Mexico City – A female wrestler suspected of killing at least 10 elderly women in Mexico City said she acted out of anger, apparently because her mother abandoned her and she was sexually abused, according to police and a videotaped confession broadcast Friday.
“I felt rage, anger, rancor,” 48-year-old Juana Barraza told two interrogators who could be heard but not seen on the video, played on the Televisa television network. Barraza said she killed the women because “they looked at me.” “I never used my hands to strangle them,” she said, noting the killings were performed “with whatever I had in my hands …
stockings, or scarves they had in their homes.” The short-haired, robust Barraza – whose physique originally led police to question transvestites in the case – may have been acting out of anger for her own mother, around the same age as the victims.
“She had a very difficult life,” Bernardo Batiz, the city’s attorney general, said Thursday. “Her mother gave her away when she was little, and the man who took her in had sex with her and she had a daughter.” Batiz said Barraza was fully conscious of, and responsible for the consequences of her acts.
Barraza described on the tape how she gained access to her last victim, Ana Maria Reyes, 82, on Wednesday. She was arrested shortly after leaving Reyes’ house when a neighbor tipped off a passing police patrol car.
“This woman was coming home from the market. I asked her whether she would give me work cleaning, or washing clothes,” Barraza said. When the woman said no, Barraza asked her for a glass of water – and Reyes let her enter to get one.
Prosecutors said they have evidence implicating Barraza as the notorious “Mataviejitas,” or “Little Old Lady Killer.” They said she has confessed to four killings, and her fingerprints match those in a total of 10 cases.
The two city policemen who arrested Barraza said Friday they thought she was a male transvestite even at the moment of her arrest.
“We thought she was a homosexual, because of the strength she had,” said officer Ismael Alvarado Ruiz.
Barraza is believed to have once worked as a professional wrestler and wrestling promoter. She has several children.
Jaime Montejo, spokesman for Brigada Callejera, an advocacy group for women, transvestites and prostitutes, demanded Friday that Batiz publicly apologize for an Oct. 14 roundup of dozens of transvestites as part of authorities’ search for the “Little Old Lady Killer.” He accused the city’s police department of having “a homophobic attitude.” The attorney general’s office did not immediately comment on the complaint.
![Newspaper advertisement offering reward for the return of an escaped man to his oppressors, Princess Anne, Maryland, April 1, 1861. Text reads: “0 Reward. Ranaway from the subscriber on Tuesday Morning, 26th Ultimo [last month], My negro boy calling himself Severn Black. The said negro is about 5 feet six inches in height, chesnut color, has a scar on his upperlip, downcast countenance when spoken to, blink-eyed, showing a great deal of white, long bushy hair, is about twenty years old, had on when he lefta [sic] blue fustian Jacket, pantaloons of a greyish color, blue striped shirt, a Black slouch hat and shoes nearly worn out. The above reward will be paid by me for the apprehension and delivery of the said negro in the county jail at Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland. April 1, 1861. Richard E. Snelling. Somerset Herald Print, Princess Anne, Md.’ The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 obliged citizens and lawmen of free zones to return escaped men to those whom they fled. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)](/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-53262583-16x9-1.jpg?w=620 "GettyImages-53262583-16x9-1")
