Andrés Filomeno Mendoza Celis was described by his neighbors as a kind and generous man. However, he is currently known as, perhaps, the worst femicide in Mexico.
Mendoza had lived in Atizapán, Mexico, since the 1980s, although he was born in Oaxaca. At some point in his life he had a butcher shop, but he had been doing activism in his neighborhood for some time and invited people to demand improvements in the infrastructure.
When his neighbors were asked about the man, they all referred to him as someone who liked to help out and be a part of activities. In fact, his latest victim was very close to him, so much so that he invited him to family parties.
(You may be interested: The ‘almost perfect’ crime that was solved because a shark threw up an arm).
His last femicide
Reyna González, 34, disappeared on May 14, 2021 after telling her husband, Bruno Portillo, that she would go downtown to get some products for their store. accompanied by Mendoza, who by that point was already a friend of the family.
However, González did not return home after the encounter and Portillo, who was also a police officer, began to investigate what had happened to him.
Portillo managed to locate his wife’s cell phone through the GPS location, whose last record was near Mendoza’s house, but the signal was not enough to track whether he had entered or not. However, he decided to ask the man about the whereabouts of his wife in person.
The husband went to his neighbor’s house and found one of the worst scenes he had ever faced. Although Mendoza tried to prevent the man from entering the place, Portillo entered and saw the dismembered body of his partner.
Reyna González then became the first known victim of the ‘Monster of Atizapán’, as the media began to call it, but not the only one. In fact, in that same house were the remains of more than ten women who had been murdered by Mendoza.
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The ‘Monster of Atizapan’
The investigation that was done on Mendoza revealed that in an underground room located in his house, which had a strong smell of vinegar, the remains of at least 17 women, a man and a minor were found buried.
The State of Mexico Prosecutor’s Office reported that it had collected a total of 4,600 skeletal remains in the house and that there is a possibility that there are more victims who were simply not buried in that same location.
After his arrest, Mendoza confessed that he not only murdered his victims and dismembered them, but also sometimes consumed their meat. From there came the name of the ‘Caníbal de Atizapán’, which was assigned by the local media.
In addition, when searching his things, the Police also found a notebook where the man described the women he had murdered, as well as videos and photographs where he recorded his crimes. Some of the victims’ belongings were also found.
The authorities estimate that the 72-year-old man had been murdering women for approximately three decades.
(Also read: The heinous crimes of Frank Atwood, the last executed in the US).
The Good Neighbor Facade
The investigations of the Police also managed to explain what was the ‘modus operandi’ of the femicide that, apparently, when he consumed alcohol he stopped being the neighbor that everyone knew.
According to some testimonies, Mendoza went to bars to meet women and, if they did not want to go voluntarily with him to his home, he offered them money or simply took them by force. Then he killed them.
Some of the man’s neighbors testified that sometimes when he was drunk, he would change his behavior completely and become a pervert offering them to watch sex videos he had made with their partners.
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The documentary series that begins this Monday will show why the femicide of Atizapán, Andrés Filomeno Mendoza, possibly killed more than 30 women for more than 40 years pic.twitter.com/XDxzTLzN7S– EVENTS (@Sucesosenlinea) June 27, 2022
Even on some occasions neighbors testified that they had seen him with injuries to his face or blood stains on his shirt.
In addition, they also said that their house often smelled strange “as if a dog was burning”, so it is not yet clear if there were more bodies that were possibly cremated by Mendoza.
(Keep reading: ‘Barbie and Ken,’ the sadomasochistic couple who raped at least 30 women.)
‘Cannibal, total outrage’
To the year 2022, Mendoza is serving a life sentence for the murder of Reyna González. However, there are still open investigations into the other remains of women that were found in her house.
Mendoza has spoken to the press and has expressed his supposed repentance: “Nothing can be remedied, and what was done is nothing more to put up with. One regrets it, but it is already too late”, the feminicide commented to the local chain ‘Multimedios’ in 2021.
The impact that this case had on the Mexican population was such that Javier Tejada, a lawyer, decided to carry out a documentary series called ‘Caníbal, total indignation’, in which the story of the man and his victims is portrayed for, apparently, raise awareness about femicides in Mexico, which seem to be on the rise.
“It invites us (the series) to reflect deeply on the collective tragedy of femicides in Mexico and to form an alliance of all to reverse this unfortunate situation”, wrote Arturo Zaldivar, president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, on his Twitter account.
You can also read
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