by Colleen McClintock
On the morning of September 18th as I was driving to work I got a phone call from my sister Cathleen, who told me that Carey had been murdered in Mexico. I pulled over to the side of the road and sat in silence. I couldn’t quite process the reality of it. I kept thinking, “Maybe it’s not her body that they found. Maybe there has been a mistake.”
After talking to my parents I arranged to fly to Dallas that afternoon.
That day memories of Carey flooded my head – the time I returned home from college and went to watch her in a skating performance and was so proud of her that I cried, realizing I hardly knew this amazing person who was my sister. I remembered when Carey was 18 and got a job for Eastern Airlines as a flight attendant; she called me at work and we schemed and dreamed about the trips we would take together around the world. I thought of going to visit her in Queens, New York after she first married David. I was so happy for Carey to have found someone so special to share her life with. I also remembered the darker times, when I went to Texas to visit my family for the holidays and together we went to her house planning to do some kind of intervention to rescue her from the drugs that we suspected had taken her from us. Vividly, I could still hear her voice in my head and the hope in her voice during my last conversation with her when she asked if someday I would come visit her in Mexico.
I got to Texas late that evening and we got up early the next morning and flew to El Paso, Texas. We were met in El Paso by some great people from Southwest Airlines (where Brenda works) who had offered to take us into Juarez when they learned what had happened to Carey. One of the guys, Bob, said that he had lived in El Paso for five years and had never crossed the border into Juarez because it was so dangerous. Luckily, the other guy who was coming with us, Javier, had been to Juarez many times since his mother lived in the city. He knew his way around and was going to take us to the US Consulate where we hoped to learn more about Carey’s death.
I was surprised that crossing the border was so easy. Getting into Mexico didn’t require any kind of identification; we just drove straight over the bridge, across the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Apparently they randomly but rarely stop drivers and check the identification of those entering the country. As we drove through the border patrol, into Juarez, there were soldiers with machine guns and tanks alongside the road. Javier explained that the soldiers had been brought in by the Mexican government to restrain the excessive violence that had plagued the city for years and combat the Mexican drug cartels. (For information on the Mexican troops in Juarez see http://www.borderfirereport.net/michael-webster/armed-mexican-troops-patrol-the-streets-of-juarez.html .)
While in Juarez, we saw the headings of the Juarez newspaper, El Diario, proclaiming that over 600 people had been murdered in Juarez in 2008. The numbers vary depending on the source but all sources seem to agree- the numbers are far higher than reported. The murders have resulted in nicknames for Juarez like ‘City of Death’ and ‘Killing Fields’. I was silently horrified that Carey had spent her last days in such a place.
When we arrived at the U.S. Consulate we were informed that we could not bring cell phones or cameras into the building. Our belongings had to be passed through x-ray scanners and we went through a metal detector to enter the building. Once in the building we went to a large waiting area filled with Mexican people. The room had several windows with attendants helping the next person in line. It was not at all clear how you entered this queue. My Dad went up to one of the windows and asked for the person at the Consulate he was told to see, a man named Miguel, and was asked to wait. We sat in the consulate for at least 45 minutes before Miguel appeared. While we were waiting a visibly agitated American man entered the waiting room. As he passed by us he stopped and said in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear, “You are Americans? Don’t come to Juarez. Go back home.”
Miguel introduced himself and explained he would be taking us to the morgue to identify Carey’s body and then to the Police department to speak to the detectives. We all piled into a large van and Miguel drove us to the morgue. On the way he explained that we were heading outside of town to the new morgue which had been built especially to house the bodies of murdered women; the morgue in town had been overflowing with no place to put the bodies. He described how over the past several years many women had been murdered in Juarez and how these murders had been largely unsolved.
The morgue was a large white warehouse style building with no windows and a small cement porch and glass door entrance. As we approached the building two Mexican women were leaving. Both were crying and one of them held a handkerchief over her mouth. I wondered what she had seen in there and my heart went out to them for their loss. When we entered the closet sized waiting area right inside the door the smell of Lysol was overpowering. Miguel spoke in Spanish to the women behind the counter, explaining that we were Carey’s family and had come to identify her body.
