Coffins, but no comfort, for slain family’s survivors
Questions haunt Houston sisters in Mexico deaths
The Mexican government has supplied three coffins but little in the way of closure for a pair of Houston sisters whose parents and brother were murdered, allegedly by members of a drug cartel, while visiting family south of the border.
The bodies of Juan Vargas, 52, his wife, Maria, 50, and their 18-year-old son Daniel were returned to Houston this week, nearly a year after they left to visit family for the New Year holiday in the Mexican state of Hidalgo.
Now, their surviving daughters, Daisy Vargas, 23, and Annel Ochoa, 29, are hoping federal officials will make good on their promise of support, and that a pending autopsy will provide answers and a chance to lay their parents and brother to rest
“It’s been the worst year of our lives,” Ochoa said. “What killed me personally was the not knowing what happened to them. Your brain starts imagining things.”
Phone calls go quiet
Their parents and brother left Houston last Dec. 26 for an 18-hour drive from their Greenspoint home to Tuancingo, about 70 miles northeast of Mexico City. The three planned to visit for a few days to attend the funeral of a relative who had died days earlier and to ring in the new year with family they had not seen since the summer.
They were due back to celebrate Daniel’s 19th birthday on Jan. 7 with Daisy, Ochoa, her husband Josue and their two kids.
The three never made it home. On Jan. 5, as they began to make their way back to Houston, Ochoa said their frequent calls dried up. A week later, Ochoa received a message on Facebook demanding a ransom for her family, but provided no proof they still were alive. Mexican investigators, she said, deemed it a hoax.
It was not until August that Mexican authorities arrested a man in connection with the ransom demand after hearing him talk on the telephone about killing the Vargases. He told authorities where the bodies were buried in October.
Countries’ collaboration
Mexican authorities have told Ochoa the Vargases were ambushed and killed, allegedly by 11 members of a Tampico drug cartel who lusted after their Chevy Malibu as a birthday gift for their boss.
The repatriation of the three came via a joint effort by the FBI, Rep. Gene Green’s office, the Mexican Attorney General, the Mexican Consulate and the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims in Mexico.
“There has been a great deal of collaboration between Mexican and American authorities, both on the municipal and federal levels,” said Imanol de la Flor, the Mexican Consul for Protection and Legal Affairs in Houston. “Our common goal is to bring those guilty of the crime to justice.”
De la Flor said the Houston consulate was made aware of the case in June and served as a bridge between the Vargas family and authorities in both Mexico and the United States.
Ochoa said the Mexican government was slow to help at first. It was only after she went to local media, she said, that Mexican officials began talking with the family and American authorities.
“I feel like if they’d done more initially, we would’ve found (the killer) earlier and found out where they were buried,” Ochoa said.
‘A little bit of closure’
As for the promised support for funeral costs, the family has yet to see any of the money, and is relying on a crowdfunding effort to hold a proper burial. Her parents and brother’s bodies are at a funeral home in north Houston, and Ochoa said she has yet to see them.
Until their bodies were found in October, the Vargases were three more names on the list of more than 30,000 “desaparecidos” in Mexico — crime victims whose disappearance typically implies a violent, often gang-related end.
“I got a little bit of closure, versus the families of the thousands of Mexicans who don’t know where their relatives are,” Ochoa said.
Since immigrating to the United States almost three decades ago, Juan Vargas owned several small businesses, including, J & D Auto Sales in Greenspoint, which he ran with his son. Ochoa and her husband closed the business shortly after her parents disappeared.
Ochoa said she will never return to Mexico, even to see family.
With the holidays fast approaching, thousands of Texas residents are expected to travel south of the border to celebrate at home with family. Ochoa wants to use her family’s loss to raise awareness of the situation in the country she once called home.
“It’s not the Mexico we knew,” she said. “It’s not as safe as we think it is.”