Dec. 10, 2025
El Chalequero - Francisco Guerrero Pérez
The shepherd saw everything—watched as El Chalequero dragged an elderly woman toward the Consulado River, pulled a knife from his
Episode 11 of 15 | Season 36: Serial Killers in History
Mexico City's first documented serial killer hunted working-class women for nearly three decades. This episode examines the systemic failures that allowed Francisco Guerrero Pérez to operate freely while authorities looked the other way.
The Women History Forgot
Murcia Gallardo was 47 years old when she died—a market vendor in La Merced who sold chilies and produce from the same corner stall she'd operated for over a decade. Her customers knew her voice calling out prices before dawn. She had three children and six grandchildren. Her daughter worked a stall two rows over. When Francisco Guerrero Pérez offered to help carry her baskets home that evening, she had no reason to refuse. He looked respectable. Spoke politely. Everyone in the market district knew El Chalequero by sight—the well-dressed craftsman in his elegant vests.
She became one of at least 21 women murdered along the Consulado River between 1880 and 1908. Market vendors, washerwomen, sex workers—women who worked brutal hours for subsistence wages, who walked to and from work in darkness because they had no choice. Women whose deaths barely registered in police records because the Porfirian authorities considered their lives disposable.
Why This Case Matters
The El Chalequero case exposes a stark truth about institutional failure. For eight years, bodies appeared near the same river, bearing the same method—strangulation with the victim's own clothing. Authorities knew the pattern. Neighbors whispered the killer's name. Yet systematic investigation never came because these were poor women from working-class neighborhoods. Their deaths weren't worth resources or urgency. When Francisco Guerrero Pérez was finally convicted in 1888, it was for just one murder despite evidence suggesting at least 20 victims.
Content Warning: This episode contains descriptions of violence against women and sexual assault references. Listener discretion advised.
Key Case Details
The investigation into El Chalequero represents one of the earliest documented serial murder cases in Mexican history, spanning nearly three decades of the Porfiriato era.
• Timeline of Terror: Guerrero Pérez began killing around 1880, continued until his arrest in February 1888, was released in 1904 due to a bureaucratic error confusing him with political prisoners, and killed again in June 1908. His final victim, an elderly woman named Antonia, was witnessed by a shepherd and the Solorio sisters.
• Pattern and Method: All victims were working-class women from neighborhoods along the Consulado River—Tepito, La Merced, Peralvillo. He used their own clothing, particularly rebozos (traditional shawls), to strangle them. Witnesses reported he would return to crime scenes days later to observe the aftermath.
• Justice Delayed: Despite confessing and being sentenced to death twice, Guerrero Pérez never faced execution. His first death sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment. He died of natural causes in Hospital Juárez in November 1910—the same month the Mexican Revolution began—while awaiting his second execution.
• Survivors Who Testified: Two women—Emilia, a washerwoman left for dead, and Lorenza Urrutía, a sex worker who fought back—survived attacks and later testified. Their courage provided crucial evidence that authorities had long ignored.
Historical Context & Sources
This episode draws on Mexican court records from the 1888 and 1908 trials, contemporary newspaper accounts from the Porfiriato era, and historical research into late 19th-century Mexico City's criminal justice system. The investigation reveals how the rapid industrialization under Porfirio Díaz's regime created stark divides—electric streetlights and European architecture for the wealthy, while working-class neighborhoods along the Consulado River became hunting grounds where women's deaths went largely uninvestigated. Additional insights come from studies of Porfirian-era policing priorities, which focused on protecting elite interests and suppressing political dissent rather than solving crimes against the poor.
Resources & Further Reading
For listeners interested in exploring this case and its historical context further, these sources provide additional perspective:
• The Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City maintains criminal court records from the Porfiriato era, including trial documentation from both Guerrero Pérez proceedings.
• Academic studies of crime and policing during the Porfiriato, particularly work examining class dynamics in Mexican criminal justice, offer crucial context for understanding institutional failures.
• Historical maps of 1880s Mexico City show the stark geographical divide between wealthy neighborhoods and the working-class districts where El Chalequero hunted.
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_01]: the shepherd saw everything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Jose Ines Rodriguez was tending his flock near the Consolato River on the evening of January 13th, 1908.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When he heard a woman's scream, sharp, sudden, cut short.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He looked up to see an elderly woman.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Antonia, being dragged toward the riverbank by a well-dressed
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[SPEAKER_01]: The river ran brown and thick behind them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The man was 68 years old, but moved with practiced violence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Rodriguez stayed hidden behind his flock.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He watched, watched as the man pulled a knife from his best pocket.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The blade caught what little light remained.
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[SPEAKER_01]: watched as he slid, and to neust throat, and round swift motion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The same way you'd kill livestock, precise, and efficient.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Watch as he dragged her body to the water's edge, her blood mixing with the industrial runoff in sewage that passed for a river in that part of Mexico City.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Watched as the man washed his hands in the same polluted water palm, methodical like this was his routine
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[SPEAKER_01]: Later that afternoon, the salorio sisters came to wash clothes at their usual spot along the river.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They found the killer still there, washing blood from his arms and chest in the brown water.
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[SPEAKER_01]: His elegant vest hung on a branch nearby.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He saw them seeing him, made no move to hide,
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[SPEAKER_01]: They knew immediately what they'd witnessed, everyone in the neighborhood knew.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The killer's name was Francisco Guiero Perez.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was called El Chale Caro, the vestmaker, because of his trade and the elegant vests he always wore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Twenty years earlier, he'd terrorized the same neighborhood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This same stretch of river, bodies of women had appeared on these banks for eight years straight.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had known it was him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The washerwomen had whispered his name.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The market vendors had warned their daughters.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The prostitutes had shared his description.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had been too afraid to act.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1888, he'd finally been arrested, convicted, sentenced to death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That sentence was commuted to 20 years in one of Mexico's most notorious prisons.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He served 16 years before being released in 1904, not because of good behavior or parole,
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[SPEAKER_01]: someone had filed his paperwork wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Confused him with political prisoners receiving amnesty under a new administration.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And now, four years after walking free, he killed again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Same method, same river, same neighborhood that had lived in fear of him for nearly three decades.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The salorio sisters testified, this time there would be witnesses, this time there would be justice.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it had taken 28 years and at least 21 dead women to reach that point.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To understand how Mexico City's first known serial killer operated for nearly three decades, you have to understand the Mexico he lived in, the women he targeted, the police who failed to stop him, and the justice system that let him slip through its fingers, not once, but twice.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is the story of Francisco Guero Perez, El Chalicero.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But more importantly, it's the story of the women whose names history barely bothered to record.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, friend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Fowlplay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Born in 1840, in Badgeo Region of Mexico, to a working-class family, Guerrero Perez's early life was marked by hardship and instability.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Growing up in the impoverished neighborhoods of the capital, he witnessed the stark social inequalities that characterized Mexican society during the Paul Filiato era.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was the 11th child in the family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He suffered abuse from his mother, who would beat and suffocate him from an early age.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His father was absent from the home, and the family were extremely poor.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As a child, Guerrero Perez displayed troubling sign that was foreshadowed his future crimes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors reported seeing him torture small animals, and he was known for his sudden outbursts of rage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Despite these warning signs, the limited understanding of criminal psychology at the time meant that his behavior went largely unchecked.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His family struggling to make ends meet had neither the resources nor the knowledge to address his growing psychological issues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In 1862, at the age of 22, Guerrero Perez spread his wings, left the family home and moved to Mexico City, but he trained as a shoemaker.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He settled in the neighbourhood of Parallel Villo, where a deladycled Maria and had four children with her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was a devout Christian who wore beautiful elegant clothing from his Kashmir trousers to a cherry vest and jacket to the multicolored sashes that adorned him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Despite claiming to be a religious man, he was quarrelsome, misogynistic, and allegedly had numerous affairs that led to multiple children.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some thought he may actually have been a pimple due to his behaviour.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would happily tell anyone that would listen to his beliefs, didn't care knew about his affairs, would have violent outbursts and thought he was untouchable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yet many described him as eloquent and charming.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The year was 1880.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Poor Fioro Diaz had seized the Mexican presidency for years earlier in a coup, beginning what will become the poor Fioriato, a 35-year dictatorship marked by rapid industrialization, brutal suppression of dissent, and a widening chasm between rich and poor.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mexico City was transforming, electric street lights were being installed on the Pacio de la Reforma, where wealthy families promenotted and imported European fashions, grand buildings rose in the city center, French architecture, Italian marble, German engineering, the elite spoke of progress, modernization,
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[SPEAKER_01]: But in the working-class neighborhoods, along the consulado river, in tapetu, lameeseed, paravio, nothing was changing, except the body count.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Women weren't disappearing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They were being hunted.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when they were found, they were always near the river.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Contelado River wasn't really a river anymore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: More like an open sewer cutting through the pores districts of Mexico City.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The water ran brown and thick, carrying waste, industrial runoff, textile factory chemicals, and the detritus of urban poverty.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In summer, the smell carried three blocks, human waste mixed with chemical dyes and rotting garbage.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In winter, the fog of the water hung heavy with disease.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The neighbourhoods along its bank were densely packed with tenements, wooden structures leaning against each other, laundry hanging between buildings,
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[SPEAKER_01]: 50 people sharing outdoor privies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The market stayed open past dark because working families couldn't shop during daylight hours.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Polk areas, the bars were working men, drank fermented a gave polk, lined every corner, their doorways spilling yellow lamplight onto dirt streets.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They worked as lovin' deras, washerwomen, spending 10 hours kneeling by the river, scrubbing other people's clothes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They sold food in the markets, chillies, corn, tamales, from before dawn until the evening crowds thinned.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They labored in the textile factories that had sprung up during the poor fairy autos industrial boom, breathing cotton dust, 12 hours a day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These women walked alone, had to, early morning to the market before sunrise, late evening home from work after dark.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice about a woman walking through the streets of her own neighborhood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice about a woman carrying her day's earnings home through unlit streets.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice until the bodies started appearing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first body was found in 1880, near the consulado river.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A woman, mid-30s, probably, strangled with her own ribozo, the shawl working women wore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No identification, no one came forward to claim her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The police made cursorary notes and moved on, just another dead prostitute.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Another body appeared a few months later, same location, same method, same lack of urgency from authorities, then another.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The pattern was forming, but nobody was connecting it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody was tracking it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These were poor women from working class neighborhoods, sex workers, market vendors, factory workers, washerwomen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women Mexico City's police force focused on protecting poor for Ryan elites and suppressing political descent didn't particularly care about
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[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women whose deaths didn't warrant extensive investigation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women whose murders got two lines in a lawd book and then forgotten.
