“La crituradora de angelitos”: the frightening story of the woman who killed more than 100 children in Mexico City

Don Francisco Páez, owner of the grocery store located in a building on Salamanca Street, in the Roma quarter of Mexico City, one morning he found his local plumbing plugged in.

The man – one can imagine him in an annoyed mood – called a plumber and two masons to fix the problem. You had to break the ground to access the pipe, dislodge the pipe and plug the hole again.

What was the extent of the surprise and fear of these three men when they discovered the sewer and Find, that day April 8, 1941, “an enormous plug of rotten human flesh, gauze and bloody cotton”.

Between the nausea, the plumber and the masons they extracted this mass which also enveloped the skull of a child.

The episode, as terrifying as it is read in the press of the time, literally uncovered one of the most shocking crime stories of 1940s Mexico City, which featured a woman.

His name was Felícitas Sánchez Aguillón, the press baptized it “La Ogresa de la Colonia Roma” and in the list of Mexican serial killers also appears as “The Angel Crusher“Y”The Ripper of Colonia Roma“.

The press considered his crimes as heinous as his surprising end in prison, as he only spent three months in prison, although she has been charged with the serious crimes of murder and child trafficking.

But Felícitas kept secrets that would have caused a worse shock and surely an unhappy end for many women of the time.. As she did when she committed suicide on June 16, 1941, just two months after her crimes came to light.

The flight from Veracruz

Thanks to the archives of the event journal Press, based on research by Roberto Coria and Guadalupe Gutiérrez, creators of an audio series called “Witnesses of Crime”, and Norma Lazo, author of the book Without mercy, published in 2007, it was possible to reconstruct the life and history of Felícitas Sánchez Aguillón.

Veracruzana, born in the community of Cerro Azul in the 1890s, research assures that had an unhappy childhood due to her mother’s rejection and since she was a child she has shown unusual behavior enjoying animal abuseStray dogs and cats he poisoned, he says, out of sheer distraction.

Of course, the stormy relationship with his mother and these pathological traits of his character served years later for the psychological profile that the press spread when they discovered her murderer.

In his following years Felícitas must have had a possibly conventional life, because the only thing that has been written about it is that she studied nursing., she married a man from her hometown named Carlos Conde, and during her first pregnancy, she had twins.

The birth of their daughters has apparently revealed the darker side of the woman’s personality, which convinced her husband, after much insistence, to sell these girls to earn money this would give them at least a few days of economic relief.

Her husband, although he opposed it at first, relented. But guilt assailed him and he demanded that Felícitas tell him who had “bought” his daughters. The woman refused, the marriage broke down, and the couple broke up.

Also in Veacruz, Felícitas carried out the business represented by the sale of children and became an intermediary between those women who could not support them or did not want them and those who could not have them. The business was supplemented by her midwifery services.

So, he raised enough money to move to Mexico City in 1910 and rent a room to a woman who lived in apartment 3 of the building marked 9 on Salamanca Street, in the Roma neighborhood. Where Don Francisco Páez had his grocery store.

From midwife to murderer

In the country’s capital, Felícitas continued its profitable business of selling children and midwives. Then he broadened his offer: to pregnant women outside marriage, who came to seek his services, he offered the possibility of having an abortion.

No one knows how many women have turned to her, but the information was then used to negotiate his release from prison, threatening the authorities: Either they released her or she revealed the names of the women who had turned to her. And they released her.

For nearly three decades, Felícitas has been dedicated to abortions, childbirth and the sale of children in this apartment where she spent the whole day alone.

The woman who rented it went out all day to work and He only learned of his tenant’s activities on the morning of April 8 when the authorities arrived at the building. where way to investigate the discovery of the pipe.

It was not the first time that neighbors complained about plumbing problems and later they even told authorities that Felícitas always seemed strange to them.

From their apartment, they reported, sometimes black smoke would come out, dispersing a stinky odor. and the recurring visits of “class” women caught her attention.

The authorities already knew her, because twice she had been arrested trying to sell two babies. However, the woman was released after paying a simple fine.

Felícitas was doing so well with the business, she even opened a store at number 69 Guadalajara Street, in the Hipódromo Condesa neighborhood, which he called “La Quebrada” very close to his home.

