The macabre story of Andrés Mendoza, the serial killer who filmed crimes and ate his victims

A man who had earned the respect of his fellow citizens and who had been a community leader, forging ties with local authorities in a complex suburban town of the Mexican capital, turned out to be a serial killer of women who have committed acts of cannibalism with their victims.

Femicide, identified as Andrés Mendoza, 72 years old, was unmasked by police when his home was raided in the Lomas de San Miguel neighborhood, north of Mexico City, to search for a 34-year-old woman who has been missing for several days.

Officers found the victim with the dismembered body in the basement of the house, but they were not prepared for a gruesome scene which included human remains buried in one of the rooms.

According to information disseminated by digital sites, the prosecution suspicion of at least 15 femicides engaged in this house for about three decades. Authorities say he filmed his murders and then ate body parts of the victims.

// Mexico: an Argentinian was mistakenly killed in a narco account

The accused himself said his first murder was committed 30 years ago in the capital and 20 years ago in the neighboring state of Mexico. Mendoza had been president of the Council for Citizen Participation of the Municipality of Atizapán, State of Mexico and had received a donation to carry out political acts by then mayor Ana María Balderas, of the Conservative National Action Party.

Dilcya García, central prosecutor in charge of attention to crimes related to gender violence, said that in addition, they were found in the house of the murderer. 25 videos, ID cards, clothes, shoes, women’s bags, notebooks with names and makeup. These are items the murderer kept as a sort of fetish to celebrate his criminal “exploits”, as well as a collection of knives and sharp weapons he allegedly used to cut corpses into fragments.

Mendoza was exposed thanks to anonymous complaints from its neighbors, to whom he rented rooms adjoining his house. Police broadcast images on television showing blood stains in different rooms of the house, jewelry, nail polish, shoes and dresses.

“The proceedings in place will continue to search for other signs and other remains, as various areas of the house have yet to be analyzed,” a statement from the attorney general’s office said.

Videos posted on social media show serial killer seriously aged during his arrest by the police.

“We have found evidence that leads us to believe that it may be serial femicide,” said Dilcya García, the prosecutor in charge of the case. The human remains were transferred to the prosecution to be analyzed by forensic experts in order to be identified.

Antecedents

The last such case reported by the media in Mexico occurred in October 2018 during his arrest. Juan Carlos Hernández, the so-called “Monster of Ecatepec”, as the “red press” has called it. He tells of a murderer who mistreated and killed, with the help of his wife, between 10 and 20 women in Ecatepec, a gigantic, poor and crime-ridden suburb in the northeastern part of Mexico City.

Another notable case is that of Juana Barraza, “La Mataviejitas”, who also devoted herself to wrestling and went by the fighting name of “La Dama del Silencio”, who was arrested in 2006 for the murder of at least 17 elderly women, although she is believed to have had some. killed about 50.

In 2007, another serial killer who also practiced cannibalism was arrested, Luis Calva, who read poems to women to conquer them, and after having sex with them, he killed them, cooked them and ate them. During his detention, the human remains of his victims were found in jars, on his dining room table and in the freezer.

With agency information.