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[SPEAKER_01]: By 1880, approximately 20 bodies had been recovered from or near the Consolato River.
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[SPEAKER_01]: eight years of murder, eight years of women found with their own clothing, used as murder weapons, eight years of the same neighborhoods, the same victim profile, the same notice, upper Randy, all women, all from the same working class districts, all strangled, all disposed of
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[SPEAKER_00]: Between 1887 and 1888, he claimed the lives of at least 20 women, though some historical accounts suggest the true number could be significantly higher.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mexico City found itself in the grip of terror as bodies were discovered with alarming frequency in the city's poorest neighbourhoods.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The murders followed a distinct pattern that revealed Guerrero Perez's evolving mythology.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would typically strike in the early evening hours, approaching women who were walking alone in the vicinity of markets, or on their way home from work.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Using his disarming charm and well-maintained appearance, he would strike up conversations, often offering employment or assistance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The victims often sex workers, usually from impoverished backgrounds, so little reason to distrust a well-drafts craftsman.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The locations of his crimes created a Macarb map across Mexico City's working-class districts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The neighbourhoods of Tepito, La Marseille, and Santa Ana became hunting grounds where women feared to walk alone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nearly every victim bore the same terrible signature, strangulation marks from their own clothing, particularly their Roboser.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Though sometimes he would slip their throat and occasionally he would decapitate them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would then skin his victim using a knife, and use the skin in his trade as a she-maker.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Throwing the body into the concealer to river.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What made these crimes particularly chilling was Guerrero Perez' habits of returning to the crime scene days later.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses reported seeing a well-dressed man in a vest, standing near locations where bodies had been discovered observing the aftermath of his handiwork.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This brazen behaviour spoke to his confidence in avoiding capture and complete lack of remorse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The fear that grip Mexico City during this period was unprecedented.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When we began travelling in groups and markets that usually stayed open until dusk started closing earlier.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Local newspapers filled their pages with gruesome details on the murders, creating a climate of panic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The working class neighbourhoods already struggling with poverty and crime now faced an invisible predator who could strike at any moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez' reign of terror exposed the deep social divides in Mexican society.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The authorities initial sluggish response to the murders of poor women highlighted the class prejudices of this time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you who they were.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo was a market vendor, and Lemursad.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She sold produce, chillies, tomatoes, fresh corn, squash.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From the same corner stall she'd operated for over a decade.
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[SPEAKER_01]: third row from the central fountain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her customers knew her voice, hauling out prices before dawn.
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[SPEAKER_01]: New to arrive early for the best chilies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Still do we from the farms outside the city.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was 47 years old.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At three children, six grandchildren.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her daughter worked a stall
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[SPEAKER_01]: On the evening she died, Marcia had just finished packing up her unsolved produce.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was walking home along her usual route.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The same path she'd walked for years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The same streets she knew like the lines of her own hands.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guiero Perez approached her, offered to help carry her baskets.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She'd seen him before.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone in the market district knew Alchalla Caro.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well dressed, respectable looking, why would she refuse help?
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[SPEAKER_01]: He led her away from the main street, away from the gas lamps
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[SPEAKER_01]: and then he strangled her with her own Raybozo.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The dark blue shawl, with red embroidery she wore every day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The one her mother had woven for her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He pulled it tight around her throat until she stopped moving.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Left her body, near the concelado river, with the Raybozo still nodded around her neck.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, 47 years old, mother, grandmother, market vendor for over a decade.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her murder would be the one Francisco Guiero Perez was eventually convicted of.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The only one of his crimes that made it to trial, with enough evidence to secure a conviction.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not because she was his only victim, but because she was the only one that authorities
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then there was Emilia, not Emilia, Emilia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The court records are clear, even if later retellings got her name wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia was a Lavendera, a washerwoman.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She worked alongside the Consolato River every day, except Sunday, washing clothes for wealthier families who lived blocks away from the smell of the water.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ten hours kneeling on the stone embankment, her hands raw from Wysope, her back aching from the constant bending.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was paid by the peace, three Centavos, for a shirt, five for trousers, eight for a full dress.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She had to wash 40 pieces a day, just to afford rent and food.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On the evening of her attack in early 1888, Francisco Giero Perez approached her as she was ringing out the last load.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The sun was setting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the other live-in diaras had already left.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was charming, well dressed in his vest and good trousers, offered to walk her home because it was getting dark, and a woman shouldn't be alone by the river after sunset.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She accepted, why wouldn't she?
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[SPEAKER_01]: He looked respectable, spoke politely, seemed concerned for her safety.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He led her away from the main path, away from the few people, still out, away from help.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then he raped her, strangled her with her own clothing, left her unconscious near the river, her face and the mud, blood from her torn clothing mixed with the brown water.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But Amelia survived.
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[SPEAKER_01]: when she recovered enough to speak, when the bruises around her throat had faded enough that she could get words out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia identified Francisco Guerrero Perez, described him in perfect detail.
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[SPEAKER_01]: elegant vest, the charming smile, the gentle voice that had turned cold.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She told the place exactly what he'd done, every terrible detail.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her testimony would become crucial evidence, one of the few survivor accounts that existed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One of the few voices that couldn't be silenced.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They'd heard stories, knew the neighborhood rumors, knew that bodies kept appearing near the Consolato River, and that people whispered El Chalachero's name.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But Amelia was a washerwoman, poor, worked in the river mud for Stavos, her word against a well-dressed craftsman who owned his own shop and had been operating openly in that neighborhood for years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Who would believe a washerwoman?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until other witnesses started coming forward.
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[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd seen him with victims before they disappeared.
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[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd noticed him standing near crime scenes watching.
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[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd been to afraid to speak until someone else spoke first that the police finally had to act.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenzo was a sex worker, in the parallel VO neighborhood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She worked the streets near the railroad tracks.
21:13.723 --> 21:18.792
[SPEAKER_01]: The area where factory workers and daily laborers passed through after shifts.
21:20.195 --> 21:24.323
[SPEAKER_01]: Where a woman could earn enough in an evening to pay rent for the week.
21:25.653 --> 21:31.660
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1908, after Guerrero Perez's final arrest, she came forward with her story.
21:32.861 --> 21:36.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Years earlier, she couldn't remember the exact date.
21:36.965 --> 21:39.368
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe 1905, maybe 1906.
21:39.568 --> 21:42.532
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd met him near the tracks.
21:43.392 --> 21:47.497
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd approached her, asked if she had a light for his cigarette.
21:48.678 --> 21:50.260
[SPEAKER_01]: Polite, while dressed,
21:51.404 --> 22:07.984
[SPEAKER_01]: When she came close to help, he pulled a knife, small blade, sharp, forced her to accompany him to a secluded area behind the warehouses, raped her there, tried to strangle her with his hands when he finished.
22:09.406 --> 22:17.496
[SPEAKER_01]: But Lorenza fought back, screamed, clawed at his face, kicked hard enough that he loosened
22:18.826 --> 22:23.374
[SPEAKER_01]: someone heard, a night watchman maybe, or another worker.
22:24.897 --> 22:33.291
[SPEAKER_01]: Viera Perez fled into the darkness, leaving Lorenza gasping on the ground, with his finger marks bruised into her throat.
22:34.621 --> 22:35.823
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenza survived.
22:37.005 --> 22:40.631
[SPEAKER_01]: But like Amelia, she hadn't reported it at the time.
22:40.691 --> 22:49.807
[SPEAKER_01]: Who would believe a prostitute, accusing a well-dressed craftsman, who would investigate, who would care?
22:51.350 --> 22:57.220
[SPEAKER_01]: By 1908, when she finally felt safe enough to testify, those questions had answers.
22:58.212 --> 23:04.241
[SPEAKER_01]: But for years, for the years would have might have mattered when other women might have been saved.
23:05.487 --> 23:06.130
[SPEAKER_01]: They hadn't.
23:08.776 --> 23:31.932
[SPEAKER_01]: and then there's Antonia, the elderly woman murdered on June 13, 1908, the one that shepherd Jose Inez Rodriguez saw, the one whose death, the Celario sisters witnessed in its aftermath, the one whose murder finally brought forward witnesses who weren't to afraid to testify.
23:32.485 --> 23:34.548
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know Antonia's last name.
23:34.568 --> 23:37.994
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how old she was exactly.
23:39.216 --> 23:47.169
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know if she had family, or she lived, or she did for work, whether she had children waiting for her to come home that evening.
23:48.531 --> 23:58.307
[SPEAKER_01]: What we know is she died violently, near the Consolato River, that her throat was slit by a man who'd been killing women for 28 years.
23:59.705 --> 24:03.631
[SPEAKER_01]: that she was just walking, just existing in her own neighborhood.
24:04.532 --> 24:17.091
[SPEAKER_01]: When Francisco Gierro Perez decided she didn't deserve to live, that her death was what finally, finally brought him to justice.
24:17.111 --> 24:25.223
[SPEAKER_01]: 28 years to late for her, 28 years to late, for at least 20 other women.
24:29.101 --> 24:36.628
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia, Emilia, Lorenza, Antonia, and approximately 17 other women whose names won't ever know.
24:38.010 --> 24:46.018
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, women who work brutal hours for substance wages.
24:47.439 --> 24:51.843
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who walked to and from work in the dark because they had no choice.
24:52.864 --> 24:58.770
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose murders were barely investigated because the authorities considered their lives
25:00.033 --> 25:02.808
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose bodies were found and forgotten.
25:04.055 --> 25:06.448
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose families were told nothing.
25:07.711 --> 25:14.298
[SPEAKER_01]: women whose deaths didn't matter enough to warrant anything beyond cursory police notes.
25:16.000 --> 25:19.123
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what Francisco Guillermo Perez counted on.
25:19.183 --> 25:33.499
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what allowed him to kill for nearly three decades, not just his own cruelty, but the systemic indifference that decided certain lives weren't worth protecting.
25:33.479 --> 25:40.290
[SPEAKER_01]: The institutional failure that decided poor women's deaths weren't worth investigating.
25:40.330 --> 25:46.801
[SPEAKER_01]: The social structure that decided working-class women were expendable.
25:48.304 --> 25:53.192
[SPEAKER_01]: He counted on that, and for 28 years he was right.
