Claudia Mijangos, second woman on the left. (Image source here.)
Claudia Mijangos was a college-educated woman who came from a wealthy family. She had a happy childhood, and had once even been voted beauty queen of the Mexican city of Mazatlan. After college, Mijangos married Alfredo Gutierrez, the owner of a upscale women’s clothing store in Queretaro. The couple had three children, and while the marriage was initially a happy one, they eventually divorced. Gutierrez said that Claudia suffered from psychological problems, and this made the marriage unworkable.
Claudia was granted custody of the children, and Gutierrez agreed to keep paying their tuition at the Catholic school where Claudia also taught classes. At the school, Claudia became very close with a priest named Ramon, and it was rumored that the two were lovers. On April 23, 1989, Gutierrez took the kids out and got into an argument with Claudia after he dropped them off. He wanted to get back together with Claudia, but she refused. “You’ll regret it,” he said, and left. Claudia locked the door and then went to bed.
Claudia and her ex-husband. (Image source here.)
Around 5 in the morning, Claudia woke up and heard voices in her head. They told her to kill her children. After listening to them for a few minutes, she got dressed and went into the kitchen. She picked up three knives, one for each child.
Her son, Alfredo Antonio, had slept in bed with her, and she decided to kill him first. Alfredo woke up during the attack, and despite his screams to stop, she so savagely stabbed him that his left hand was cut off. Claudia then went for her daughter Claudia Maria, whose screams of “No, mama! No, mama, don’t do it!” reportedly woke up some of their neighbors. Claudia Maria escaped downstairs, but Claudia finished the attack after she killed her other daughter, Ana Bethelehem. She then dropped her daughters’ bodies onto her bed, next to Alfredo’s. She laid down alongside them, and slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt.
The dress Claudia wore during the murders. (Image source here.)
Veronica Vazquez, Claudia’s friend and neighbor, stopped by a few hours later. When Claudia opened the door, she was incoherent and covered in blood. Seeing Claudia like this, and noticing the strains of blood all over the house,Veronica was afraid that somebody had broke in and attacked Claudia. She walked into Claudia’s bedroom, where she found the children’s bodies still laying on the bed. Horrified, Veronica jolted out of the house and called the police. When authorities arrived, they had to break the door down. Claudia was found in the bedroom, faintly breathing and her eyes half-closed.
After waking up in the hospital where she was taken, Claudia gave a number of conflicting statements about what had happened. At first, she insisted that her kids were still asleep at home, and then said that Ramon telepathically commanded her to divorce her husband and murder her children. Although Claudia had no prior history of mental illness, she was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder. In view of this, she was only given a 30 year sentence, and she’s set to be released in 2019.
Claudia’s neighbors have sectioned her house off to discourage visitors. (Image source here.)
Claudia’s house, which has sat abandoned since the murders, is said to be haunted. Neighbors and curious visitors have reported hearing screams and seeing child-like shadows on the walls and a little boy looking out from the master bedroom’s window. Carlos Trejo, a ghost hunter, said he encountered a girl dressed in blood-soaked pajamas when he was investigating the house. His investigation was aired on TV, and apparently recorded the children’s shadows and their screaming “No, mama!” When Claudia saw the segment in prison, she suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be kept on medical surveillance for a while.
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