Biografia
Juana Dayanara Barraza Samperio (born 27 December 1957) is a Mexican convicted serial killer and former professional wrestler known as "La Mataviejitas" ("The Old Lady Killer"). She was convicted of the murders of 16 elderly women and sentenced to 759 years in prison. The killings attributed to "La Mataviejitas" have been variously dated: some accounts place the first murders in the late 1990s, while at least one source cites a specific killing on 17 November 2003. Authorities and the press have estimated the total number of victims at between 42 and 48 deaths. After Barraza's arrest, officials officially closed the Mataviejitas investigation despite more than 30 unresolved cases. In 2005, Araceli Vázquez and Mario Tablas were also arrested and were at times identified by police and media as "La Mataviejitas". == Early life and family == Juana Dayanara Barraza Samperio was born in Epazoyucan, Hidalgo, a rural area north of Mexico City. Barraza's mother, Justa Samperio, was an alcoholic who reportedly exchanged her for three beers to a man who repeatedly raped her while in his care, and by whom she became pregnant with a son. She had four children in total, although her eldest son died from injuries sustained in a mugging. Prior to her arrest, Barraza was a professional wrestler under the ring name of La Dama del Silencio (The Lady of Silence). She had a strong interest in lucha libre, a form of Mexican masked professional wrestling. She fought as a ruda (a heel). == Profile == All of Barraza's victims were women aged sixty or over, many of whom lived alone. Barraza bludgeoned or strangled them before robbing them. Bernardo Bátiz, the chief prosecutor in Mexico City, initially profiled the killer as having "a brilliant mind, [being] quite clever and careful", and suggested that the killer probably struck after gaining the trust of the intended victim. Investigating officers suspected that the killer posed as a government official, offering victims the chance to sign up for welfare programs. The search for Barraza was complicated by conflicting evidence. At one point, the police hypothesized that two killers might be involved. An odd coincidence also distracted the investigation: at least three of Barraza's victims owned a print of an eighteenth-century painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Boy in a Red Waistcoat. The authorities believed that Juana Barraza was a psychopath who felt no remorse. Furthermore, Barraza associated her elderly victims with her mother and believed that she was helping society by killing them. In order to gain her victims' trust, Barraza posed as a government official who worked in social welfare. == Investigation == The authorities were heavily criticized by the media for dismissing evidence that a serial killer was at work in Mexico City as merely "media sensationalism" as late as the summer of 2005. Soon after setting an investigation in motion, the police incurred further criticism by launching what one journ
