WOMEN AND GIRLS KILLED AND ABUSED WITHOUT JUSTICE

Mexico is becoming a mecca for murders of women and children. A news story cites the tale of Marisela Escobedo a nurse in the U.S. who retired after her16-year-old daughter, Rubi Marisol, was found killed and dismembered in August 2008. The suspect, her live-in boyfriend, Sergio Rafael Barraza, escaped into Mexico, out of American hands.

The set out to find the suspect, and she did in Zacatecas. She led investigators to him and HE CONFESSED and LED THE investigators to the site where he buried the dismembered body.

At trial, Barraza said he was tortured and forced to confess. So, in April 2010, a three-judge panel acquitted Barraza and said the prosecution did not have enough evidence against Barraza. The appeals court overturned the verdict and instated a 50-year-term. However, Barraza was again no where to be found and no law enforcement officers looked for him. In the meantime, Barraza joined a gang Los Zetas and had made death threats against the victim's mother, Marisela Escobedo.

The 52-year-old mother said she was going to stand in front of the governor's palace in Chihuahua city, the capital of Chihuahua state, where the Ciudad of Juarez is located. Marisela said if Barraza and the gang were going to kill her, they had to do it to shame the officials for the injustices.

As the mother protested outside of the palace, a video camera shows a white Jetta stop, a man approached her and she ran into traffic to cross the street. The man was right behind her and shot her in the head with a 9 mm pistol. Marisela died. The hit-man got away. Barraza is still free and part of a very violent gang.

In 1993, there were a string of very brutal murders in Chihuahua, lasting through 2003. The federal government put together units to investigate and prosecute the killers. The problem still exists. Estimates from the news reports put the number of women and girls killed from 1993 thru 2003 around 1,000. The number of men and boys killed was no mentioned.