."
Fiercely independent
Carol Kiecker jokes that she colors her hair to hide the gray caused by her
45-year-old daughter. At age 5, Cynthia removed her bike's training wheels,
then taught herself to ride, her mother remembers.
Every Christmas for nearly 20 years, the Kieckers drove to Mexico and camped
on beaches. The kids -- Cynthia, Claire and Alan -- grew to love the
country. They became fluent in Spanish.
Cynthia graduated from the old Lincoln High School in Bloomington. In her
early 20s, she quit the University of Minnesota, bought a motorcycle and
rode to California. She took up the saxophone. After she met Ulises, now 45,
they hung out in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, playing music
for money.
"They lived in trailers and traveled around the U.S. and Mexico until the
last seven years," her mother says during the long bus ride from Juarez to
Chihuahua City, which she makes about once a month.
"Is it the kind of life I wanted or expected for my daughter?" she begins.
"No, but what are my choices? It's her life."
Cynthia adopted the "artist name" of "La Cheyenne," and Ulises began calling
himself "La Changa." Kiecker says they developed a following in Mexico City,
where they sold homemade tapes of protest songs.
But there were many artists in Mexico City, so they moved to Chihuahua, a
conservative place where women wear sensible house dresses and men wear
cowboy hats.
The Perzabals were different, and therefore suspect. Cynthia wore dangling
earrings, a column of bracelets and Indian-style clothing. Both have tattoos
down their arms. In their shop, they sold crystals and Jimi Hendrix and
Metallica T-shirts. There was a poster of Che Guevara.
Ulises had hair to his waist and a beard. He sang protest songs in the plaza
and was photographed for the local paper demanding that police solve the
murders of young women in the region. Viviana Rayas is one of 16 believed
murdered or missing in Chihuahua.
The issue of the young women had begun to get international attention, and
police were under pressure -- from the press, human-rights groups and
Mexican President Vicente Fox.
Ulises was a handy suspect. In 2001, he had had a sexual relationship in
Chihuahua with a minor. Although he wasn't charged, her family sued him, and
the police knew, according to Kiecker.
When Rayas disappeared, fliers went up all over Chihuahua. Shortly
thereafter, an anonymous caller told the girl's father, Jose Rayas, that he
should check into the couple who ran the "hippie" store.
Jose Rayas is a powerful man in Mexico. The head of a large transportation
union, he demanded action from police. They had been investigating two men,
including the girl's uncle. But two months had passed. Rayas said the police
had three days to find a suspect or face a walkout by toll-booth operators,
according to the Perzabals' lawyers and news reports.
They broke down the door of Ulises and Cynthia Perzabal's house the next
day.
After meeting Kiecker and reviewing the evidence, Jose Rayas says he no
longer believes Cynthia and Ulises were involved, according to news reports.
City of lost girls
At the intersection of Paseo de la Victoria and Ejercito Nacional in Juarez,
across the border from El Paso, Texas, there is a cotton field with eight
pink crosses. Each bears the name of a young woman who was sexually
assaulted, murdered and dumped there. They are testimony to the sadness and
pain that has gripped "the City of Lost Girls." The youngest victim was 13.
At least 100 and possibly as many as 400 young women have been killed in the
state of Chihuahua in the past 10 years. The official police report lists
321 women killed since the early 1990s.
The report states that only 39 killings remain unsolved. Independent
monitors doubt the figures.
"The failure of the competent authorities to take action to investigate
these crimes, whether through indifference, lack of will, negligence or
inability, has been blatant over the last ten years," an Amnesty
International report says.
The report also mentions the Perzabals' case: The "allegations that those
arrested in connection with the [Viviana Rayas] case were tortured,
demonstrate yet again that the abductions and murders in question are far
from being solved."
Cynthia Bejarano, a New Mexico State University criminal-justice professor
who has been monitoring the slayings and the Mexican judicial system for
several years, says the case "fits the same pattern of injustice by police
in Chihuahua going back many years."
Theories on the killings include drug gangs, organ thieves, pornographers
and the sons of rich, influential Mexican families.
One U.S. law enforcement official monitoring the murders, who asked that he
not be named because he works with Mexican authorities, said that while he's
sometimes skeptical of activist groups, "I think they're making a pretty
good case for corruption."
Determined mother
Carol Kiecker has never flinched at problems. As a vice president of a
California health care company, she oversaw a half-dozen hospitals and a
$900 million budget. Her Bloomington condo is filled with art from Mexico,
India and West Africa. It's also cluttered with the paperwork that has
become her full-time job: justice for her daughter.
