Hey there, DETECTIVES! DETECTIVE WRITER here to tell you all about an unsolved crime in Mexico, the murder of Elisabeth Mandala.
Elisabeth Mandala was born in 1992 and she lived on a ranch in Texas. Her parents were divorced when she was a young girl. Her family was unaware that she had been working at the Moments Cabaret nightclub in Pasadena, Texas as an erotic dancer. She had also allegedly paid money into an online scam that was not specified.
On April 27th, 2010, Mandala had gone down to Mexico from Texas in a car. While she had told a few friends, her mother did not give her permission to go and found messages saying she was in Mexico but would return soon.
On May 1st, 2010, her mother reported her as a missing person after not hearing from her for some time. However, it was also the same day she would be found dead at 6 A.M. inside a pickup truck registered to Texas in a Mexican highway. She was only 18 years old. Two Mexican citizens, 38 year old, Dante Ruiz Siller and 44 year old, Luis Angel Estrella Mondragón were also inside the truck she was in as well. One of the men had a criminal record and both had false IDs. It was unknown why they were even with Mandala or what their relationship to her even was. The media had speculated that she was trying to smuggle the men into the U.S. but it was never proven and her family has continued to deny it.
The pickup truck was discovered after colliding with another truck. The other truck’s driver had no injuries. All three individuals were beaten to death. Houston police refused to investigate the case because she was found dead in Mexico, hence lacking jurisdiction. Mexican police had no leads as to who killed her, the motive, and no further leads. They also reported the crash was not intense enough to cause death. Mandala’s family also refused to pay a private investigator for the case because they had already spent so much money sending Mandala’s body back to the U.S. Her case remains unsolved to this day.
I hope you have enjoyed this storytime as much as I did, DETECTIVES! Please let me know in the comments if you want to have more storytime! Have a great day, night, afternoon, or evening, DETECTIVES! Stay tuned for next week’s post; until then, keep on sleuthing, DETECTIVES!
Detective Writer 