Michoacán.- After 10 years of being a fugitive from justice, Cecilia A, was recaptured by the United States by the International Criminal Police Organization or International Police (Interpol).
The woman faces charges for the kidnapping and murder in 2012 of Bernardino, a 5-year-old boy, whom she held in her own home.
Also known as “The Witch of Angahuan”, she was released months later, by the then fourth judge in criminal matters, Ernestina Pimentel Pineda.
History
Witnesses, testimonies that work in the then Preliminary Investigation, residents and relatives, narrated what happened.
On March 21, 2012, Natividad G, mother of little Bernardino, traveled to Moroleón, Guanajuato, to buy clothes, which she marketed in her town of Angahuan.
Zury, as he was called, had been left in charge of his father, who attended a family repair shop in that community of the Purhépecha Plateau.
The 5-year-old went out to play with other children outside his house, where Cecilia A, a neighbor who claimed to practice witchcraft, arrived.
The woman approached the child and dazzled him with a remote control toy, with which she took him “secretly” to his house located in front of where Bernardino lived.
In that house, Cecilia A and an assistant named Delfina, “did witchcraft work, performed cleaning, moorings and all kinds of activities related to the occult.”
Zury, had been kidnapped and subjected to precarious conditions, mistreatment and ties of feet and hands, in a nook of that house that they say, “was diabolical.”
The perpetrator sent her assistant to the municipality of Zamora and waited for the child’s mother to return home, so that Delfina would call them and ask for the rescue.
Cecilia A, asked for 600 thousand pesos from the family of the minor, in exchange for releasing him, so the parents began to get the money without notifying the authorities.
The relatives narrate that every day they received the intimidating calls in which they demanded the total amount of the ransom or else they were going to kill the child.
Zury’s parents handed over a part of that money and filed the complaint with the then Attorney General’s Office of the State of Michoacán (PGJE).
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At the same time, the other villagers were looking for the child in the surroundings of the community and closed roads to demand results from the investigating authority.
Meanwhile, Delfina’s calls – in anonymity – from Zamora, were increasingly persuasive and intimidating, although she made them from Zamora, so as not to be discovered.
At the same time, Cecilia A, told Zury’s parents that through her “magic crystal ball” she could guess the exact place where her son was.
With this, they say, The Witch took the opportunity to further settle the suspicions that she had kidnapped the minor and take more money from the relatives, than the one already delivered.
Thus a month passed and little Bernardino was still deprived of his freedom inside the house of Cecilia A. However, the pressure of the inhabitants and the search grew.
Neighbors report that the woman was increasingly nervous and afraid of being discovered, until one day she severely beat the child and suffocated him, to the point of killing him.
The body of little Bernardino was found in a place in the town of Las Cocinas, located on the Uruapan-Los Reyes highway.
He paid 5 thousand pesos to disappear the body
According to the test data of the then PGJE, Cecilia A paid 5 thousand pesos to a couple from the same town to remove the body of the child from their home.
The order was that they take the body out of the community of Angahuan and disappear it, so that there would be no evidence, since there were already suspicions against it.
The investigations led the authorities to the marriage formed by Genaro B and Guadalupe S, who confessed their participation in the crime.
They also betrayed Cecilia A as the kidnapper and murderer of the 5-year-old boy and the assistant, Delfina S, as the person who made the calls to demand the ransom.
Little Zury was watched for three days in his hometown and his relatives accompanied by the entire community enraged by what happened.
The Judge and the Witch
After the statement of Genaro B and Guadalupe S, the PGJE arrested Delfina S, who also accepted her complicity and betrayed the witch of being the kidnapper and murderer of the child.
Subsequently, Cecilia A was captured for the first time, as the intellectual and material author of the double criminal act, to the detriment of the minor of 5 years of age.
The MP, made available to the Judiciary, the four accused for the murder of the little boyor Bernardino, the indigenous boy who just went out to play and came back dead.
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Despite the confessions and the elements presented by the MP of the case, the fourth criminal judge, Ernestina Pimentel Pineda, released the four involved.
The order of freedom ruled on December 16, 2012, was, according to the judge, under the reservations of law, for lack of evidence to prosecute.
Pimentel Pineda argued that in the case of Cecilia A, the MP did not arrest her in flagrante delicto and that at the time of her capture she did not have a Purhépecha language translator.
That decision of Ernestina Pimentel was questioned by the relatives of the victim, by the MP, by the inhabitants and even by specialists in the field.
The inhabitants were enraged and confronted the judge on several occasions; and even accused her of corruption and of attending to other interests outside the application of justice.
Ernestina requested her change and was protected by the Judiciary and sent to the city of Morelia, “to guarantee her safety.”
Children’s rights are worthless
The judge’s decision was refuted by Natividad G, who after learning of Ernestina Pimentel’s ruling, let go in tears and said she was at a disadvantage in the face of injustice.
The mother of little Zury, told journalist Carlos López at the time, that “that is more of a mockery for us.”
“And still (Cecilia A) approaches and puts some plastic flowers on the arch that we had put (from altar to Zury),” denounced the mother of the child.
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He claimed that they also never counted on the government (in reference to the Judiciary) since the only thing that is worth, is who brings money and the one who does not bring, is nothing, he said.
“Here we don’t have any validity right now, because they say that the lady left because they didn’t respect her rights as an indigenous woman, that’s why I told the judge: ‘then they valued the rights of the lady more than the rights of all the children.'”
“That’s not worth it; a child does not have the right to go out and play in the street for a while; their rights are not worth it; we as indigenous people too; the rights of a lady who is a murderer and kidnapper are worth more than the rights of us,” he reproached the judge.
She added: “That’s why I told my husband and my daughters: ‘If the lady goes free then no way, we are not going to do anything because we have no money’; the ladies took my money and killed my son; all the money and wealth I had for my children, everything was left to them.”
Mocks and threatens to kill more children
Once released, Cecilia A, returned to Angahuan and confronted the parents of little Zury, whom she threatened to kill other of her children and more children in the community.
The woman vowed to take revenge and to say of the relatives of the child, their mockery and warnings were very daily, which caused disgust in all the inhabitants.
The locals inflamed and set fire to the witch’s house, where the 5-year-old boy was kidnapped and where he was also tortured and killed.
Cecilia managed to flee and since then nothing was known about her, until this Thursday, that the Prosecutor’s Office of Michoacán announced her recapture.
The FGE indicated that the International Legal Assistance and Extradition Unit, as well as Interpol, completed the arrest warrant against Cecilia A.
He confirmed that the woman was captured for her possible involvement in the kidnapping and murder of the 5-year-old boy.
He said the investigations allowed him to establish that Cecilia A was in the United States to evade justice.
He emphasized that, thanks to the exchange of information with Interpol and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, he achieved the deportation of Cecilia A, to Mexico.
The woman has already been placed at the disposal of the court that claims her, which, the relatives request, “is not as corrupt or corrupt as Ernestina Pimentel.”
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