25:57.121 --> 26:04.471
[SPEAKER_01]: For eight years, bodies had appeared near the Consulato River, wanting women, maybe more.
26:05.712 --> 26:10.158
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone in those working class neighborhoods knew who was responsible.
26:11.600 --> 26:16.126
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone whispered his name, but fear kept them silent.
26:17.227 --> 26:23.415
[SPEAKER_01]: Until February 1888, when the evidence became impossible to ignore,
26:25.690 --> 26:29.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was arrested on the 13th of February 1888.
26:29.516 --> 26:33.101
[SPEAKER_00]: The arrest itself was surprisingly anticlimactic.
26:33.902 --> 26:39.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Officers located Guerrero Perez at his workshop where he was calmly working on a leather vest.
26:39.750 --> 26:44.357
[SPEAKER_00]: He offered no resistance and maintained an unsettling composure as he was taken into custody.
26:44.337 --> 26:51.188
[SPEAKER_00]: When searched, he was found carrying personal items belonging to recent victims, providing immediate evidence of his guilt.
26:52.029 --> 27:03.527
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point an important witness came forward, Amelia, a washerwoman, who recognised Guerrero Perez, and said that she had been raped by him near the Conselada River, and then left for dead.
27:04.672 --> 27:11.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Amelia's testimony matched the scattered descriptions gathered over the previous months, and confirmed that they had the right man.
27:12.244 --> 27:17.251
[SPEAKER_00]: During his initial interrogation, Guerrero Perez's behaviour shocked even hardened investigators.
27:18.213 --> 27:24.823
[SPEAKER_00]: He spoke about his crimes with a disturbed attachment, providing details that only the killer could have known.
27:24.803 --> 27:36.400
[SPEAKER_00]: His arrest bought immense relief to Mexico City's terrorized communities, though the ease with which he had evaded capture for so long exposed serious flaws in the city's law enforcement system.
27:37.421 --> 27:44.972
[SPEAKER_00]: The subsequent trial of Francisco Guerrero Perez became one of the most sensational legal proceedings in 19th century Mexico.
27:44.952 --> 27:52.528
[SPEAKER_00]: The courtroom was consistently packed with spectators, journalists and families of victims, all eager to witness justice being served.
27:53.270 --> 28:02.910
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez maintained an eerily calm demeanor throughout the proceedings, often appearing more interested in the technical aspects of the trial than his own fate.
28:02.890 --> 28:15.952
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution presented overwhelming evidence, including testimonies from survivors, witnesses who had seen him with victims before their disappearances, and the numerous personal effects of murdered women found in his possession.
28:17.194 --> 28:22.603
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps most dumbing was Guerrero Perez' own detailed confession, which he never retracted.
28:22.583 --> 28:27.249
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a parent lack of a more deeply disturbed both the jury and the public.
28:28.030 --> 28:32.615
[SPEAKER_00]: The trial exposed significant shortcomings in Mexico's criminal justice system.
28:33.356 --> 28:40.825
[SPEAKER_00]: The absence of standardized investigative procedures had allowed Guerrero Perez to continue his killing spree far longer than necessary.
28:41.747 --> 28:48.675
[SPEAKER_00]: This realization led to calls for reform, particularly in how evidence was collected and shared between precincts.
28:48.655 --> 28:57.110
[SPEAKER_00]: After a relatively brief deliberation, the jury found Guerrero Perez guilty of the murder of Mercia Gallardo and the assault of Amelia.
28:57.671 --> 28:59.253
[SPEAKER_00]: The other murders could not be proved.
28:59.995 --> 29:04.703
[SPEAKER_00]: The judge sentenced him to death, but this was later converted to 20 years imprisonment.
29:07.167 --> 29:12.216
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial revealed something authorities had known for years, but never acted upon.
29:13.546 --> 29:23.887
[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guillero Perez had been killing women since 1880, 28 years of murders, at least 21 dead women that we know of.
29:25.050 --> 29:31.403
[SPEAKER_01]: Likely more, whose bodies were never found, or whose deaths had never been connected to him.
29:32.834 --> 29:36.381
[SPEAKER_01]: and the response from Mexico City's justice system.
29:37.664 --> 29:41.551
[SPEAKER_01]: They convicted him of one murder, one woman.
29:42.654 --> 29:53.475
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, the market vendor whose body had been found, near the Consolato River, with her own rebozo still nodded around her neck.
29:53.455 --> 30:03.355
[SPEAKER_01]: not because Mercia was the only one he killed, but because Mercia was the only one for whom they'd maintained enough evidence to secure a conviction.
30:03.395 --> 30:07.143
[SPEAKER_01]: The only one they'd bothered to properly investigate.
30:08.145 --> 30:12.814
[SPEAKER_01]: The only one who's death seemed to matter enough to warrant a complete trial.
30:14.785 --> 30:24.379
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial transcripts reveal Giro Perez showed no remorse, described his victims as worthless women who deserved what happened to them.
30:25.861 --> 30:31.950
[SPEAKER_01]: claimed he'd done society a service by removing prostitutes and poor women from the streets.
30:33.263 --> 30:40.793
[SPEAKER_01]: the same attitude that allowed him to operate for decades, the belief that certain lives simply didn't matter.
30:41.815 --> 30:54.752
[SPEAKER_01]: He expressed openly and court, no shame, no regret, just cold contempt for the women he'd murdered, in the working-class neighborhoods he terrorized.
30:56.354 --> 30:59.018
[SPEAKER_01]: His defense argued diminished capacity.
31:00.263 --> 31:09.441
[SPEAKER_01]: claimed childhood abuse had damaged his mind, pointed to his age, 68 years old now, as a mitigating factor.
31:10.724 --> 31:18.880
[SPEAKER_01]: Suggested he wasn't fully responsible for his actions, because of his difficult upbringing and psychological issues.
31:20.210 --> 31:43.723
[SPEAKER_01]: But the prosecution had survivors, had witnesses, had physical evidence, had 28 years of bodies found near the same river, had testimony from Amelia and Lorenza, had the shepherd's account of Antonia's murder, had the hilarious sisters, describing him washing blood from his hands.
31:45.245 --> 31:46.707
[SPEAKER_01]: The verdict was guilty.
31:48.070 --> 31:50.775
[SPEAKER_01]: The sentence was death by hanging.
31:52.378 --> 31:56.706
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, once again, you're a critic in difference.
31:57.948 --> 32:01.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Presidential clemency, political pressure.
32:01.234 --> 32:07.345
[SPEAKER_01]: The sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment in the Berlin prison.
32:08.725 --> 32:21.672
[SPEAKER_01]: no execution, no justice for 21 dead women, just another prison term for a man who'd already been released from prison through bureaucratic incompetence once before.
32:24.368 --> 32:34.803
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez became known as a model prisoner, working in the prison's leather workshop, and maintaining the same polite, measured behavior that had previously allowed him to avoid suspicion.
32:35.885 --> 32:43.356
[SPEAKER_00]: Fellow inmates reported that he'd never spoke of his crimes, but would occasionally share detailed observations about the prison's security weaknesses.
32:44.438 --> 32:50.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was pardoned and released in 1904, but it wasn't long before he was back to his old ways.
32:53.191 --> 32:54.773
[SPEAKER_01]: the pardon wasn't mercy.
32:56.254 --> 32:57.996
[SPEAKER_01]: It was another bureaucratic error.
32:59.117 --> 33:11.570
[SPEAKER_01]: After serving 16 years of his 20-year sentence, Francisco Guero Perez's file was mistakenly placed with political prisoners, receiving amnesty under a new administration.
33:13.112 --> 33:21.240
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone confused paperwork, filed the wrong documents, mixed up a serial killer with political
33:22.486 --> 33:24.829
[SPEAKER_01]: and just like that, he walked free.
33:26.450 --> 33:27.532
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years passed.
33:28.733 --> 33:35.220
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of El Chalachiro, living in the same Paravolo neighborhood, where he'd hunted before.
33:35.280 --> 33:46.553
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of neighbors recognizing him, knowing what he was, but having no legal grounds to report a man who'd served his modified sentence.
33:47.748 --> 33:57.117
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of working-class women walking the same streets where he'd killed before, knowing he was there but having no protection.
33:59.879 --> 34:08.067
[SPEAKER_01]: June 13th, 1908, 20 years after his first conviction, four years after his release.
34:09.668 --> 34:15.814
[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guillero Perez killed again.
34:17.043 --> 34:24.201
[SPEAKER_01]: the one from our opening, the one that shepherds Jose and Ness Rodriguez, witnessed being murdered.
34:25.424 --> 34:32.723
[SPEAKER_01]: Same river, same method, same neighborhood that had lived in fear of him for nearly three decades.
34:32.703 --> 34:37.709
[SPEAKER_01]: But this time, there were witnesses who weren't too afraid to testify.
34:37.769 --> 34:43.156
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, the salorio sister saw him washing blood from his body.
34:44.177 --> 34:47.582
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, a shepherd saw the actual murder happen.
34:48.903 --> 34:51.146
[SPEAKER_01]: This time authorities couldn't ignore it.
34:52.368 --> 34:58.255
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, they arrested him within days.
34:59.399 --> 35:06.407
[SPEAKER_01]: The evidence was overwhelming, eyewitnesses, physical evidence, his own lack of denial.
35:07.669 --> 35:10.693
[SPEAKER_01]: He was convicted, sentenced to death.
35:11.974 --> 35:12.295
[SPEAKER_01]: Again.
35:14.537 --> 35:18.262
[SPEAKER_01]: But Francisco Guiero Perez never faced the executioner.
35:20.324 --> 35:25.170
[SPEAKER_01]: In November, 1910, the same month the Mexican Revolution began.
35:26.416 --> 35:30.182
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same month, Portfiero Diaz's regime started collapsing.
35:31.243 --> 35:35.269
[SPEAKER_01]: Giero Perez died and hospitalwarras in Mexico City.
35:36.651 --> 35:37.773
[SPEAKER_01]: He was 70 years old.
35:39.335 --> 35:49.470
[SPEAKER_01]: The cause of death is elistid variously as brain embolism, tuberculosis, typhoid, accounts differ, records are unclear.
35:49.450 --> 35:51.673
[SPEAKER_01]: What's clear is this.
35:52.594 --> 35:56.139
[SPEAKER_01]: He died in a hospital bed, not at the end of a rope.
35:57.201 --> 36:02.708
[SPEAKER_01]: He died while awaiting execution for one murder when he'd committed at least 21.