One of the women brought up a picture of Carey on the computer monitor and turned the monitor so we could see it. It was Carey’s face. Her eyes were closed and her face was bruised. Her mouth was slightly open and there was dried blood on the corners of her lips. Even though her face was beaten, to me, she looked peaceful. I started to cry and stepped outside.
While my parents were taken back into the morgue to see Carey’s body, my sister and I went across the street to get something to drink. It was a small snack bar across the street from the morgue where several Mexican men were hanging out. As we purchased our drinks one of the men handed us his card and introduced himself. He was from a funeral parlor in Juarez and wanted to know if we needed his services. The others, who didn’t speak English, simply handed us their cards. I guessed they just waited there and tried to get business from those unfortunate enough to be visiting the morgue. Cathleen appropriately called them the ‘vultures’!
After the morgue, Miguel drove us to the Mexican Police Department. We went to the new building dedicated to female homicide cases. Like the morgue, the building was virgin white, as if to conceal the horrific purpose it served. Since 1993 hundreds of women have been brutally murdered for no apparent reason, their bodies left in the desert outside of Juarez (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez and http://media.www.ecollegetimes.com/media/storage/paper991/news/2008/04/17/News/Phoenix.Writer.Travels.To.Juarez.To.Investigate.Murders.Of.Hundreds.Of.Young.Wom-3329749.shtml and http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/05/juarez.html .) Hundreds more women are simply ‘missing’. Although the femicide has received world-wide attention, the majority of these cases remain mysteriously unsolved. Some speculate that the authorities are somehow involved.
The murdering of women began in 1993, with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), when many US companies, such as General Electric and DuPont, began operating assembly plants in Juarez. Over 300 international companies have set up such assembly operations in Juarez to take advantage of the low cost, abundant supply of labor. They hire mainly women, ostensibly because of their smaller more agile hands. More likely the women are hired because they tend to be more reliable, passive, and willing to work in the harsh factory conditions for low wages- around $55 for a 45 hour week.. Many of the murdered women worked for one of the assembly factories and the theory is that gangs of unemployed, disempowered men are responsible for their deaths. (See http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/juarez.html and http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/juarez.html .)
At the police department, tired and hungry, we waited while the detectives questioned my parents individually. Like the morgue, the building smelled strongly of cleaning products. I sat in the waiting area, a long corridor with offices on both sides, feeling nauseous from the overpowering antiseptic odor. After about a hour of questioning my parents emerged, one at a time, from separate offices. The police had told them that Carey’s case was still open so they would not release her body until the following week. They were told they would need to return to Juarez to sign the release.
Since I was the last family member who spoke with Carey the police also wanted to talk to me. I followed one of the detectives into one of the small offices and he asked me to tell him about the last time I had spoken to Carey. I told him in detail about my conversation with Carey on August 24th. I gave him all the information I had, including the names of the hotel where she had spent her last days and the El Paso attorney who was supposedly paying the bill. I promised to send him the tracking number from the Western Union receipt from when I sent Carey money for the hotel phone bills.
In giving this information, I did not believe they would ever actually discover who was responsible for my sister’s death. The autopsy did not reveal any drugs in her body and it doesn’t seem to me that her death was drug related. In many ways, Carey’s murder fit the pattern of the femicide in Juarez and she may have been one more victim of a growing number of senseless murders. Or it could be that the attorney who was paying for her hotel residence in Juarez was somehow involved. Either way it seemed unlikely that we would ever learn the truth.
We returned to Juarez a week later to finalize arrangements for Carey’s body. She was cremated in Las Cruses, New Mexico and some friends of our family flew her ashes back to Dallas. We held a memorial service for Carey on October 11, 2008 in Dallas at my father’s church. Many family members and friends who knew and loved Carey were present. We did our best to honor Carey’s life.
Last night there was a full moon. To me, it appeared lonely and woeful in the black sky. I still can’t imagine that I will never see or speak to Carey again. Losing her has given me a different perspective on life that I imagine I now share with those who have lost someone they love.
Carey Marcella McClintock 