Ciudad Juárez, Mexico – A U.S. judge in El Paso on Wednesday ordered former Denver resident Edgar Alvarez Cruz removed to Mexico, where authorities then arrested him in connection with a notorious string of murders that five years ago shook this sprawling border city to its bones.
Investigators trying to link the 30-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Denver last month to the murders of at least 10 women now face a substantial hurdle: Employment records reviewed by The Denver Post show that Alvarez Cruz was in Colorado when many of the Ciudad Juárez killings occurred.
Official information on the case against Alvarez Cruz is scarce, but a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office confirmed Wednesday that he has been charged with murder.
The unsolved murders and disappearances of more than 350 women have haunted Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, for more than a decade and a half.
Mexican authorities have said Alvarez Cruz is a suspect in the murders of eight women whose bodies were discovered in November 2001, and at least two in another group whose bodies appeared a year later. But it’s unclear if they believe he’s substantially responsible or played a smaller role.
On Wednesday, Alvarez Cruz was marched across a bridge between El Paso and Mexico at 3:30 p.m. by armed U.S. marshals and immigration agents who handed him over to the Chihuahua state police. Asked by a reporter whether he was involved in the killings, Alvarez Cruz vehemently shook his head and answered, “No.”
When Alvarez Cruz was arrested in Denver on Aug. 15, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Antonio Garza, called it a major break in the Juárez case, and this week embassy officials reaffirmed that statement.
But Alvarez Cruz’s friends and family in the U.S. and Mexico – including Beatriz Sanchez, his former common-law wife and mother of his son – have used paycheck receipts, family photos and a detailed chronology to try to sketch an alibi for him.
They describe a hard-working man who was able to lift himself out of a poor Ciudad Juárez neighborhood and who focused much of his time on supporting his disabled son in Denver.
Paycheck receipts and other records of All Phase Concrete Construction show Alvarez Cruz worked full time for the Denver company from mid-July 2001 through Nov. 7, 2001, when eight bodies linked by authorities to Alvarez Cruz were found in Ciudad Juárez.
Of those eight deaths, referred to locally as the Cotton Field murders, four of the women disappeared during the time the documents show that Alvarez Cruz was in Colorado.
Beatriz Sanchez, remarried and now living in Texas, said he joined her in Colorado starting in April 2001, a time period that would cover at least two more Cotton Field disappearances.
Another Denver employer – subcontractor Heladio Marquez – said he recalled that Alvarez Cruz worked for him doing siding on homes for a few months in early 2001. “He was a good worker, but he was quiet,” Marquez said.
In a second group of five identified bodies – known as the Christo Negro murders – at least two deaths have reportedly been connected to Alvarez Cruz by Mexican officials. But documents show he was in Colorado during the reported disappearance of all but one of them.
“It’s just not logical. He was in Colorado during this time,” said his father, Fidel Alvarez Villamil, sitting on a patio of Alvarez Cruz’s brother’s house in Ciudad Juárez on Tuesday. “Imagine my desperation. When I saw it on the news, I went crazy.”
Here, while growing up, Alvarez Cruz met Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz and Alejandro Delgado. Granados now sits in a U.S. prison, while Mexican media have reported that Delgado, who grew up next door to Alvarez Cruz, is somewhere in Mexico and may be serving as a protected witness.
A source briefed on the Mexican investigation said authorities are pursuing leads suggesting that Alvarez Cruz and the two other men were part of a gang based in their Ciudad Juárez neighborhood.
Police say Granados sent letters from prison to family members in Mexico, giving details of the murders, according to family members interrogated in the investigation. Alvarez Cruz’s family suspects that Granados – related to Alvarez Cruz by marriage – linked the Denver cement worker to the crimes.
Police questioned family members about a small Renault car that Alvarez Cruz once owned, his father said, which may indicate the car has been tied to some of the murders.
But family members insist that any claims of Alvarez Cruz’s involvement in the murders don’t jibe with what they know of his character or his whereabouts during the time of the crimes.
Beatriz Sanchez said she moved in with Alvarez Cruz in the early 1990s. In 1996, they had a son who was born severely disabled and who can still neither walk nor talk.
Although the couple separated for a time in the late 1990s, Sanchez said she lived in the family’s compound until she moved to Denver in 2000, and that Alvarez Cruz worked long days at a car wash to pay for their son’s medicines and physical therapy.
She said Alvarez Cruz joined her in Colorado in April 2001, where they lived together for more than a year before separating again, this time for good.
Now a permanent U.S. resident, Sanchez said that while she now rarely saw him, Alvarez Cruz continued to pay weekly child support until his arrest.
“When my child was young, he was Edgar’s entire life,” Sanchez said. “He lived and worked for our son.”
Staff writer Manny Gonzales and researcher Monnie Nilssen contributed to this report.
