The Mata Viejas - Mexico City's Old Lady Killer

In the neighborhoods around Mexico City, people lived in great fear in the early 2000s. An evil killer was on the loose, sneaking into homes and brutally attacking elderly women in the night. This monster became known as the Mata Viejas, or the "Old Lady Killer."

The crimes started small at first - just simple robberies targeting aged victims in their homes across the city's run-down areas. But in January 2003, the break-ins took a much darker turn when the first body was discovered. Ana María Reyes Alfaro, an 82-year-old woman, was found beaten to death in her house. Shockingly, this was just the start.

Over the next four years, the Mata Viejas embarked on a terrifying murder spree, stalking the streets searching for more elderly victims to brutalize. Sometimes the killer struck multiple times in the same week. Tales of the latest grisly discoveries spread quickly, amplifying the panic and fear gripping Mexico City's most vulnerable residents.

While the methods varied, the attacks typically involved sneak entries late at night while the victims were sleeping. The Mata Viejas would use whatever objects were handy as weapons - knives, bats, even just bare hands - to savagely beat the elderly women until death, often leaving them unrecognizable. In most cases, cash, jewelry and other valuables were also stolen, suggesting robbery was the motive.

As the body count mounted into the dozens, frantic police struggled to produce any solid leads to the killer's identity, allowing the region to descend deeper into an atmosphere of dread. Photos of the bloodied crime scenes and autopsy reports detailing the horrific injuries circulated through the press, only amplifying the terror. Many older residents refused to leave their homes, boarding up windows and doors out of desperation.

The great breakthrough finally came in July 2005 when one determined investigator made some key connections. He combed through records of earlier robbery cases to find links to victims of the recent slayings, putting the same name next to several - Juana Barraza Samperio.

Police swiftly moved in to arrest Barraza at the modest Mexico City home she shared with her sister. They were astonished to find the 48-year-old former wrestling poly worker and mom of four was indeed the infamous Mata Viejas killer. Hiding in plain sight, Barraza had calmly continued her day job at the same time she maintained her prolific rate of murder and mayhem.

The details of how such a unassuming woman became Mexico's City's most depraved criminal only grew more bewildering. Interrogations revealed Barraza had developed an intense hatred of the elderly while having to care for her mother and uncle in their final years. She loathed her sacrifices and the thankless tasks involved, eventually warping those resentments into a pathological blood lust.

But more inexplicable was how Barraza chose her targets - through a unique sixth sense she claimed to possess that instinctively drew her to the city's most vulnerable elders. She bragged about being able to eerily sense the smells, imagining them as a ghostly trail that led her to find victims at random on the street or in their homes. To Barraza's twisted mind, she wasn't just robbing and killing, but putting these forgotten souls out of their worldly agonies.

When it was all said and done, Barraza was charged with 16 murders and 17 attempted killings on elderly women, though many suspected her true tally stretched much higher than the crimes she admitted to. A forensic psychologist diagnosed her with acute twisted fantasies on par with the most sadistic serial killers. Yet in her mind, she saw herself as an angel of death sent to end the suffering of Mexico City's most destitute and desperate souls.

In the end, Juana Barraza showed no remorse, proclaiming loudly during her sentencing hearing that she was not guilty of any crimes at all. She received 759 years in total for her heinous spree - later summing it up plainly: "I am at peace with myself. I know what I did."

For a period spanning nearly half a decade, Barraza had induced a level of terror in Mexico City's neighborhoods not seen since the infamous "Cathedral" serial killings in the 1940s-60s. A baby-faced woman had become public enemy number one, the literal monster living among the masses indiscriminately slaughtering society's most vulnerable. It took every resource at law enforcement's disposal to finally unmask her identity and end her sickening acts of depravity - but the scars left by Barraza, the Mata Viejas, remain forever shaming Mexico's history with its gruesome exhibition of elder abuse and hatred taken to the most twisted extreme.