Based on the novel written by Jorge Ibarguengoita (Las Muertas), The Dead Girls is the story of four Mexican sisters, who infamously came to be known as Las Poquianchis. The series takes inspiration from real life and tells the horrifying tale of the women who were responsible for the deaths of as many as 90 people. True crime dramas are often quite interesting, but this one stands out from the crowd because of the ironic nature of the sisters, the internal conflict they harbored, their distinctive perspective, and most of all, their uncanny ability to absolve themselves of all sin. Often, victims of abuse, those who have been tortured in their childhood, grow up to be really sensitive human beings, but in this case, the opposite happened. Also, the extent to which these women went in order to establish themselves, earn good money, and thrive in general, was just terrifying. Had their lives not been documented, it would have been hard to even believe that somebody was actually committing the crimes they were accused of. I feel that the makers of The Dead Girls have taken a lot of creative liberties, since there is a lot of scope for doing that. We know their story in broad strokes, but while going through all the reports, podcasts, and critical pieces, I felt that there was a lot of information that was still missing. So let’s get to know who the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters were, what they did, and if they were ever apprehended by the law.
What were the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters involved in?
Maria Delfina Gonzalez Valenzuela was the eldest of the four sisters, and she was the one who led; the other three, i.e., Maria del Carmen Gonzalez Valenzuela, Maria Luisa Gonzalez Valenzuela, and Maria de Jesus Gonzalez Valenzuela, followed. Their father, Isidro Torres, who was himself a law enforcement officer, tortured them in the name of punishment. At times, he incarcerated them, and he kept them locked up for days. I believe Delfina was sick and tired of fighting to procure a day’s meal and then dealing with her abusive father after that. Once she was incarcerated, she made a deal with a man who was much older than her. The man was supposed to free her, and in return he wanted to get married to her. After reading about the kind of society they lived in, one thing became very clear: women were treated as objects, and the men didn’t feel any kind of guilt over making their existence miserable. Delfina opened a bar/restaurant, but that venture didn’t turn out to be very profitable for her. According to certain reports, she did not open her own brothel at first but managed and then took over one such place that belonged to another man. Slowly, Delfina and her other sisters became an integral part of the sex trafficking and prostitution ring. In fact, they started advertising job vacancies, where they promised to give young girls a chance to earn their livelihood by working as maids in affluent households. Their audacity they had could be judged from the fact that they often took permission from the parents of such girls before taking them away. The parents believed that their girls were going to earn some money and support them in running the house, but once Delfina took them in, there was no going back. She drugged them, tortured them, and did whatever she needed to do to make them obey her orders. From politicians to police officers, and at times even priests, almost every influential man used to frequent the brothel of the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters. Once the girls reached 25 years of age, they were not only fired from their job, but the sisters also made sure that they were killed either by burying them alive or by starving them to death. There was a special man they hired for this job specifically, and he took a great deal of pleasure in carrying out the torture. It gives you nightmares when you even think about such a thing, and so I cannot imagine what those poor girls must have gone through.
Were the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters caught by the authorities?
I believe around 1963 a law was passed that made brothels illegal in Mexico. The sister operated mainly in their hometown of El Salto de Juanacatlan, Jalisco, and in nearby areas in the state of Guanajuato. They had to shift their base, and that’s where their downfall started. A girl named Catalina Ortega, who worked for the sisters, managed to escape from their fortress, and she directly went and reported to the authorities about what was happening in those brothels and how girls were being abused and killed. I guess her testimony wouldn’t have caused much damage, but then a woman named Josefina Gutierrez, who kidnapped young girls for the sisters, spilled all the secrets once she was caught by the authorities. At the end, in 1964, the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters were awarded a sentence of 40 years each, but the shocking thing was that they were accused of sadism, and not the crimes that they had actually committed. Around 90 dead bodies were found buried on their premises; they tortured women, kidnapped them, abused them, and earned from their misery, but I believe the authorities weren’t really concerned about it. Also, according to some reports, it was not the crimes against women that triggered the police to take action against the sisters, but Delfina’s use of a firearm when she tried to shoot a man who had apparently killed or maybe grievously hurt her son. The irony was that the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters were really religious, which was why they prohibited the girls from indulging in any kind of sexual activity among themselves. I am quite sure that Delfina wouldn’t have felt an ounce of remorse over letting young girls become prey to lecherous men, who devoured them without caring if they lived or died. Also, I didn’t understand why they had to kill those poor girls when they knew that they had a strong hold over the entire system. Once the general public got to know about what had happened, there was so much anger among the masses that if left up to them, they would have lynched the sisters to death. Just so that something like that didn’t happen, the sisters were shifted to a different high-security prison. Maria, I believe, was the only one who completed her sentence and then started living a life out of public view. Carmen passed away due to a terminal illness when she was still in prison, while Maria Luisa descended into madness due to the hate she received from the people. The fear of being persecuted by the people drove her to insanity. Delfina died in the most horrifying manner when a man poured cement on her head accidentally while she was still serving time in prison. It’s still hard for me to imagine how somebody could be so cruel and how they could become even worse than their own father and still consider themselves ardent devotees of the Almighty. It’s not in very good taste, but one does feel that she deserved her fate because of the kind of torture she put those innocent girls through.