The place later became a benchmark in his case, because until then, he carried his crimes, which went from selling to murdering minors.

Intermediate head

The events press of the time was fascinated by the details of the cases. The newspaper Press, who still exists and is one of the most famous in yellow-tinted police media coverage, set the slogan for the Felícitas murders.

Between myths and truths, the murders of children he couldn’t sell are frightening: He strangled, poisoned, cut, burned or dismembered them and bagged their remains which he left in the trash or emptied them in the toilet. There were more details, but it is better to leave them out.

Who knows how long he’s been committing these crimes, but the press estimated that his victims numbered more than 100 children, until the day of the macabre discovery in the store of Don Francisco Páez, neighbor of Felícitas.

The investigation of the case was in the hands of a suspicious investigator, very famous at the time, by the name of José Acosta Súarez, who began the investigations and interrogations of the neighbors of the building.

Arriving at apartment 3 where Felícitas lived, the door was opened by the woman who rented the room to him years ago. He knew nothing about his tenant’s crimes, but he let the police through.

In Felícitas’ room They found an altar with candles, needles, baby clothes, a human skull and a large number of photographs of children.. On the same day, authorities searched the “La Quebrada” mixture, where they obtained further evidence against him.

Felícitas discovered the investigation and fled. But the investigator José Acosta was able to arrest in a few days an accomplice of Felícitas, who by then had already become “La Descuartizadora” and “La Ogresa de la Colonia Roma”.

It was about a plumber named Salvador Martínez Nieves, who was apprehended on April 11, 1941. In his statement confirmed the woman’s crimes and accepted her complicity in exchange for money to unclog pipes constantly clogged by the bodies of fetuses and children.

That same day, at night, Felicitas also fell with her lover Roberto or Alberto Covarrubias, whom they called “El Beto” or “El Güero”. They were both in a car driving along Belgium Street in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of central Mexico City on the way to Veracruz.

An unexpected end

Felícitas’ first statements to the authorities they froze the blood of the inhabitants of Mexico.

“Indeed, I have frequented many times women who come to my house. I treated them for the heavy bleeding they had, some from beatings and most from severe problems from ingesting special substances to get an abortion. I took care of the people who needed my services and once I completed my obstetrical work, I flushed the fetuses down the toilet.“Did he declare.

Without any trace of guilt, according to the newspaper’s chronicles Press, the woman told scary scenes.

“A woman told me that she had dreamed that her son was going to be born very ugly, that she would please do an operation to throw him away. Indeed, this creature was a monster: it had an animal face, instead of eyes, hideous eye sockets and a sort of cone on its head. At the time of birth, the child did not cry, but sniffled. I asked Mr. Roberto to throw him in the canal and he tied a thread around his neck ”. Thus his words reproduced by the newspapers.

Always dressed in black Felicítas was held in solitary confinement for posing a danger for the rest of the detainees.

Who knows if it was his lawyer’s idea or his warn the judge of her case that she would reveal the names of all the women who had come to see her abort if that enabled him to obtain a lesser sentence.

The newspaper Press he was responsible for spreading the veiled threat. Its title reads as follows: “La Descuartizadora will denounce all the ladies who have gone to ask”.

On April 26, 1941, Felícitas Sánchez Aguillón was prosecuted for abortion, illegal burial of human remains, crimes against public health, and clinical and medical responsibility. None considered serious by law. On May 10 of the same year, the eighth judge issued a bond of 600 pesos to release her..

The following month, in June, “L’Ogresa de la Colonia Roma” left prison after authorities “lost” the evidence against him (including the skull found in the pipe). The attorney general’s office could not even appeal the judge’s decision, despite the confession of the plumber’s lover and accomplice.

Social rejection surrounded her and Felícitas committed suicide shortly after, on June 16, 1941, with an overdose of Nembutal.. He died at dawn, in the house he shared with his lover while he was sleeping.

He left three posthumous letters: two addressed to his lawyers and one to his partner. None for a girl who had fathered with her lover and who apparently ended up in an orphanage.

Detective José Acosta, for his part, left this frustrating case behind him by arresting, a year later, another Mexican serial murderer: Gregorio “Goyo” Cárdenas, known as “El Estrangulador de Tacuba”.

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