Mexico: narco-Satanism in Ciudad Juárez?

Grisly narco-terror continues to escalate in the Mexican border city of Juárez. A beheaded body was left hanging from an overpass on Nov. 7. A banner aimed at rival drug gangs was hung next to the body, and police found the victim's head in a black bag in a nearby plaza. Meanwhile outside Ciudad Chihuahua, the state capital to the south of Juárez, masked men gunned down two police officers at a supermarket—leaving a toy pig next to the bodies. And on Nov. 4, a victim was left hanging in house in Ciudad Juárez wearing a pig mask. A message next to the hanging corpse accused him of working for the Sinaloa Cartel and threatened to do the same to others.

Elsewhere in the border city, a headless body was found in the street, accompanied by written threat aimed at local gang members, and woman's body with bullet wounds was thrown out of a vehicle in another street. Two more men were killed in separate incidents and a man reported missing was also found dead. Over 1,000 have been killed in the city this year as the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels battle for control of the narco-entrepôt. (CanWest, AP, Nov. 7; Sydney Herald Sun, Nov. 5)

On Oct. 21, an ice chest packed with four human heads was sent via special delivery to the police station in the outlying Ciudad Juárez district of Ascención. An envelope with an undisclosed message was found inside. The bodies have not been located. (AP, Oct. 21)

Also in late October, murder suspect Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz confessed that he killed at least 10 women between 1993 and 2006 as "offerings to Satan." He reportedly told officials that more bodies are buried in his accomplice's yard. (USA Today, Oct. 30)

Hundreds of women have been killed in Ciudad Juárez over the past 15 years, their bodies dumped in the desert on the outskirts of town.

See our last post on Mexico's narco wars.