By ALBERTO ARCE
SANTA BARBARA,
Honduras (AP) — Tears and anger poured out for the dark-haired beauty who was
to have flown to London on Wednesday to represent Honduras at the Miss World
pageant, only to be found shot to death with her sister on a remote river bank.
After the bodies of
the reigning Miss Honduras, 19-year-old Maria Jose Alvarado, and her sister
Sofia, 23, were discovered early in the day, police announced that the sister's
boyfriend had confessed to killing them last week in a fit of jealousy over his
girlfriend dancing with another man.
Dozens of relatives
and friends of the beauty queen gathered for a candlelight vigil at the college
she attended, remembering a down-to-earth young woman who aspired to be a
diplomat, went out without makeup and worked as a model to help support a
humble family.
"She was
simple, humble, a total innocent smiling and without malice," said Ludin
Reyes, a fellow student at the Technical University of Honduras.
The Center for
Women's Rights, based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, issued a
statement condemning the sisters' killing and noted 328 women have been slain
in this Central American nation so far in 2014.
"The case of
Mary Jose and Sofia show clearly the situation of generalized violence against
women and the nonexistent response of the Honduran government to prevent,
investigate or punish it," the statement said.
In this April 26,
2014 photo, Maria Jose Alvarado is crowned the new Miss Honduras in San Pedro,
Sul …
The bodies believed
to be the sisters were found buried near the spa where they disappeared a week
earlier while celebrating the birthday of the sister's boyfriend, Plutarco
Ruiz.
At some point
during the night of Nov. 13, a heated argument broke out over the sister
dancing with another man and Ruiz pulled a gun, firing first at his girlfriend
and then at Alvarado as she tried to flee, said the National Police director,
Gen. Ramon Sabillon. Alvarado was hit twice in the back.
Claudio Cecilio
Munoz, an uncle of the sisters, said Ruiz came to the family's modest house on
a dirt road the day after the young women disappeared to invite them to lunch,
and returned several days to help with the search. He described Ruiz not as a
boyfriend, but as someone who was courting his niece.
"We didn't
file a complaint right away because we were waiting for a telephone call asking
for ransom," Munoz said. "On Saturday their mother and I went to put
in a complaint and the killer was with us."
Ruiz led
investigators to the gravesite where he and an alleged accomplice buried them
in Santa Barbara, about 240 miles (400 kilometers) west of Tegucigalpa.
Alvarado's body,
wrapped in brown plastic, was loaded into the back of a pickup truck just hours
before she was to have boarded a flight to London to compete in the Miss World
pageant. A winner will be crowned Dec. 14.
"We had her
gown ready and her traditional dress costumes," said television
personality Salvador Nasrallah, who employed Alvarado as a model on his TV game
show, "X-O Da Dinero."
"This is not a
crime of passion; this is machismo," said Nasrallah, a former presidential
candidate.
Honduras pageant
organizer Eduardo Zablah said the country would not send a substitute to
London.
Alvarado's pageant
profile describes her as a college student who played volleyball and soccer and
loved to perform a traditional Garifuna dance called the Punta Dance.
Police and forensic
workers inspect the site where two bodies were found in the village of
Cablotale …
The sisters'
mother, Teresa Munoz, told Televicentro that her daughters were trusting and
naive. "They were not very astute about assessing the people around them.
They were just friendly," Munoz said. "They were going out with
people they hadn't known very long."
The killing of the
sisters highlights what experts call an alarming trend of violence against
women in Central America, fueled by poverty, male chauvinism, domestic
violence, street gangs and drug trafficking.
According to a
report by the United Nations, slayings of women and girls in Honduras increased
263 percent between 2005 and 2013. The country has the highest homicide rate in
the world for a country not at war, with an estimated 90 to 95 killings per
100,000 people.
In September, the
Center for Women's Rights published a report noting that the number of women
dying violently rose from 512 in 2011 to 636 last year — even as the number of
men killed dropped slightly. The center estimated Honduras' government
underreports slayings of women by as much as 17 percent.
"Violence
against women is a huge problem in Honduras," said Adriana Beltran, a
senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Those who knew
Alvarado, who was crowned in April, said she was not caught up in the celebrity
of her position. She would go around town in jeans with her hair up and without
makeup.
"When Maria
Jose won the pageant, she didn't think it was that important. I just wanted her
to be happy," her mother said.
___
Courtesy:
Associated Press
writers Peter Orsi in Mexico City and Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras,
contributed to this report.
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