Las Poquianchis sisters: Mexico’s most notorious serial killers
Every violent crime is horrific, but some cases are so depraved that they make you question the existence of evil. The González Valenzuela sisters, popularly known as Las Poquianchis, fall into this category. They are thought to have murdered between 150 to 200 people, making them the world's most prolific murder partnership.
Join us at Crime+Investigation as we examine the haunting Las Poquianchis case. There’s no need for ghost stories when humanity harbours such terror.
The early years
Like most cases of violent serial killers, the González Valenzuela sisters had a difficult childhood. There were four of them in total: María Delfina González Valenzuela (1912 - 1968), María del Carmen González Valenzuela (1918 - 1969), María Luisa González Valenzuela (1920 - 1984) and María de Jesús González Valenzuela (1924 - 1990).
Their mother, Bernardina Valenzuela, was a devout Catholic, and their father, Isidro Torres, was a local policeman — both authoritarian, often inflicting harsh punishments for minor discretions. On more than one occasion, Torres locked his daughters in cells overnight. Even worse, he would routinely force them to watch as he tortured the people he arrested.
The merry-go-round of abuse finally ended when Torres shot and killed a man during an argument, forcing the family to relocate from El Salto de Juanacatlan to San Francisco del Rincon. Here, the girls escaped their father by opening a bar and turning to prostitution, which generated enough income for them to expand their operations throughout the surrounding states.
A terrible empire
From 1950 to 1964, the sisters opened several brothels in different areas. Some were technically legal (although what happened inside was definitely not), while others operated discreetly from cantinas. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the time, and clients included police officers, soldiers and politicians.
However, locals couldn't help but notice girls were going missing — more than usual, from the Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Zacatecas areas. The police launched an investigation and arrested a woman called Josefina Gutiérrez on suspicion of kidnapping. Under interrogation, she implicated the González Valenzuela sisters.
Another break in the case came when a young girl approached police officers with a twisted tale. She said she had escaped from a ranch somewhere near León, where dozens of children, teenagers and women were being held captive. The police chief took her seriously and ordered a search of the area, which would prompt one of the grisliest discoveries in Mexico's history.
The house of horrors
It didn't take long for the search team to unearth their first body. After that, they just kept coming. While exact numbers vary, approximately 80 young women, 11 men and several foetuses were excavated. The actual number of deaths is thought to be much higher — remember, this is just one of the sisters' many properties.
Alongside the dead, officers rescued living victims who helped piece together the horrifying story. They explained how the González Valenzuela sisters tricked young girls with help-wanted ads for housemaids. Once they arrived, they were force-fed heroin and cocaine, raped, beaten and forced into prostitution.
To ensure compliance, the sisters and their helpers (which included their sons) enforced a campaign of terror. Defiant girls were starved, beaten with nail-studded bats and set on fire. The most feared punishment of all was the 'cama real' or 'royal bed' — a narrow board where victims were placed and wrapped in barbed wire for days at a time. Teenagers were forced to give birth alone without medical care, with babies being buried in the ranch yard.
Patrons didn't escape the cruelty of Las Poquianchis either. Wealthy clients were robbed and murdered with no real forethought about who might question their whereabouts. Without a doubt, it was this kind of sloppiness and blind rage that eventually contributed to the tumbling house of cards.
The downfall of the González Valenzuela sisters
The three oldest sisters were arrested first. The youngest had moved away a decade prior but, on returning to support her sisters, was detained on the grounds of satanism and witchcraft. Despite the severity of their crimes, they received fairly lenient sentences, with the maximum being 40 years under Mexican law.
However, their endings were poetically tragic. María Delfina died in a freak accident when a construction worker poured cement on her head. María del Carmen died of cancer before her release. María Luisa ended up in a mental institution, driven to madness by her crimes. Scarily, María de Jesús was released and never heard from again.
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