S3 Ep29: Juana Barraza: Mexico's Little Old Lady Killer

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Born December 27, 1957 in Epazoyucan, Hidalgo, Juana Dayanara Barraza Samperioa was a 48-year-old single mother with a troubled past. After years of traumatic experiences in her early life, including being sold by her mother to a man in exchange for three beers, Juana moved to Mexico City and began killing in 1998. Residents were on edge as they noticed the mysterious killings seemed to be targeting elderly women. While Mexico City initially believed their suspect was a man or a transgender woman, Juana roamed free as the murders spanned for 8 years, until she was caught in 2006. In today's episode, we learn more about Mexico's first confirmed serial killer and how the mysterious murderer came to be known as the Old Lady Killer.

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from the Obsessed Network exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even earn the label,
0:15.6	Crime of the Century.
0:18.4	But the stories that made headlines in decades past
0:21.5	aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:25.0	I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author,
0:27.5	and in each episode of this show,
0:29.5	I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today but was huge when it happened.
0:35.0	This is crimes of the centuries. The spree that started in the 1990s began with fairly petty crimes.
0:55.0	Reports came into police about valuable items disappearing from the homes of older women in Mexico City.
1:02.0	Soon a pattern seemed to emerge. The items vanished after the
1:06.2	women had been visited by a health care or social worker. Soon police
1:11.2	pieced together a description of the culprit, a stocky woman with supposedly masculine features who was always polite enough at the door that her victims never thought twice about letting her inside. But then came the first murder.
1:25.2	64-year-old Maria de la Luz Gonzalez opened the door to her apartment and, oblivious to any danger danger let a stranger walk inside. The next
1:36.4	time someone entered her apartment they found Maria's dead body. She'd been
1:40.8	strangled. I took several more bodies before Mexico City police conceded that they might have a serial killer on their hands.
1:49.0	With that notice to the public came another.
1:52.0	The culprit, police said, surely wasn't a cis-gender
1:55.2	woman after all but rather a transgender woman they dubbed El Mataviaitas or old lady
2:02.0	killer. Note that the L in Spanish is Bejitas, or Old Lady Killer.
2:03.1	Note that the L in Spanish is a masculine modifier.
2:07.5	After alerting the public to this theory,
2:09.7	law enforcement descended on the gay and trans communities in Mexico City, arresting
	...

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