Last October, two cyclists from Mexico City discovered the body of a dead woman underneath a highway bridge. She was Ariadna López, a 27-year-old single mother from Mexico City.

Sadly, more and more women are being murdered in Mexico, and many are never identified. Los Angeles Times Mexico City bureau chief Patrick McDonnell joined Lisa McRee on “LA Times Today” with the story surrounding this gruesome murder and Mexico’s femicide epidemic.

One of the cyclists who found López’s body took photos of her tattoos in the hopes of identifying her.

“He noticed that she had some identifying tattoos," McDonnell said. "He decided to take photos of some of those tattoos very suddenly, of a sunflower, of a name of a small dinosaur that she had on her body and kept those in his cellphone, then notified authorities. He said later that he was afraid she would end up in a common grave and not identified."  

When authorities in Morelos performed the initial autopsy, they determined that López had died of severe alcohol poisoning. Her family asked for another autopsy to be done in Mexico City. 

“The second autopsy by Mexico City authorities found that she had died of multiple blows," McDonnell said. "In fact, she had many blows, including two to the back of her head, which caused internal bleeding. And they found that she’d essentially been assaulted. That was the reason that she died, not because of severe alcohol poisoning. So at that point, it became a homicide or, as they say here, a femicide investigation."

The main suspect in López’s death is Rautel Astudillo García, a wealthy patron at the restaurant where she worked. McDonnell explained how a culture of status outweighing justice complicates the femicide issue in Mexico. 

“Women tended to be blamed for their own deaths, which is what people saw here," he said. "The first prosecutor said she drank too much. That’s why she died. A lot of people read that as saying that she kind of deserved it. One more point I want to make is this amazing amount of fear. The family was very hesitant to talk. The bicyclist has scrubbed his social media and told the family he’s had threats."

Astudillo García and his girlfriend have been arrested and are facing femicide charges. If convicted of murder, they face up to 70 years in prison.

In death, Ariadna López has become a symbol in the fight for equality, as women marched in the streets for the Day of the Woman with her photo on their signs.

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