Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – A U.S. judge in El Paso Wednesday ordered former Denver resident Edgar Alvarez Cruz removed to Mexico, where authorities 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 cement worker 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 Juarez murders 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 Juarez, 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 – who was in the U.S. illegally – 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 if 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 Juarez case, and this week embassy officials reaffirmed that statement.
But Alvarez Cruz’ friends and family in the U.S. and Mexico 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 Juarez neighborhood and focused much of his time supporting his disabled son in Denver.
Paycheck receipts and other records show Alvarez Cruz worked full time for a Denver company from mid-July 2001 through Nov. 7, 2001, when eight bodies linked by authorities to Alvarez Cruz were found in Ciudad Juarez.
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, formerly his common-law wife and now living in another state, said he joined her in Colorado starting in April 2001, a time period that would cover at least two more Cotton Field disappearances.
Of the five identified bodies in a second group – known as the Christo Negro murders – of which at least two deaths have allegedly been connected to Alvarez Cruz by Mexican officials, documents show he was in Colorado during the reported disappearance of all but one of them.
Family members insist that any claims of Alvarez Cruz’ involvement in the murders doesn’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, and in 1996 they had a son who was born severely disabled and who can still neither walk nor talk.
Although the two 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 sees him, Alvarez Cruz continued to pay weekly child support until his arrest.
“When my child was young, he was Edgar’s entire life. He lived and worked for our son,” Sanchez said.
Researcher Monnie Nilssen contributed to this report. Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at mriley@denverpost.com or 303-820-1614.
