‘Heartbreaking’: Bodies of 3 Sisters Murdered in Northern Mexico Found

The girls were found embracing each other one day after their mother’s body was discovered.

Police tape in Mexico. Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images

An organization that helps families of missing persons in northern Mexico reported the discovery of the bodies of three girls who were murdered in Sonora, a state on the U.S. border.

“In all my years of searching, I have never seen such cruelty,” the organization Buscadoras por la Paz de Sonora (Searchers for Peace in Sonora) wrote on Facebook on July 5. “Three girls, sisters, executed. What could they have done?”

The Sonora State Attorney General’s Office reported hours later that the three girls, one aged 9 and twins aged 11, were found on the afternoon of July 5 on Highway 36 North, in the Miguel Alemán district of Hermosillo, Sonora.

“The incident is linked to a previous discovery, which occurred on the same road, at the Hermosillo-Bahía de Kino junction, where a woman was found dead on July 4, who was confirmed to be the mother of the three minors found yesterday afternoon,” the Attorney General’s Office stated.

The mother was 28 years old.

On July 6, in an update on the case, the attorney general’s office stated that “the investigative police have captured the mother’s romantic partner, who is fully connected to the events,” according to an English translation.

“This individual is involved in drug distribution and is linked to a criminal organization operating in the state capital,” the office stated.

The attorney general’s office stated that it would continue to provide updates on the case as the legal process allows.

Cecilia Delgado, leader of Buscadoras por la Paz de Sonora (Searchers for Peace in Sonora), who was part of the group that went to the place where the girls were found, described the scene as “heartbreaking” in an interview with media outlet Fuerza Informativa Azteca.

Delgado said that in her more than six years as a searcher, she and her colleagues have encountered all kinds of shocking scenes, “but I think this one has marked us, marked us forever, because it was so heartbreaking.”

She said that on July 5, they received a couple of anonymous calls about bodies partially buried in the place where the girls were found, less than a mile away from where their mother’s body had been found the day before.

“When we arrived, we saw this terrible scene, terrible ... heartbreaking. For us, it was very, very difficult to see these girls in the woods, under a tree,” she said.

“One of the little sisters was hugging the youngest ... trying to protect her, and the 9-year-old was in a fetal position ... I don’t want to imagine the terror they experienced at that moment.

“Seeing the terror that one of them had experienced, because you could see the fear on her face, she was the one hugging her little sister.”

The leader said the scene was so shocking that she has not been able to sleep well since that day.

On July 8, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke about the death of the girls and their mother during a press conference.

“It is a very painful episode. It is a mother and three girls. It shocks all of Mexico, obviously,” the president told a reporter.

“What must the authorities do in the face of this and any crime? Investigate and work every day to reduce violence in our country; that is what all authorities must do.”