She was a catechist and a careful mother, but one night she beat her three children to death: the macabre case of Claudia Mijangos

2024-09-23 08:23:00

Some chilling screams woke up the residents of the municipality Queretaroin Mexicoon the night of April 24, 1989. No one knew what happened until the next morning when the authorities reported that the three children, ages 6, 9 and 11, who lived on Hacienda del Street Vegil, brutally murdered by her mother. Claudia Mijangos.

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The news surprised the public, since she was a woman with a good reputation: she was a former beauty queen in her town, she taught classes as a category and she had no history with Law and Justice. However, the case quickly spread and the press gave the title “Querétaro Hyena” for the macabre scene he left in his home when he committed the crime. triple filicide.

A promising young woman

Mijangos was born on 26 May 1956 in the city of Mazatlán in Mexico, and grew up in a Catholic, middle-class family. Being a teenager, participated in a beauty pageant from his home and won first place.

This is how she became “queen”, not only because of her physical appearance but because of her intelligence and well-developed student. Her family and friends saw a “hopeful future” in her.

Years later, after completing a university degree in commerce, she met Alfredo Castaños Gutiérrez, whom she married and moved to the municipality of Querétaro. Once they were settled, they opened a clothes shop and had three children, Alfredo, Claudia y Anna Belen.

Mijangos approached the church of the school his children attended, Fray Luis de León, to be closer to them. There, he went to catechism group and they started teaching classes for boys who were about to take their first communion. In those years, she was very close to the priest Rigoberto Castellano, director of the educational institution, to the point that there were rumors that the two lovers.

When she was young, Claudia Mijangos was a former beauty queen after winning a competition in her hometown. (Photo: From Puebla).

The Hyena of Querétaro

The rumors related to the alleged unbelief de Mijangos had problems within his marriage. For this reason, she and her husband began therapy sessions to strengthen their relationship. Despite this, professional help did not help and they separated.

At that time, people who knew Claudia claimed that the 33-year-old woman began to behave strangely. “He said he saw things and said unintelligible things“, the priest Castellano expressed in a documentary Discovery Channel.

These words were confirmed in the the tragic night of April 24, 1989. At that time, the woman woke up her youngest son Alfredo, six years old, and stabbed him several times, causing his death.

After the boy’s calls for help and screams of terror, his older sister Claudia María (11) ran into the room and found the bloody scene. Although he asked his mother to stop, mijangos he brutally attacked her and she was murdered in the same way. Far from stopping, the woman went to the room of her 9-year-old daughter, Ana Belén, and stabbed her without mercy.

After the crimes, Claudia collected the bodies of her three children and lay next to them until the early hours of the next morning.

Claudia Mijangos at the time of her arrest in 1989. (Photo: BBC).

Mijangos was arrested an hour later, after a neighbor entered the house and found the bodies of the three murdered boys. He immediately informed the police about what had happened and, moments later, the neighborhood was full of experts and investigators.

After inspecting the house, investigators They found the woman with blood stains on her clothes y with some cuts on the body. She was taken to a local clinic, where, according to doctors, she did not remember what happened to her children.

Claudia Mijangos dress full of blood after the crime. (Photo: Diario de Querétaro).

The criticism

When arrested, Mijangos testified that on that night she began “to hear voices” that they told him he should attack his children with kitchen knives. Later, the investigation revealed that she had an argument with her ex-husband on the same day and had a nervous breakdown as a result.

During the following statements, the murderer spoke of her children as if they were alive and seemed to have no idea what she had done. So, a psychiatrist evaluated her and concluded that Claudia suffered epilepsy y schizophreniatwo conditions that caused the woman to lose consciousness and hallucinations.

“It was fixed at the time of the crime, He was not in his right mind and declared that he was not responsible.“said Armando Fonseca, the professional who worked with the accused, in the documentary Discovery Channel.

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After spending two years behind bars, Mijangos was sentenced to spend 30 years in detention in the psychiatric area from Tepeppan prison in Mexico City. It was released on April 24, 2019.