Mexico uncovers 10 more bodies from mass grave

MEXICO CITY — Forensic scientists in the Mexican state of Sonora have recovered 10 more bodies from mass graves near a beach town, raising the total number of bodies and skeletons found in the area since October to 52.

The state attorney’s office said Saturday they were tipped off to the desert burial pits by a group of volunteers called Searching Mothers that tries to find missing people. The remains will be taken to the state capital of Hermosillo for possible identification.

The bodies were found near the Gulf of California beach town of Puerto Penasco, known to U.S. tourists as Rocky Point.

Drug and kidnapping gangs often bury the bodies of people they have killed in such clandestine sites.

Authorities began pulling human remains from the burial pits about 5 miles from Puerto Penasco at the end of October. A handful of the skeletons still had clothing and decomposing flesh on them.

Mexican forensic personnel are conducting autopsies and asking relatives of missing people in the area to submit DNA samples for comparison.

The discoveries have offered a glimmer of hope to families searching for loved ones such as Rolando Gutierrez, a U.S. citizen who was last heard from while in Puerto Penasco in 2017.

“I feel like this is it — there’s a chance that we might be able to find closure,” said Chavie Gutierrez, one of Rolando’s five siblings.

“He was a good person, and he deserves peace,” she said by phone from her home in Yakima County, Wash.

Gutierrez’s parents gave DNA samples to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Database in the U.S. But Mexican officials are asking that family members of missing loved ones provide samples in Mexico.

The extended family is trying to pool resources so a sibling can travel to Mexico to provide the sample, as Gutierrez’s father is too ill to travel and his mother cannot afford to take time off from work as a home health care provider.

“We’ve been reading very closely about the families in Arizona traveling to give samples,” said Zavala. “But for us it would just be financially impossible.”

Nogales, on the border with Arizona and a less than two-hour drive from Tucson, is one of the towns in Sonora state where Mexican officials are collecting DNA samples.