36:04.511 --> 36:07.715
[SPEAKER_01]: He died before final justice could be served for Antonia.
36:09.037 --> 36:13.724
[SPEAKER_01]: He died while Amelia and Lorenza and the other survivors were still alive.
36:15.106 --> 36:17.449
[SPEAKER_01]: Still caring what he'd done to them.
36:20.416 --> 36:26.351
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a story that gets told about Francisco Guiero Perez, about El Chelacera.
36:27.394 --> 36:28.236
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes like this.
36:29.299 --> 36:32.527
[SPEAKER_01]: His case was a watershed moment in Mexican criminal justice.
36:33.429 --> 36:36.417
[SPEAKER_01]: His arrest led to reforms and police procedures.
36:36.397 --> 36:42.605
[SPEAKER_01]: His crimes prompted the creation of Mexicans' first specialized homicide units.
36:43.507 --> 36:46.911
[SPEAKER_01]: His trial changed how evidence was collected and documented.
36:47.993 --> 36:56.464
[SPEAKER_01]: The horrors of his murders forced Mexico City to confront its failures and build better systems to protect vulnerable women.
36:57.997 --> 37:13.894
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a comforting story, a story where something good came from something terrible, where the murders of 21 women led to systemic change that would protect future victims, where their death at least meant something.
37:15.395 --> 37:17.057
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also not true.
37:20.140 --> 37:27.868
[SPEAKER_01]: The historical record doesn't support the claim that Guillermo Perez' case prompted specific
37:29.080 --> 37:51.105
[SPEAKER_01]: The changes that did come to Mexican law enforcement in the early 20th century, and there were some, came from broader forces, from the Mexican Revolution that began five months after his death, from the collapse of the poor Fieriato, and the slow, painful construction of new institutions.
37:51.085 --> 37:56.350
[SPEAKER_01]: From decades of activists and reformers pushing for change.
37:57.390 --> 38:02.355
[SPEAKER_01]: From political upheaval that transformed everything about how Mexico was governed.
38:03.596 --> 38:13.444
[SPEAKER_01]: Not from one serial killer's arrests, not from 21 murdered women, not from three decades of systemic failure, finally being exposed.
38:14.525 --> 38:19.810
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth is less comforting, but more important to acknowledge
38:21.848 --> 38:28.496
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth is that the women, Francisco Giro, provides murdered, failed by every system that should have protected them.
38:29.657 --> 38:46.658
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by police who didn't think poor women's deaths were worth investigating thoroughly, who made cursory reports and moved on, who knew the pattern was there, same neighborhood, same victim profile, same method, year after year, and did nothing
38:47.887 --> 39:06.148
[SPEAKER_01]: who waited until well-dressed craftsmen was literally seen murdering someone by multiple witnesses before taking action, failed by a justice system that convicted him of only one murder when the evidence suggested at least 20.
39:07.310 --> 39:12.238
[SPEAKER_01]: that released him through bureaucratic incompetence after his first conviction.
39:13.600 --> 39:21.813
[SPEAKER_01]: That commuted his death sentence after the second conviction, sending him to prison where he died of natural causes less than two years later.
39:23.055 --> 39:31.748
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by a prison system that confused him with political prisoners and released him early, putting him back on the streets to kill again.
39:31.728 --> 39:55.052
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by a society that considered working class women's lives inherently less valuable than others, that decided market vendors and washer women and sex workers weren't worth protecting, that allowed neighborhoods full of vulnerable women to become hunting grounds, because the victims weren't important enough.
39:56.534 --> 40:01.101
[SPEAKER_01]: That systemic failure is giaroporizes real legacy.
40:02.202 --> 40:15.522
[SPEAKER_01]: Not reforms, not changes, not lessons learned, but the stark, uncomfortable reminder of what happens when society decides certain people don't matter enough to protect.
40:16.852 --> 40:25.292
[SPEAKER_01]: The neighborhoods along the Consolato River in 1880s, Mexico City were full of women who had no choice but to be vulnerable.
40:26.414 --> 40:29.241
[SPEAKER_01]: Women working brutal hours for substance wages.
40:30.588 --> 40:38.198
[SPEAKER_01]: Women walking to and from work in darkness, because they couldn't afford transportation, and their jobs didn't match daylight hours.
40:39.520 --> 40:43.025
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who couldn't hire security or pay for safe housing.
40:44.266 --> 40:47.831
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who existed in the spaces the poor fiato forgot.
40:48.953 --> 40:52.778
[SPEAKER_01]: The tenements, the markets, the riverside washing stones.
40:53.879 --> 40:58.806
[SPEAKER_01]: While electric street lights were being installed, blocks away for the wealthy.
41:00.136 --> 41:09.312
[SPEAKER_01]: And when those women started dying, when their bodies appeared near the river year after year, their response from authorities was minimal.
41:10.555 --> 41:17.487
[SPEAKER_01]: Her summary reports, no real investigation, no coordination between precincts.
41:17.467 --> 41:25.833
[SPEAKER_01]: No urgency, no outrage, just bureaucratic notation that another nameless woman have been found dead in a poor neighborhood.
41:26.636 --> 41:31.611
[SPEAKER_01]: Another casualty of urban poverty that didn't warrant resources or attention.
41:32.806 --> 41:47.862
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until survivors came forward, until Amelia testified, until Lorenza testified, until witnesses felt safe enough to speak, until someone with enough social standing was murdered in front of witnesses.
41:48.331 --> 41:52.316
[SPEAKER_01]: until the evidence became so overwhelming, it couldn't be ignored.
41:53.577 --> 41:58.003
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, Giarro Perez was only convicted of one murder.
41:59.184 --> 42:04.070
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, he was released after 16 years through bureaucratic failure.
42:05.231 --> 42:13.461
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, when he killed again, it took 28 years total before he died in prison of natural causes.
42:16.462 --> 42:22.235
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, who sold chilies, and Lama said market, had six grandchildren.
42:23.718 --> 42:29.691
[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia, who washed clothes, and the consulato river, for three Centavo's a piece.
42:31.255 --> 42:34.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenza Arudia, who survived, and testified.
42:35.918 --> 42:45.135
[SPEAKER_01]: Antonia, whose last name we don't know, and approximately 17 other women, whose names history never bothered to record.
42:46.678 --> 42:48.000
[SPEAKER_01]: They deserved protection.
42:49.122 --> 42:50.605
[SPEAKER_01]: They deserved investigation.
42:51.507 --> 42:52.729
[SPEAKER_01]: It deserved justice.
42:53.907 --> 42:57.452
[SPEAKER_01]: What they got was a system that considered their lives disposable.
42:58.674 --> 43:04.643
[SPEAKER_01]: That legacy, that failure, is what we need to remember about El Chalequiero.
43:06.125 --> 43:21.467
[SPEAKER_01]: Not reform myths, not comforting narratives about lessons learned, but the honest truth about what happens when certain lives are deemed not worth protecting, when bureaucratic and
43:22.763 --> 43:31.497
[SPEAKER_01]: When three decades of murders in the same neighborhood, targeting the same type of victim, barely register as worth investigating.
43:32.979 --> 43:33.901
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the legacy.
43:35.083 --> 43:37.727
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what deserves to be remembered.
43:41.132 --> 43:42.915
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember.
43:44.026 --> 43:48.436
[SPEAKER_01]: When a system decides, certain lives don't matter enough to protect.
43:49.358 --> 43:51.844
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just failing the victims.
43:51.864 --> 43:53.968
[SPEAKER_01]: It's revealing what it truly values.
43:55.452 --> 43:56.955
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening, friend.
00:05.093 --> 00:06.836
[SPEAKER_01]: the shepherd saw everything.
00:08.114 --> 00:16.444
[SPEAKER_01]: Jose Ines Rodriguez was tending his flock near the Consolato River on the evening of January 13th, 1908.
00:17.885 --> 00:23.812
[SPEAKER_01]: When he heard a woman's scream, sharp, sudden, cut short.
00:25.254 --> 00:27.036
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked up to see an elderly woman.
00:27.797 --> 00:37.648
[SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Antonia, being dragged toward the riverbank by a well-dressed
00:38.911 --> 00:41.576
[SPEAKER_01]: The river ran brown and thick behind them.
00:42.939 --> 00:47.608
[SPEAKER_01]: The man was 68 years old, but moved with practiced violence.
00:49.111 --> 00:51.695
[SPEAKER_01]: Rodriguez stayed hidden behind his flock.
00:53.118 --> 00:58.108
[SPEAKER_01]: He watched, watched as the man pulled a knife from his best pocket.
00:59.390 --> 01:01.915
[SPEAKER_01]: The blade caught what little light remained.
01:03.413 --> 01:09.062
[SPEAKER_01]: watched as he slid, and to neust throat, and round swift motion.
01:10.144 --> 01:16.494
[SPEAKER_01]: The same way you'd kill livestock, precise, and efficient.
01:16.514 --> 01:27.531
[SPEAKER_01]: Watch as he dragged her body to the water's edge, her blood mixing with the industrial runoff in sewage that passed for a river in that part of Mexico City.
01:27.511 --> 01:37.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Watched as the man washed his hands in the same polluted water palm, methodical like this was his routine
01:38.547 --> 01:45.514
[SPEAKER_01]: Later that afternoon, the salorio sisters came to wash clothes at their usual spot along the river.
01:47.016 --> 01:53.743
[SPEAKER_01]: They found the killer still there, washing blood from his arms and chest in the brown water.
01:54.904 --> 01:57.667
[SPEAKER_01]: His elegant vest hung on a branch nearby.
01:57.707 --> 02:03.053
[SPEAKER_01]: He saw them seeing him, made no move to hide,
02:04.366 --> 02:10.314
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew immediately what they'd witnessed, everyone in the neighborhood knew.
02:10.354 --> 02:15.761
[SPEAKER_01]: The killer's name was Francisco Guiero Perez.
02:17.103 --> 02:25.014
[SPEAKER_01]: He was called El Chale Caro, the vestmaker, because of his trade and the elegant vests he always wore.
02:25.054 --> 02:30.441
[SPEAKER_01]: Twenty years earlier, he'd terrorized the same neighborhood.
02:31.602 --> 02:38.815
[SPEAKER_01]: This same stretch of river, bodies of women had appeared on these banks for eight years straight.
02:40.297 --> 02:41.840
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had known it was him.
02:41.900 --> 02:45.286
[SPEAKER_01]: The washerwomen had whispered his name.
02:46.108 --> 02:48.492
[SPEAKER_01]: The market vendors had warned their daughters.
