Raid On Serial Killer's Home Yields Bone Fragments From At Least 17 Unnamed Victims

Investigators retrieved some 3,787 bone fragments belonging to at least 17 victims inside a suspected serial killer’s home in the Mexican municipality of Atizapán de Zaragoza on Saturday as digging operations continue.

Local police seized former butcher Andrés, 72, also known as "El Chino" (or The Chinese), two days later on Monday after a police search executed in his residence gathered evidence that he had killed and hacked one of his victims, Reyna González, 34, who went missing on Thursday last week, El Pais reported.

The accused serial killer, who cannot be fully identified due to legal protection, reportedly dismembered the woman's body on May 14 using a butcher’s hacksaw and knives in the neighborhood of Las Lomas de San Miguel. González, a mother of three children, ran a small cell phone store near his house.

During the Saturday digging operation, agents from the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Mexico found jewelry, nail polish, shoes, a hairdryer, and several items that have been linked to two other women who disappeared in 2016 and 2019, Rubicela Gallegos and Flor Nínive Vizcaíno.

Grisly photographs leaked from the crime scene revealed disturbing photos of a pair of feet properly severed at the ankle, a partially filleted arm, and identification cards placed near the dismembered body parts, the Associated Press noted.

Police also recovered eight mobile phones, women’s jewelry, makeup, and clothing as well as audio and videotapes marked with names, suggesting that the 72-year-old may have recorded his victims. They confiscated 28 8mm videotapes that were discontinued around 2007 and 25 VHS cassettes.

Dilcya García Espinoza de los Monteros, the special prosecutor for crimes against women in Mexico City, suggested that the horrific findings may not end there. The discoveries convinced investigators that they were dealing with a serial killer, who has since admitted to at least 30 murders over two decades.

Neighboring businesses claimed that the man, who was later found to be affable in the neighborhood, was always visiting his last victim at her store to have a chat.

“He was there every day, talking to the girl, every day. I think he sometimes brought her food,” Marisol, a hairdresser who works across the street, had confirmed.

Gabriela Navarro, who owns a store near the victim's cell phone business, said she thought Andrés was the victim's father-in-law because he frequented her store. “She’d been working here for around two and a half years. We would greet one another, that’s all. But on Friday she didn’t come to work,” she said.

Missing person posters went up that same day in a frantic search for the mother of three, who was the wife of a police commander who Andrés personally knew. The unsuspecting González did not return home on Thursday after supposedly meeting with the suspect on a shopping trip. It led the police officer to raise his suspicions against the former butcher.

Investigators are now preparing to extend the scope of their search to the soil under several other rooms the suspect rented in the same property.

Authorities said that the recovered bone fragments are now under lateralization study to delicately clean each bone, identify which part of the body it is, and restore it in an anatomical position to determine the approximate number of victims, Pennsylvania News Today noted.