1. Has even one person been arrested for even one murder?
In short, yes.
The first one was an Egyptian who had been working for local maquiladoras. He had criminal antecedents of abuse and rape in the US were he was a legal resident(in Texas and Florida, I believe). He was acussed of multiple murders, but in the end judged for only one killing and sentenced to imprisonment. He died in jail. Was he guilty? My opinion is that he was responsible of that killing, and very likely the author of many others.
The case of the gang mentioned by another poster was the second notorious case related to the killings. They were acussed of killing girls following the orders of the Egyptian. They were charged for several deaths. Were they guilty? It is possible some of the members were. Were they acting on behalf of the Egyptian? I seriously doubt it.
Then the "investigations" focused on the drivers of the public transport system after one girl survived an attack and identified the driver of the bus as the perpetrator. That guy was imprisoned and under torture he accused other bus drivers of being involved. At least two more men were convicted and accused of killing more than 8 girls. They spent several years in prison and one of them died in jail as a consequence of torture only months before they both were proved innocent.
During these years many others have been charged with other killings. Some were responsible and proved guilty. Others were released.
Note that torture is the main (if not the only) method of interrogation in México. The fact that every suspect was tortured casts the shadow of doubt over every single case.
2. Have all the murders been poor women, or have there been men, or wealthier people murdered?
The victims of the killings that inspired this movie were all poor women and young girls.
Ciudad Juárez (population 1.3 Million), as every other city in the border with the US has been territory of drug cartels and other criminal organizations for many years. It has always been considered a violent City, but the killings of those young women were something not seen before in that scale. However, the figures of thousands of women murdered in those years are not accurate. In Juárez, until 2007, the number of persons killed in a year, women included, was never above 350.
That changed in 2008, when over 1600 men, women and children were killed in Juárez. Until this day (November 19th) at least other 2250 persons have been murdered in this city in 2009. Most of those killings are related to a so called "war" among drug cartels and the overwhelming growth of crimes such as kidnappings and extortion, with many innocent victims caught in the middle, and with the police and mexican armed forces participating of many kidnappings and illegal executions (there is no death penalty in México). More than 100 of those killed so far this year were women.
In 2009, and for second consecutive year, Ciudad Juarez was declared the most violent city in the world, due to its rate of killings per every 100,000 inhabitants.
3. Has there ever been even one obvious case where there was a reason for the murder? If so, what is the reason?
Most of the killings of women described in the movie, were sexual crimes.
In my opinion there was at least one serial killer responsible of some of the crimes. It is also possible that the serial killer was a US citizen (Latif Sharif, the egyptian mentioned before, could be included in this category because he was a legal resident of that country for many years). It is important to mention that the US citizens do not require documentation to cross the border into Mexico. Only recently they are being asked to show a passport to the US immigration agents to go BACK into the US from Juárez, but they still can enter the city of Juarez without documents. (In 2008 or early 2009, one US citizen was detained and imprisoned after having perpetrated dozens of rapes in residential areas in Juarez. He used to came to the city for a few hours only to commit his crimes, then went back to his home in El Paso every time. He was captured by the police with the help of the family of a victim).
Other murders were commited by gangs. And many more were the acts of individuals in cases that were unrelated to each other. The lack of punishment and justice allowed the violence to grow without control.
And there is also the possibility that a group of policemen were involved in many killings, considering that the areas where many bodies were found were also the same areas the local police use to torture suspects of any sort. The relation of police and drug cartels is also another factor in this story; we are not talking about the ideal Police Department, but of the Police as an extension of the more powerful criminal groups. It is believed that at any point in time (for the last 3 decades) 80% of the police force in this City is or has been at the service of a criminal group.
On the other hand, the theories about organs traffic, human hunting, satanic rituals or snuff films are not sustained by any evidence.
4. Has it always been a quick murder, just one night and they find your body the next day? Have women gone missing for a long time or are they always murdered immediately?
One of the problems to understand the nature of these crimes is that frequently we are led by the media to believe that every murder was perpetrated by one serial killer or a small group of people with a particular modus operandi. That's not the case. Sometimes a woman was killed and her body was discovered immediately as in incidental killings. In the cases that started it all, the women were kidnapped and their bodies found in the outskirts of the city days, weeks or months after their dissapearences, if ever found. There was a case (in the third or fourth year of this story) where eight bodies were found in a large empty lot in the middle of the City, being that case one of the most bizarre, because the bodies seemed to have been there for a long time without anyone noticing them. The time of death of those 8 victims was diferent, going from a year to a few weeks. This is the case for what the two drivers I mentioned before were accused.
More recently, one mexican guy who was serving time in a US prison, suddenly came forward and accussed himself and several of his friends in Juarez of murdering those eight victims. After several months, those guys were released because of the lack of evidence and after serious doubts about the mental health of the first man arose. He is still imprisoned in the US under unrelated charges but he remains a suspect.
5. Has anyone almost been murdered but survived to tell people who did it and why?
Yes. A young girl traveling home from a maquiladora in a public service bus was taken to the outskirst of the city by the driver after all the other passengers had left the bus; she was then raped and brutally beaten and strangled. The man left her for dead, but she recovered conciousness several hours later that night and managed to reach a house where a man helped her. When the bus driver learned in the news that she was still alive, he escaped to another Mexican state where he was captured a few weeks later and then charged with attempeted murder and 5 other killings, after his wife went to the police. UPDATE: To add to the tragedy, two daugthers of this killer, 14 and 15 years old, were brutally murdered in Juarez on November 13th, 2009, about a decade after their father imprisonment. The mother had abandoned them shortly after the events described originally in this point.
6. Has every single murder gone unwitnessed? Has anyone ever see anything happen?
Probably the killings (I am referring only to the murders of women similar to those shown in the movie) were not witnessed. But somebody must have witnessed at least the kidnapping. Why were not reported? Maybe because of fear. It is hard to tell. I cannot find a reason that can be justified morally. Of course many other kidnappings were unwitnessed, like the one of the girl in the bus. But if that was a common method they used, the last passenger leaving the bus had to know that a girl was still in there and they never came up to tell.
And again, there is the possibility that those around at the moment of a kidnapping believed they were witnessing an arrest made by the police.
7. Has the US or the FBI gone in to investigate, if so what did they find?
At some point, US authorities provided some lab assistance. Their findings were not conclusive. Most remains consisted of bones and some clothes. The most significative scientific assistance came from Argentina. A group of women antropologists applied the experience gained while researching the fate of the "desaparecidos" in their country, to identify the remains and put a name to every victim with variable success.
8. Why has this story never been on US news? Is it blacked out in Mexico also?
I watched reports about it in several US tv programs (60 minutes, 20/20) and it is definitely not blacked out in Mexico because of the independent media. Several documentaries, movies and special tv programs have depicted the cases, although not always faithfuly. Relatives of the women killed created several organizations and they are active still today. Authorities, however, remain insensitive to their demands and the main prosecutor in the state of Chihuahua who was responsible of the investigations when it all started was named the equivalent of the General Attorney of the nation in september 2009, against the protest of the families of the victims.
If you are interested in a better filmic approach to this case, watch "Backyard" (Mexico, 2009) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1257579/). It was filmed in the city and is by far a better movie. Although some of the facts shown in "Backyard" are fictional for obvious reasons, "Bordertown" is so far from what happened in Juárez that the tragedy behind it is barely recognizable. If any other movie resembles the events in Juárez, I think it is the excellent film "Memories of murder" (South Korea, 2003) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353969/)about a similar case in that country in the 80´s.
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