02:49.333 --> 02:51.818
[SPEAKER_01]: The prostitutes had shared his description.
02:53.280 --> 02:55.905
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had been too afraid to act.
02:57.387 --> 03:04.715
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1888, he'd finally been arrested, convicted, sentenced to death.
03:06.117 --> 03:11.823
[SPEAKER_01]: That sentence was commuted to 20 years in one of Mexico's most notorious prisons.
03:13.304 --> 03:24.036
[SPEAKER_01]: He served 16 years before being released in 1904, not because of good behavior or parole,
03:25.332 --> 03:28.336
[SPEAKER_01]: someone had filed his paperwork wrong.
03:29.457 --> 03:34.943
[SPEAKER_01]: Confused him with political prisoners receiving amnesty under a new administration.
03:36.505 --> 03:41.211
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, four years after walking free, he killed again.
03:41.271 --> 03:54.647
[SPEAKER_01]: Same method, same river, same neighborhood that had lived in fear of him for nearly three decades.
03:55.943 --> 04:04.197
[SPEAKER_01]: The salorio sisters testified, this time there would be witnesses, this time there would be justice.
04:05.599 --> 04:11.809
[SPEAKER_01]: But it had taken 28 years and at least 21 dead women to reach that point.
04:13.814 --> 04:35.373
[SPEAKER_01]: To understand how Mexico City's first known serial killer operated for nearly three decades, you have to understand the Mexico he lived in, the women he targeted, the police who failed to stop him, and the justice system that let him slip through its fingers, not once, but twice.
04:36.714 --> 04:42.319
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the story of Francisco Guero Perez, El Chalicero.
04:42.299 --> 04:48.260
[SPEAKER_01]: But more importantly, it's the story of the women whose names history barely bothered to record.
04:50.507 --> 04:51.150
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, friend.
04:52.013 --> 04:53.558
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Fowlplay.
04:57.014 --> 05:07.346
[SPEAKER_00]: Born in 1840, in Badgeo Region of Mexico, to a working-class family, Guerrero Perez's early life was marked by hardship and instability.
05:08.387 --> 05:19.140
[SPEAKER_00]: Growing up in the impoverished neighborhoods of the capital, he witnessed the stark social inequalities that characterized Mexican society during the Paul Filiato era.
05:19.120 --> 05:21.784
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was the 11th child in the family.
05:22.384 --> 05:26.710
[SPEAKER_00]: He suffered abuse from his mother, who would beat and suffocate him from an early age.
05:27.351 --> 05:30.795
[SPEAKER_00]: His father was absent from the home, and the family were extremely poor.
05:31.977 --> 05:37.084
[SPEAKER_00]: As a child, Guerrero Perez displayed troubling sign that was foreshadowed his future crimes.
05:37.985 --> 05:44.233
[SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors reported seeing him torture small animals, and he was known for his sudden outbursts of rage.
05:44.213 --> 05:51.528
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite these warning signs, the limited understanding of criminal psychology at the time meant that his behavior went largely unchecked.
05:52.791 --> 05:59.826
[SPEAKER_00]: His family struggling to make ends meet had neither the resources nor the knowledge to address his growing psychological issues.
05:59.806 --> 06:10.759
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1862, at the age of 22, Guerrero Perez spread his wings, left the family home and moved to Mexico City, but he trained as a shoemaker.
06:12.001 --> 06:17.727
[SPEAKER_00]: He settled in the neighbourhood of Parallel Villo, where a deladycled Maria and had four children with her.
06:18.608 --> 06:28.260
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a devout Christian who wore beautiful elegant clothing from his Kashmir trousers to a cherry vest and jacket to the multicolored sashes that adorned him.
06:28.240 --> 06:36.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite claiming to be a religious man, he was quarrelsome, misogynistic, and allegedly had numerous affairs that led to multiple children.
06:37.413 --> 06:40.458
[SPEAKER_00]: Some thought he may actually have been a pimple due to his behaviour.
06:41.660 --> 06:49.711
[SPEAKER_00]: He would happily tell anyone that would listen to his beliefs, didn't care knew about his affairs, would have violent outbursts and thought he was untouchable.
06:50.332 --> 06:56.982
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet many described him as eloquent and charming.
06:59.425 --> 07:00.507
[SPEAKER_01]: The year was 1880.
07:01.990 --> 07:22.648
[SPEAKER_01]: Poor Fioro Diaz had seized the Mexican presidency for years earlier in a coup, beginning what will become the poor Fioriato, a 35-year dictatorship marked by rapid industrialization, brutal suppression of dissent, and a widening chasm between rich and poor.
07:23.033 --> 07:52.348
[SPEAKER_01]: Mexico City was transforming, electric street lights were being installed on the Pacio de la Reforma, where wealthy families promenotted and imported European fashions, grand buildings rose in the city center, French architecture, Italian marble, German engineering, the elite spoke of progress, modernization,
07:53.560 --> 08:04.538
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the working-class neighborhoods, along the consulado river, in tapetu, lameeseed, paravio, nothing was changing, except the body count.
08:05.840 --> 08:07.363
[SPEAKER_01]: Women weren't disappearing.
08:08.264 --> 08:09.126
[SPEAKER_01]: They were being hunted.
08:09.186 --> 08:13.493
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they were found, they were always near the river.
08:15.481 --> 08:18.645
[SPEAKER_01]: The Contelado River wasn't really a river anymore.
08:19.567 --> 08:24.193
[SPEAKER_01]: More like an open sewer cutting through the pores districts of Mexico City.
08:25.294 --> 08:35.228
[SPEAKER_01]: The water ran brown and thick, carrying waste, industrial runoff, textile factory chemicals, and the detritus of urban poverty.
08:35.208 --> 08:43.458
[SPEAKER_01]: In summer, the smell carried three blocks, human waste mixed with chemical dyes and rotting garbage.
08:44.459 --> 08:48.484
[SPEAKER_01]: In winter, the fog of the water hung heavy with disease.
08:49.765 --> 09:00.338
[SPEAKER_01]: The neighbourhoods along its bank were densely packed with tenements, wooden structures leaning against each other, laundry hanging between buildings,
09:00.318 --> 09:02.920
[SPEAKER_01]: 50 people sharing outdoor privies.
09:04.081 --> 09:10.266
[SPEAKER_01]: The market stayed open past dark because working families couldn't shop during daylight hours.
09:11.688 --> 09:29.683
[SPEAKER_01]: The Polk areas, the bars were working men, drank fermented a gave polk, lined every corner, their doorways spilling yellow lamplight onto dirt streets.
09:30.710 --> 09:38.962
[SPEAKER_01]: They worked as lovin' deras, washerwomen, spending 10 hours kneeling by the river, scrubbing other people's clothes.
09:40.084 --> 09:48.036
[SPEAKER_01]: They sold food in the markets, chillies, corn, tamales, from before dawn until the evening crowds thinned.
09:49.238 --> 09:58.472
[SPEAKER_01]: They labored in the textile factories that had sprung up during the poor fairy autos industrial boom, breathing cotton dust, 12 hours a day.
09:59.937 --> 10:09.310
[SPEAKER_01]: These women walked alone, had to, early morning to the market before sunrise, late evening home from work after dark.
10:10.652 --> 10:15.399
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice about a woman walking through the streets of her own neighborhood.
10:16.480 --> 10:21.668
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice about a woman carrying her day's earnings home through unlit streets.
10:22.950 --> 10:26.755
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody thought twice until the bodies started appearing.
10:28.827 --> 10:32.993
[SPEAKER_01]: The first body was found in 1880, near the consulado river.
10:34.334 --> 10:41.444
[SPEAKER_01]: A woman, mid-30s, probably, strangled with her own ribozo, the shawl working women wore.
10:41.464 --> 10:46.631
[SPEAKER_01]: No identification, no one came forward to claim her.
10:47.672 --> 10:57.265
[SPEAKER_01]: The police made cursorary notes and moved on, just another dead prostitute.
10:57.245 --> 11:08.401
[SPEAKER_01]: Another body appeared a few months later, same location, same method, same lack of urgency from authorities, then another.
11:09.763 --> 11:13.128
[SPEAKER_01]: The pattern was forming, but nobody was connecting it.
11:14.029 --> 11:15.591
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody was tracking it.
11:16.769 --> 11:26.024
[SPEAKER_01]: These were poor women from working class neighborhoods, sex workers, market vendors, factory workers, washerwomen.
11:27.106 --> 11:36.702
[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women Mexico City's police force focused on protecting poor for Ryan elites and suppressing political descent didn't particularly care about
11:37.812 --> 11:41.338
[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women whose deaths didn't warrant extensive investigation.
11:42.681 --> 11:47.650
[SPEAKER_01]: The kind of women whose murders got two lines in a lawd book and then forgotten.
11:49.152 --> 11:55.804
[SPEAKER_01]: By 1880, approximately 20 bodies had been recovered from or near the Consolato River.
11:56.982 --> 12:25.352
[SPEAKER_01]: eight years of murder, eight years of women found with their own clothing, used as murder weapons, eight years of the same neighborhoods, the same victim profile, the same notice, upper Randy, all women, all from the same working class districts, all strangled, all disposed of
12:27.661 --> 12:36.900
[SPEAKER_00]: Between 1887 and 1888, he claimed the lives of at least 20 women, though some historical accounts suggest the true number could be significantly higher.
12:38.223 --> 12:45.838
[SPEAKER_00]: Mexico City found itself in the grip of terror as bodies were discovered with alarming frequency in the city's poorest neighbourhoods.
12:45.818 --> 12:51.309
[SPEAKER_00]: The murders followed a distinct pattern that revealed Guerrero Perez's evolving mythology.
12:52.211 --> 13:00.908
[SPEAKER_00]: He would typically strike in the early evening hours, approaching women who were walking alone in the vicinity of markets, or on their way home from work.
13:00.888 --> 13:08.706
[SPEAKER_00]: Using his disarming charm and well-maintained appearance, he would strike up conversations, often offering employment or assistance.
13:09.548 --> 13:17.226
[SPEAKER_00]: The victims often sex workers, usually from impoverished backgrounds, so little reason to distrust a well-drafts craftsman.
13:18.235 --> 13:23.642
[SPEAKER_00]: The locations of his crimes created a Macarb map across Mexico City's working-class districts.
13:24.724 --> 13:31.613
[SPEAKER_00]: The neighbourhoods of Tepito, La Marseille, and Santa Ana became hunting grounds where women feared to walk alone.
