La Dama del Silencio—or “The Silent Lady”—isn’t a name that rings any significant bells in wrestling or lucha libre. As a matter of fact, there are many luchadores and luchadoras who ring bells but are still active.
However, she is a significant figure in that she is one of Mexico’s most infamous serial killers having an eight-year span and anywhere between 42 and 48 victims.
La Mataviejitas: The Old Lady Killer
Born Juana Barraza on December 27, 1957 in a Hidalgo suburb, La Dama del Silencio was a huge fan of lucha libre. At 12, her mother once prostituted her for three beers and which resulted in the first of her four children.
It was this childhood trauma that was a major factor in her targets: elderly women. Barraza’s stomping grounds was Mexico City and she was able to go unnoticed between 1998 and 2006. Her modus operandi was to pose as a social worker—complete with some medical supplies and the like—and gain entry into senior citizens’ homes.
Given that a social worker is an occupation centered on helping others and the elderly are a vulnerable, sometimes forgotten population in some areas, she figured out a working combination.
Plus, she picked one of the easiest victims for any serial killer and all of her victims lived alone. One reason La Dama del Silencio went undetected for so long is that profiling had the murderer pegged as a man—specifically a blonde man with a mole.
After initially dismissing the notion of a serial killer in Mexico City, the police were of the belief that there were two murderers. While all of the murders had the same type of victim, three of the victims had the same painting “Boy in a Red Waistcoat” by Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
So, there are supposedly two murderers roaming about Mexico City and it was believed to be either a man or transgendered sex workers. A term commonly used was “a masculine-looking woman” in the latter case.
Some witnesses even saw Barraza leaving the scene of murders and she pretty much matched the description given. Barraza as eventually captured in Mexico City on January 25, 2006, while fleeing the residence of an 82-year-old victim. She had strangled the woman with a stethoscope.
When grilled about her reason, she had a similar reason as many serial killers who targeted women: these elderly women reminded her of her own mother and she felt that she was doing the world a favor by killing them.
In 2008, Juana Barraza stood trial for 40 of the murders. At the end of March, she was convicted of 16 counts of murder. Currently, she is severing out her 759-year sentence at Santa Martha Acatitla.
However, she will have to do 60 years, the maximum in Mexico.
The Media Portrayal of La Dama del Silencio
What drew my attention to Barraza some years back was how she was portrayed in shows like season 9, episode 5 of ID’s Deadly Women. It was always as a luchadora who murdered even though she retired before she began murdering.
Barraza started in 1998 and the last match I can find of her was in October 1997 for the defunct Southern California-based indy Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a promotion that featured gimmicks such as the Ku Klux Klown, The Rapist, Yom Ripper, and Harley Racist.
Actually, that’s the only documented match I could find. While it’s not unusual for multiple luchadors to wrestle under the same name in different areas, this name was specific albeit generic.
So, you get this image of someone who wrestled while committing murders and that’s the draw. It isn’t the crime, it’s 2021 and we’ve been getting true crime content since the Discovery Channel, Court TV, and A&E had programs dedicated to that genre.
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