When she left her job in California, a newspaper in San Jose reported that
she was looking forward to "devoting more time to family concerns."
Little did she know that would mean joining protest marches, speaking at the
showing of documentaries on the killings and contacting dozens of government
officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell has spoken to
Mexican officials about the case, according to a State Department spokesman.
When Cynthia was arrested in May, Kiecker says, "It was so outrageous I
thought it was simply a mistake and that they'd be out when they
straightened it out." As time passed, she became increasingly concerned.
Now, she takes turns with her ex-husband and other daughter visiting the
couple and dealing with lawyers.
She initially was told to hire a prominent, expensive Mexico City lawyer.
But when he said her daughter was a drug addict and probably guilty, Kiecker
found a 34-year-old Chihuahua City lawyer known for old-fashioned manners,
ethics and taking cases to the press.
"So I picked a lawyer for a murder case based on the recommendation of my
hippie daughter," Kiecker jokes. "Now, I'm about 95 percent sure I did the
right thing."
The lawyer, Miguel Zapien de la Torre, immediately noticed discrepancies in
accounts of the arrest and the timetable provided by police. He tracked down
witnesses, talked neighbors into testifying and challenged the police. De la
Torre found a woman selling tamales who said she saw Rayas crying in a car
driven by an unidentified man at 8:30 p.m., more than four hours after she
was allegedly killed at the Perzabals'.
De la Torre and his assistants received death threats for their work on the
case, and he says their phone lines were cut and they were evicted from one
of their offices. After witnesses recanted, he adds, they protected them
while police stood on nearby corners and helicopters circled overhead.
The lawyer also tells of a colleague who was defending a man in another of
the murders who was shot by police, who said they mistook him for a fleeing
criminal.
But De la Torre has made progress. In mid-January, a federal judge found
reason to believe the state judge "made errors," and De la Torre believes
that local politics spurred the arrest of the Perzabals.
There were banner headlines on the front pages of Mexican newspapers:
"Satanism and Death in the House of La Changa!" One showed a poster from the
Perzabals' home that combined a picture of Jesus and Jimi Hendrix as
evidence of devil worship.
"Chihuahua is very conservative, very religious," De la Torre said. "Cynthia
and Ulises sang and did poetry in public that was sometimes against the
government. People said, 'They are revolutionaries.' In reality, they were
perfect citizens."
He says public opinion has changed, and he believes there's an 85 percent
chance he will get them out, perhaps in July when the terms of the Juarez
governor and attorney general are up. (Both sides presented their cases last
summer, and there are no juries in Mexico. The judge has until July to issue
a verdict.)
De la Torre says, in all seriousness, his chances would be 100 percent -- if
not for the possibility that he or his clients will be murdered before then.
Cheyenne's destiny
De la Torre outlines the case in his office for Mexican Congresswoman Blanca
Gámez and legislator Luis Enrique Acosta.
"Maybe we could see if we could get Cynthia released as long as she promises
to stay in Mexico until the judge's decision," Gámez says.
Acosta is surprisingly blunt: "The problem in Mexico, unfortunately, is
honesty. It is not the existence of human rights laws or committees, it's
the application of those laws that's a problem because of all the
corruption. . . . Trying to prove your innocence in Mexico is very
expensive, very difficult and very dangerous."
Back at the prison, a small crowd has gathered to hear Ulises sing about
playing the blues on the West Bank in Minneapolis, where Cynthia used to
sell jewelry during the summers.
Ulises is both charismatic and antagonistic. Even fighting for his release
from prison, he rails against the "Mexican mafia that runs this country."
"The story of me and Cheyenne is a very strong story of independence and
dignity," he says. "We are true artists, not commercial artists. Cheyenne is
the reality people, the independent feminista. I was with the American
independence woman, and the Mexican macho men didn't like it."
Cynthia is a confident woman with deep blue eyes and dreadlocks. She's a
pacifist and vegetarian, and one of her hobbies in prison is feeding
resident cats. She says she's being treated well. She makes her jewelry and
gets to see Ulises twice a week. Every month they get a conjugal visit.
As visiting day ends, the warden stops by. She hugs Cynthia and tells her
mother that Cynthia's a wonderful person, that she's innocent, that they all
hope she gets out soon.
"I hear a lot of this, so I try not to get too excited," Kiecker says later.
If she gets out, Cynthia says, she and Ulises want to move to Minnesota and
possibly open a store. They still talk about adopting a baby.
"I can't believe my destiny is to live the rest of my life in this prison.
Maybe our destiny is to bring more attention to these problems so people can
do something about them."