13:32.675 --> 13:39.484
[SPEAKER_00]: Nearly every victim bore the same terrible signature, strangulation marks from their own clothing, particularly their Roboser.
13:39.464 --> 13:43.675
[SPEAKER_00]: Though sometimes he would slip their throat and occasionally he would decapitate them.
13:44.418 --> 13:49.150
[SPEAKER_00]: He would then skin his victim using a knife, and use the skin in his trade as a she-maker.
13:49.632 --> 13:51.938
[SPEAKER_00]: Throwing the body into the concealer to river.
13:53.808 --> 13:59.721
[SPEAKER_00]: What made these crimes particularly chilling was Guerrero Perez' habits of returning to the crime scene days later.
14:00.643 --> 14:08.440
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses reported seeing a well-dressed man in a vest, standing near locations where bodies had been discovered observing the aftermath of his handiwork.
14:09.081 --> 14:14.112
[SPEAKER_00]: This brazen behaviour spoke to his confidence in avoiding capture and complete lack of remorse.
14:14.986 --> 14:18.293
[SPEAKER_00]: The fear that grip Mexico City during this period was unprecedented.
14:19.115 --> 14:24.467
[SPEAKER_00]: When we began travelling in groups and markets that usually stayed open until dusk started closing earlier.
14:25.569 --> 14:31.763
[SPEAKER_00]: Local newspapers filled their pages with gruesome details on the murders, creating a climate of panic.
14:31.743 --> 14:40.272
[SPEAKER_00]: The working class neighbourhoods already struggling with poverty and crime now faced an invisible predator who could strike at any moment.
14:40.292 --> 14:45.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez' reign of terror exposed the deep social divides in Mexican society.
14:46.339 --> 14:52.726
[SPEAKER_00]: The authorities initial sluggish response to the murders of poor women highlighted the class prejudices of this time.
14:55.349 --> 14:56.670
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you who they were.
14:58.169 --> 15:01.315
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo was a market vendor, and Lemursad.
15:02.297 --> 15:07.668
[SPEAKER_01]: She sold produce, chillies, tomatoes, fresh corn, squash.
15:08.610 --> 15:12.718
[SPEAKER_01]: From the same corner stall she'd operated for over a decade.
15:13.357 --> 15:15.140
[SPEAKER_01]: third row from the central fountain.
15:16.442 --> 15:19.907
[SPEAKER_01]: Her customers knew her voice, hauling out prices before dawn.
15:21.089 --> 15:23.313
[SPEAKER_01]: New to arrive early for the best chilies.
15:24.094 --> 15:26.598
[SPEAKER_01]: Still do we from the farms outside the city.
15:27.900 --> 15:29.302
[SPEAKER_01]: She was 47 years old.
15:30.284 --> 15:32.647
[SPEAKER_01]: At three children, six grandchildren.
15:33.769 --> 15:40.039
[SPEAKER_01]: Her daughter worked a stall
15:40.019 --> 15:44.967
[SPEAKER_01]: On the evening she died, Marcia had just finished packing up her unsolved produce.
15:46.069 --> 15:48.373
[SPEAKER_01]: She was walking home along her usual route.
15:49.235 --> 15:51.238
[SPEAKER_01]: The same path she'd walked for years.
15:52.200 --> 15:55.345
[SPEAKER_01]: The same streets she knew like the lines of her own hands.
15:56.523 --> 16:03.192
[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guiero Perez approached her, offered to help carry her baskets.
16:03.212 --> 16:04.233
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd seen him before.
16:05.455 --> 16:08.759
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone in the market district knew Alchalla Caro.
16:10.001 --> 16:14.988
[SPEAKER_01]: Well dressed, respectable looking, why would she refuse help?
16:16.390 --> 16:26.243
[SPEAKER_01]: He led her away from the main street, away from the gas lamps
16:27.455 --> 16:30.719
[SPEAKER_01]: and then he strangled her with her own Raybozo.
16:31.780 --> 16:36.006
[SPEAKER_01]: The dark blue shawl, with red embroidery she wore every day.
16:36.026 --> 16:38.789
[SPEAKER_01]: The one her mother had woven for her.
16:40.251 --> 16:44.056
[SPEAKER_01]: He pulled it tight around her throat until she stopped moving.
16:45.358 --> 16:51.285
[SPEAKER_01]: Left her body, near the concelado river, with the Raybozo still nodded around her neck.
16:52.970 --> 17:01.580
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, 47 years old, mother, grandmother, market vendor for over a decade.
17:03.102 --> 17:07.928
[SPEAKER_01]: Her murder would be the one Francisco Guiero Perez was eventually convicted of.
17:07.968 --> 17:14.636
[SPEAKER_01]: The only one of his crimes that made it to trial, with enough evidence to secure a conviction.
17:14.676 --> 17:22.926
[SPEAKER_01]: Not because she was his only victim, but because she was the only one that authorities
17:24.897 --> 17:29.382
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there was Emilia, not Emilia, Emilia.
17:30.723 --> 17:35.648
[SPEAKER_01]: The court records are clear, even if later retellings got her name wrong.
17:36.890 --> 17:40.033
[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia was a Lavendera, a washerwoman.
17:40.754 --> 17:50.584
[SPEAKER_01]: She worked alongside the Consolato River every day, except Sunday, washing clothes for wealthier families who lived blocks away from the smell of the water.
17:51.762 --> 17:59.815
[SPEAKER_01]: Ten hours kneeling on the stone embankment, her hands raw from Wysope, her back aching from the constant bending.
18:01.037 --> 18:09.310
[SPEAKER_01]: She was paid by the peace, three Centavos, for a shirt, five for trousers, eight for a full dress.
18:10.431 --> 18:14.698
[SPEAKER_01]: She had to wash 40 pieces a day, just to afford rent and food.
18:15.893 --> 18:24.195
[SPEAKER_01]: On the evening of her attack in early 1888, Francisco Giero Perez approached her as she was ringing out the last load.
18:25.238 --> 18:26.100
[SPEAKER_01]: The sun was setting.
18:27.243 --> 18:31.033
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the other live-in diaras had already left.
18:31.013 --> 18:42.407
[SPEAKER_01]: He was charming, well dressed in his vest and good trousers, offered to walk her home because it was getting dark, and a woman shouldn't be alone by the river after sunset.
18:43.809 --> 18:46.131
[SPEAKER_01]: She accepted, why wouldn't she?
18:46.151 --> 18:53.140
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked respectable, spoke politely, seemed concerned for her safety.
18:54.352 --> 19:01.159
[SPEAKER_01]: He led her away from the main path, away from the few people, still out, away from help.
19:02.701 --> 19:15.814
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he raped her, strangled her with her own clothing, left her unconscious near the river, her face and the mud, blood from her torn clothing mixed with the brown water.
19:17.316 --> 19:19.178
[SPEAKER_01]: But Amelia survived.
19:21.200 --> 19:28.258
[SPEAKER_01]: when she recovered enough to speak, when the bruises around her throat had faded enough that she could get words out.
19:29.561 --> 19:36.559
[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia identified Francisco Guerrero Perez, described him in perfect detail.
19:37.855 --> 19:42.823
[SPEAKER_01]: elegant vest, the charming smile, the gentle voice that had turned cold.
19:44.145 --> 19:48.852
[SPEAKER_01]: She told the place exactly what he'd done, every terrible detail.
19:50.194 --> 19:56.123
[SPEAKER_01]: Her testimony would become crucial evidence, one of the few survivor accounts that existed.
19:56.143 --> 20:04.335
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the few voices that couldn't be silenced.
20:05.564 --> 20:16.779
[SPEAKER_01]: They'd heard stories, knew the neighborhood rumors, knew that bodies kept appearing near the Consolato River, and that people whispered El Chalachero's name.
20:18.382 --> 20:33.883
[SPEAKER_01]: But Amelia was a washerwoman, poor, worked in the river mud for Stavos, her word against a well-dressed craftsman who owned his own shop and had been operating openly in that neighborhood for years.
20:35.264 --> 20:37.066
[SPEAKER_01]: Who would believe a washerwoman?
20:38.467 --> 20:41.570
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until other witnesses started coming forward.
20:42.611 --> 20:45.954
[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd seen him with victims before they disappeared.
20:47.236 --> 20:50.879
[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd noticed him standing near crime scenes watching.
20:51.820 --> 21:04.933
[SPEAKER_01]: People who'd been to afraid to speak until someone else spoke first that the police finally had to act.
21:05.487 --> 21:09.314
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenzo was a sex worker, in the parallel VO neighborhood.
21:10.597 --> 21:12.741
[SPEAKER_01]: She worked the streets near the railroad tracks.
21:13.723 --> 21:18.792
[SPEAKER_01]: The area where factory workers and daily laborers passed through after shifts.
21:20.195 --> 21:24.323
[SPEAKER_01]: Where a woman could earn enough in an evening to pay rent for the week.
21:25.653 --> 21:31.660
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1908, after Guerrero Perez's final arrest, she came forward with her story.
21:32.861 --> 21:36.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Years earlier, she couldn't remember the exact date.
21:36.965 --> 21:39.368
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe 1905, maybe 1906.
21:39.568 --> 21:42.532
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd met him near the tracks.
21:43.392 --> 21:47.497
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd approached her, asked if she had a light for his cigarette.
21:48.678 --> 21:50.260
[SPEAKER_01]: Polite, while dressed,
21:51.404 --> 22:07.984
[SPEAKER_01]: When she came close to help, he pulled a knife, small blade, sharp, forced her to accompany him to a secluded area behind the warehouses, raped her there, tried to strangle her with his hands when he finished.
22:09.406 --> 22:17.496
[SPEAKER_01]: But Lorenza fought back, screamed, clawed at his face, kicked hard enough that he loosened
22:18.826 --> 22:23.374
[SPEAKER_01]: someone heard, a night watchman maybe, or another worker.
22:24.897 --> 22:33.291
[SPEAKER_01]: Viera Perez fled into the darkness, leaving Lorenza gasping on the ground, with his finger marks bruised into her throat.
22:34.621 --> 22:35.823
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenza survived.
22:37.005 --> 22:40.631
[SPEAKER_01]: But like Amelia, she hadn't reported it at the time.
22:40.691 --> 22:49.807
[SPEAKER_01]: Who would believe a prostitute, accusing a well-dressed craftsman, who would investigate, who would care?
22:51.350 --> 22:57.220
[SPEAKER_01]: By 1908, when she finally felt safe enough to testify, those questions had answers.
22:58.212 --> 23:04.241
[SPEAKER_01]: But for years, for the years would have might have mattered when other women might have been saved.
23:05.487 --> 23:06.130
[SPEAKER_01]: They hadn't.
23:08.776 --> 23:31.932
[SPEAKER_01]: and then there's Antonia, the elderly woman murdered on June 13, 1908, the one that shepherd Jose Inez Rodriguez saw, the one whose death, the Celario sisters witnessed in its aftermath, the one whose murder finally brought forward witnesses who weren't to afraid to testify.
23:32.485 --> 23:34.548
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know Antonia's last name.
23:34.568 --> 23:37.994
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how old she was exactly.
23:39.216 --> 23:47.169
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know if she had family, or she lived, or she did for work, whether she had children waiting for her to come home that evening.
23:48.531 --> 23:58.307
[SPEAKER_01]: What we know is she died violently, near the Consolato River, that her throat was slit by a man who'd been killing women for 28 years.
23:59.705 --> 24:03.631
[SPEAKER_01]: that she was just walking, just existing in her own neighborhood.
24:04.532 --> 24:17.091
[SPEAKER_01]: When Francisco Gierro Perez decided she didn't deserve to live, that her death was what finally, finally brought him to justice.
24:17.111 --> 24:25.223
[SPEAKER_01]: 28 years to late for her, 28 years to late, for at least 20 other women.
24:29.101 --> 24:36.628
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia, Emilia, Lorenza, Antonia, and approximately 17 other women whose names won't ever know.
24:38.010 --> 24:46.018
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, women who work brutal hours for substance wages.
24:47.439 --> 24:51.843
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who walked to and from work in the dark because they had no choice.
24:52.864 --> 24:58.770
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose murders were barely investigated because the authorities considered their lives
25:00.033 --> 25:02.808
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose bodies were found and forgotten.
25:04.055 --> 25:06.448
[SPEAKER_01]: Women whose families were told nothing.
25:07.711 --> 25:14.298
[SPEAKER_01]: women whose deaths didn't matter enough to warrant anything beyond cursory police notes.
25:16.000 --> 25:19.123
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what Francisco Guillermo Perez counted on.
25:19.183 --> 25:33.499
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what allowed him to kill for nearly three decades, not just his own cruelty, but the systemic indifference that decided certain lives weren't worth protecting.
25:33.479 --> 25:40.290
[SPEAKER_01]: The institutional failure that decided poor women's deaths weren't worth investigating.
25:40.330 --> 25:46.801
[SPEAKER_01]: The social structure that decided working-class women were expendable.
25:48.304 --> 25:53.192
[SPEAKER_01]: He counted on that, and for 28 years he was right.
25:57.121 --> 26:04.471
[SPEAKER_01]: For eight years, bodies had appeared near the Consulato River, wanting women, maybe more.
26:05.712 --> 26:10.158
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone in those working class neighborhoods knew who was responsible.
26:11.600 --> 26:16.126
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone whispered his name, but fear kept them silent.
26:17.227 --> 26:23.415
[SPEAKER_01]: Until February 1888, when the evidence became impossible to ignore,
26:25.690 --> 26:29.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was arrested on the 13th of February 1888.
26:29.516 --> 26:33.101
[SPEAKER_00]: The arrest itself was surprisingly anticlimactic.
26:33.902 --> 26:39.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Officers located Guerrero Perez at his workshop where he was calmly working on a leather vest.
26:39.750 --> 26:44.357
[SPEAKER_00]: He offered no resistance and maintained an unsettling composure as he was taken into custody.
26:44.337 --> 26:51.188
[SPEAKER_00]: When searched, he was found carrying personal items belonging to recent victims, providing immediate evidence of his guilt.
26:52.029 --> 27:03.527
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point an important witness came forward, Amelia, a washerwoman, who recognised Guerrero Perez, and said that she had been raped by him near the Conselada River, and then left for dead.
27:04.672 --> 27:11.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Amelia's testimony matched the scattered descriptions gathered over the previous months, and confirmed that they had the right man.
27:12.244 --> 27:17.251
[SPEAKER_00]: During his initial interrogation, Guerrero Perez's behaviour shocked even hardened investigators.
27:18.213 --> 27:24.823
[SPEAKER_00]: He spoke about his crimes with a disturbed attachment, providing details that only the killer could have known.
27:24.803 --> 27:36.400
[SPEAKER_00]: His arrest bought immense relief to Mexico City's terrorized communities, though the ease with which he had evaded capture for so long exposed serious flaws in the city's law enforcement system.
27:37.421 --> 27:44.972
[SPEAKER_00]: The subsequent trial of Francisco Guerrero Perez became one of the most sensational legal proceedings in 19th century Mexico.
27:44.952 --> 27:52.528
[SPEAKER_00]: The courtroom was consistently packed with spectators, journalists and families of victims, all eager to witness justice being served.
27:53.270 --> 28:02.910
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez maintained an eerily calm demeanor throughout the proceedings, often appearing more interested in the technical aspects of the trial than his own fate.
28:02.890 --> 28:15.952
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution presented overwhelming evidence, including testimonies from survivors, witnesses who had seen him with victims before their disappearances, and the numerous personal effects of murdered women found in his possession.
28:17.194 --> 28:22.603
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps most dumbing was Guerrero Perez' own detailed confession, which he never retracted.
28:22.583 --> 28:27.249
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a parent lack of a more deeply disturbed both the jury and the public.
28:28.030 --> 28:32.615
[SPEAKER_00]: The trial exposed significant shortcomings in Mexico's criminal justice system.
28:33.356 --> 28:40.825
[SPEAKER_00]: The absence of standardized investigative procedures had allowed Guerrero Perez to continue his killing spree far longer than necessary.
28:41.747 --> 28:48.675
[SPEAKER_00]: This realization led to calls for reform, particularly in how evidence was collected and shared between precincts.
28:48.655 --> 28:57.110
[SPEAKER_00]: After a relatively brief deliberation, the jury found Guerrero Perez guilty of the murder of Mercia Gallardo and the assault of Amelia.
28:57.671 --> 28:59.253
[SPEAKER_00]: The other murders could not be proved.
28:59.995 --> 29:04.703
[SPEAKER_00]: The judge sentenced him to death, but this was later converted to 20 years imprisonment.
29:07.167 --> 29:12.216
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial revealed something authorities had known for years, but never acted upon.
29:13.546 --> 29:23.887
[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guillero Perez had been killing women since 1880, 28 years of murders, at least 21 dead women that we know of.
29:25.050 --> 29:31.403
[SPEAKER_01]: Likely more, whose bodies were never found, or whose deaths had never been connected to him.
29:32.834 --> 29:36.381
[SPEAKER_01]: and the response from Mexico City's justice system.
29:37.664 --> 29:41.551
[SPEAKER_01]: They convicted him of one murder, one woman.
29:42.654 --> 29:53.475
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, the market vendor whose body had been found, near the Consolato River, with her own rebozo still nodded around her neck.
29:53.455 --> 30:03.355
[SPEAKER_01]: not because Mercia was the only one he killed, but because Mercia was the only one for whom they'd maintained enough evidence to secure a conviction.
30:03.395 --> 30:07.143
[SPEAKER_01]: The only one they'd bothered to properly investigate.
30:08.145 --> 30:12.814
[SPEAKER_01]: The only one who's death seemed to matter enough to warrant a complete trial.
30:14.785 --> 30:24.379
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial transcripts reveal Giro Perez showed no remorse, described his victims as worthless women who deserved what happened to them.
30:25.861 --> 30:31.950
[SPEAKER_01]: claimed he'd done society a service by removing prostitutes and poor women from the streets.
30:33.263 --> 30:40.793
[SPEAKER_01]: the same attitude that allowed him to operate for decades, the belief that certain lives simply didn't matter.
30:41.815 --> 30:54.752
[SPEAKER_01]: He expressed openly and court, no shame, no regret, just cold contempt for the women he'd murdered, in the working-class neighborhoods he terrorized.
30:56.354 --> 30:59.018
[SPEAKER_01]: His defense argued diminished capacity.
31:00.263 --> 31:09.441
[SPEAKER_01]: claimed childhood abuse had damaged his mind, pointed to his age, 68 years old now, as a mitigating factor.
31:10.724 --> 31:18.880
[SPEAKER_01]: Suggested he wasn't fully responsible for his actions, because of his difficult upbringing and psychological issues.
31:20.210 --> 31:43.723
[SPEAKER_01]: But the prosecution had survivors, had witnesses, had physical evidence, had 28 years of bodies found near the same river, had testimony from Amelia and Lorenza, had the shepherd's account of Antonia's murder, had the hilarious sisters, describing him washing blood from his hands.
31:45.245 --> 31:46.707
[SPEAKER_01]: The verdict was guilty.
31:48.070 --> 31:50.775
[SPEAKER_01]: The sentence was death by hanging.
31:52.378 --> 31:56.706
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, once again, you're a critic in difference.
31:57.948 --> 32:01.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Presidential clemency, political pressure.
32:01.234 --> 32:07.345
[SPEAKER_01]: The sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment in the Berlin prison.
32:08.725 --> 32:21.672
[SPEAKER_01]: no execution, no justice for 21 dead women, just another prison term for a man who'd already been released from prison through bureaucratic incompetence once before.
32:24.368 --> 32:34.803
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez became known as a model prisoner, working in the prison's leather workshop, and maintaining the same polite, measured behavior that had previously allowed him to avoid suspicion.
32:35.885 --> 32:43.356
[SPEAKER_00]: Fellow inmates reported that he'd never spoke of his crimes, but would occasionally share detailed observations about the prison's security weaknesses.
32:44.438 --> 32:50.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Guerrero Perez was pardoned and released in 1904, but it wasn't long before he was back to his old ways.
32:53.191 --> 32:54.773
[SPEAKER_01]: the pardon wasn't mercy.
32:56.254 --> 32:57.996
[SPEAKER_01]: It was another bureaucratic error.
32:59.117 --> 33:11.570
[SPEAKER_01]: After serving 16 years of his 20-year sentence, Francisco Guero Perez's file was mistakenly placed with political prisoners, receiving amnesty under a new administration.
33:13.112 --> 33:21.240
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone confused paperwork, filed the wrong documents, mixed up a serial killer with political
33:22.486 --> 33:24.829
[SPEAKER_01]: and just like that, he walked free.
33:26.450 --> 33:27.532
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years passed.
33:28.733 --> 33:35.220
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of El Chalachiro, living in the same Paravolo neighborhood, where he'd hunted before.
33:35.280 --> 33:46.553
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of neighbors recognizing him, knowing what he was, but having no legal grounds to report a man who'd served his modified sentence.
33:47.748 --> 33:57.117
[SPEAKER_01]: Four years of working-class women walking the same streets where he'd killed before, knowing he was there but having no protection.
33:59.879 --> 34:08.067
[SPEAKER_01]: June 13th, 1908, 20 years after his first conviction, four years after his release.
34:09.668 --> 34:15.814
[SPEAKER_01]: Francisco Guillero Perez killed again.
34:17.043 --> 34:24.201
[SPEAKER_01]: the one from our opening, the one that shepherds Jose and Ness Rodriguez, witnessed being murdered.
34:25.424 --> 34:32.723
[SPEAKER_01]: Same river, same method, same neighborhood that had lived in fear of him for nearly three decades.
34:32.703 --> 34:37.709
[SPEAKER_01]: But this time, there were witnesses who weren't too afraid to testify.
34:37.769 --> 34:43.156
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, the salorio sister saw him washing blood from his body.
34:44.177 --> 34:47.582
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, a shepherd saw the actual murder happen.
34:48.903 --> 34:51.146
[SPEAKER_01]: This time authorities couldn't ignore it.
34:52.368 --> 34:58.255
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, they arrested him within days.
34:59.399 --> 35:06.407
[SPEAKER_01]: The evidence was overwhelming, eyewitnesses, physical evidence, his own lack of denial.
35:07.669 --> 35:10.693
[SPEAKER_01]: He was convicted, sentenced to death.
35:11.974 --> 35:12.295
[SPEAKER_01]: Again.
35:14.537 --> 35:18.262
[SPEAKER_01]: But Francisco Guiero Perez never faced the executioner.
35:20.324 --> 35:25.170
[SPEAKER_01]: In November, 1910, the same month the Mexican Revolution began.
35:26.416 --> 35:30.182
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same month, Portfiero Diaz's regime started collapsing.
35:31.243 --> 35:35.269
[SPEAKER_01]: Giero Perez died and hospitalwarras in Mexico City.
35:36.651 --> 35:37.773
[SPEAKER_01]: He was 70 years old.
35:39.335 --> 35:49.470
[SPEAKER_01]: The cause of death is elistid variously as brain embolism, tuberculosis, typhoid, accounts differ, records are unclear.
35:49.450 --> 35:51.673
[SPEAKER_01]: What's clear is this.
35:52.594 --> 35:56.139
[SPEAKER_01]: He died in a hospital bed, not at the end of a rope.
35:57.201 --> 36:02.708
[SPEAKER_01]: He died while awaiting execution for one murder when he'd committed at least 21.
36:04.511 --> 36:07.715
[SPEAKER_01]: He died before final justice could be served for Antonia.
36:09.037 --> 36:13.724
[SPEAKER_01]: He died while Amelia and Lorenza and the other survivors were still alive.
36:15.106 --> 36:17.449
[SPEAKER_01]: Still caring what he'd done to them.
36:20.416 --> 36:26.351
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a story that gets told about Francisco Guiero Perez, about El Chelacera.
36:27.394 --> 36:28.236
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes like this.
36:29.299 --> 36:32.527
[SPEAKER_01]: His case was a watershed moment in Mexican criminal justice.
36:33.429 --> 36:36.417
[SPEAKER_01]: His arrest led to reforms and police procedures.
36:36.397 --> 36:42.605
[SPEAKER_01]: His crimes prompted the creation of Mexicans' first specialized homicide units.
36:43.507 --> 36:46.911
[SPEAKER_01]: His trial changed how evidence was collected and documented.
36:47.993 --> 36:56.464
[SPEAKER_01]: The horrors of his murders forced Mexico City to confront its failures and build better systems to protect vulnerable women.
36:57.997 --> 37:13.894
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a comforting story, a story where something good came from something terrible, where the murders of 21 women led to systemic change that would protect future victims, where their death at least meant something.
37:15.395 --> 37:17.057
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also not true.
37:20.140 --> 37:27.868
[SPEAKER_01]: The historical record doesn't support the claim that Guillermo Perez' case prompted specific
37:29.080 --> 37:51.105
[SPEAKER_01]: The changes that did come to Mexican law enforcement in the early 20th century, and there were some, came from broader forces, from the Mexican Revolution that began five months after his death, from the collapse of the poor Fieriato, and the slow, painful construction of new institutions.
37:51.085 --> 37:56.350
[SPEAKER_01]: From decades of activists and reformers pushing for change.
37:57.390 --> 38:02.355
[SPEAKER_01]: From political upheaval that transformed everything about how Mexico was governed.
38:03.596 --> 38:13.444
[SPEAKER_01]: Not from one serial killer's arrests, not from 21 murdered women, not from three decades of systemic failure, finally being exposed.
38:14.525 --> 38:19.810
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth is less comforting, but more important to acknowledge
38:21.848 --> 38:28.496
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth is that the women, Francisco Giro, provides murdered, failed by every system that should have protected them.
38:29.657 --> 38:46.658
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by police who didn't think poor women's deaths were worth investigating thoroughly, who made cursory reports and moved on, who knew the pattern was there, same neighborhood, same victim profile, same method, year after year, and did nothing
38:47.887 --> 39:06.148
[SPEAKER_01]: who waited until well-dressed craftsmen was literally seen murdering someone by multiple witnesses before taking action, failed by a justice system that convicted him of only one murder when the evidence suggested at least 20.
39:07.310 --> 39:12.238
[SPEAKER_01]: that released him through bureaucratic incompetence after his first conviction.
39:13.600 --> 39:21.813
[SPEAKER_01]: That commuted his death sentence after the second conviction, sending him to prison where he died of natural causes less than two years later.
39:23.055 --> 39:31.748
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by a prison system that confused him with political prisoners and released him early, putting him back on the streets to kill again.
39:31.728 --> 39:55.052
[SPEAKER_01]: Failed by a society that considered working class women's lives inherently less valuable than others, that decided market vendors and washer women and sex workers weren't worth protecting, that allowed neighborhoods full of vulnerable women to become hunting grounds, because the victims weren't important enough.
39:56.534 --> 40:01.101
[SPEAKER_01]: That systemic failure is giaroporizes real legacy.
40:02.202 --> 40:15.522
[SPEAKER_01]: Not reforms, not changes, not lessons learned, but the stark, uncomfortable reminder of what happens when society decides certain people don't matter enough to protect.
40:16.852 --> 40:25.292
[SPEAKER_01]: The neighborhoods along the Consolato River in 1880s, Mexico City were full of women who had no choice but to be vulnerable.
40:26.414 --> 40:29.241
[SPEAKER_01]: Women working brutal hours for substance wages.
40:30.588 --> 40:38.198
[SPEAKER_01]: Women walking to and from work in darkness, because they couldn't afford transportation, and their jobs didn't match daylight hours.
40:39.520 --> 40:43.025
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who couldn't hire security or pay for safe housing.
40:44.266 --> 40:47.831
[SPEAKER_01]: Women who existed in the spaces the poor fiato forgot.
40:48.953 --> 40:52.778
[SPEAKER_01]: The tenements, the markets, the riverside washing stones.
40:53.879 --> 40:58.806
[SPEAKER_01]: While electric street lights were being installed, blocks away for the wealthy.
41:00.136 --> 41:09.312
[SPEAKER_01]: And when those women started dying, when their bodies appeared near the river year after year, their response from authorities was minimal.
41:10.555 --> 41:17.487
[SPEAKER_01]: Her summary reports, no real investigation, no coordination between precincts.
41:17.467 --> 41:25.833
[SPEAKER_01]: No urgency, no outrage, just bureaucratic notation that another nameless woman have been found dead in a poor neighborhood.
41:26.636 --> 41:31.611
[SPEAKER_01]: Another casualty of urban poverty that didn't warrant resources or attention.
41:32.806 --> 41:47.862
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until survivors came forward, until Amelia testified, until Lorenza testified, until witnesses felt safe enough to speak, until someone with enough social standing was murdered in front of witnesses.
41:48.331 --> 41:52.316
[SPEAKER_01]: until the evidence became so overwhelming, it couldn't be ignored.
41:53.577 --> 41:58.003
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, Giarro Perez was only convicted of one murder.
41:59.184 --> 42:04.070
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, he was released after 16 years through bureaucratic failure.
42:05.231 --> 42:13.461
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, when he killed again, it took 28 years total before he died in prison of natural causes.
42:16.462 --> 42:22.235
[SPEAKER_01]: Marcia Gallardo, who sold chilies, and Lama said market, had six grandchildren.
42:23.718 --> 42:29.691
[SPEAKER_01]: Emilia, who washed clothes, and the consulato river, for three Centavo's a piece.
42:31.255 --> 42:34.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorenza Arudia, who survived, and testified.
42:35.918 --> 42:45.135
[SPEAKER_01]: Antonia, whose last name we don't know, and approximately 17 other women, whose names history never bothered to record.
42:46.678 --> 42:48.000
[SPEAKER_01]: They deserved protection.
42:49.122 --> 42:50.605
[SPEAKER_01]: They deserved investigation.
42:51.507 --> 42:52.729
[SPEAKER_01]: It deserved justice.
42:53.907 --> 42:57.452
[SPEAKER_01]: What they got was a system that considered their lives disposable.
42:58.674 --> 43:04.643
[SPEAKER_01]: That legacy, that failure, is what we need to remember about El Chalequiero.
43:06.125 --> 43:21.467
[SPEAKER_01]: Not reform myths, not comforting narratives about lessons learned, but the honest truth about what happens when certain lives are deemed not worth protecting, when bureaucratic and
43:22.763 --> 43:31.497
[SPEAKER_01]: When three decades of murders in the same neighborhood, targeting the same type of victim, barely register as worth investigating.
43:32.979 --> 43:33.901
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the legacy.
43:35.083 --> 43:37.727
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what deserves to be remembered.
43:41.132 --> 43:42.915
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember.
43:44.026 --> 43:48.436
[SPEAKER_01]: When a system decides, certain lives don't matter enough to protect.
43:49.358 --> 43:51.844
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just failing the victims.
43:51.864 --> 43:53.968
[SPEAKER_01]: It's revealing what it truly values.
43:55.452 --> 43:56.955
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening, friend.
