She had been buried 68 days.
The time that the Nuevo León State Prosecutor's Office had to advance in one of the cases of violence against women that has most irritated Mexico in a long time.
The image of Debanhi Escobar, 18, walking alone on a highway on the outskirts of Monterrey, catalyzed the horror experienced by women in the country, where 10 are murdered every day.
Her body turned up in a motel cistern 13 days later.
And the citizens, who had followed the search for her attached to her on the radio, television and social networks, were clear that regardless of whether there was a person responsible for her death, the Prosecutor's Office had many questions to answer.
More than two months later, her body has been unearthed this Friday to perform a second autopsy that answers the most basic: how did she die?
With no more certainties than that corpse,
Debanhi case
freezes at the starting point.
The chain of irregularities in the investigation, which cost two prosecutors their jobs, began before the body of the young woman was found.
Since his trail was lost, in the early hours of April 9, and in the midst of a wave of indignation over the disappearance of women in the State, the Government of Samuel García tried to get involved, personally, in the search for Debanhi Escobar as evidence that his administration did not turn its back on women.
He did not count on the fact that the case would end up slipping to the Prosecutor's Office, in such a way that the outrage was no longer state, but national, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised federal support to correct each of the failures that had been committed. and get to the truth of what happened that night.
Debanhi left a party on the night of April 8, got into a car - which worked for the DiDi platform, although he was hired privately - and a few meters later, he got out.
The image of the road was taken there, which has become a symbol of femicide and gender violence.
Since his disappearance was reported, the Prosecutor's Office had the possibility of accessing all the security cameras in the area and the establishments it looked at: a transport company and later, the motel where the body of the.
But for almost two weeks there was no graphic record of the young woman's last hours.
The justification: the owners of the premises claimed that their cameras were not recording.
Days later it was shown that they lied.
No one has been arrested for cover-up.
Experts from the Forensic Medical Service (SEMEFO) work in a cemetery in the municipality of Galeana, Nuevo León. Miguel Sierra (EFE)
From there, the search for Debanhi, although intense for 13 days, was blind.
The authorities searched the motel up to four times, the meetings of the young woman's relatives with volunteers were held just a few steps from the cistern.
No one noticed that the dead girl was there, floating in the water tank.
After the discovery of her body, the heads responsible for the search, the Anti-kidnapping and Missing Persons, were fired.
The first autopsy performed on his body, signed by forensic doctors Omar León Maldonado and Alan Ortiz Montellano, established the cause of death as deep skull contusion.
A strong blow to the head that caused a respiratory arrest.
Maldonado announced it at a press conference with the attorney general and the victim's father, Mario Escobar.
But they did not offer more details about the mechanics of death, or whether or not he had suffered sexual abuse or further beatings.
The door was left open for her to have fallen into that cistern alone and died by accident.
An argument so common in the face of the violent death of a woman in Mexico that the outrage could only escalate.
The silence of the authorities on this point lasted more than a month.
The theory of the accident hovered over the case and threatened a premature shelving, despite the fact that the young woman's father had requested a second opinion of the first autopsy, the results of which were hidden from public opinion.
The second forensic report, to which EL PAÍS had access, conclusively concluded that Debanhi Escobar was murdered and suffered sexual abuse before she died.
It did not contradict the cause of her death: a blow to her skull.
But he added more details that already answered the fundamental question of how she died.
To conclude the murder and the sexual violence he suffered, the doctor who prepared the second opinion analyzed medical evidence, forensic images and conclusions of the original autopsy (the only one carried out so far).
And he argued that the young woman was dead at the time of reaching the cistern, since "liquid was not found inside the trachea and bronchi", so that the coroner ruled out her death by drowning.
Also, that not only did she receive a blow and this she could not cause herself, since she presented severe trauma in different parts of the head, "intense, repeated and with different angles of impact", which must have been caused "by another person" .
And that there were signs of sexual violence, detected by the first doctors, but omitted in her opinion.
After the details of the second ruling were made public, state authorities accepted the support of the federal government in the investigation.
The undersecretary of Public Security promised to offer support from the Army, National Guard, intelligence and forensic scientists, to correct the chain of errors that had stalled the
Debanhi case
.
From this collaboration was born the idea of exhuming his body, starting at the beginning.
And a second autopsy carried out by a new forensic team that definitively determines how the young woman died.
Doctors are expected to release the results between July 2 and 3.
In the 68 days that Debanhi has been buried, the Prosecutor's Office has not presented any progress on what happened that night.
Despite the fact that he later managed to rescue some videos from the motel's security cameras that captured the young woman's last minutes;
to identify some cars that entered the establishment shortly after her;
In addition to collecting the testimonies of her friends who went out partying with her, of the taxi driver who dropped her off in the middle of the road, there is no clear line of investigation.
They have not even officially confirmed femicide.
There is no detainee.
This week, state authorities searched the motel again.
A venue that has already been searched at least 10 times.
The results of the expert reports are not public at the moment, nor what track leads them to the same place over and over again.
The
Debanhi case
became a giant challenge for a Prosecutor's Office that is piling up the cases of missing and murdered women.
So far this year, 68 women have been reported missing, adding to the 1,800 who have not been found for more than 50 years.
Crimes against them suffer impunity in more than 90% of cases, as is the case for other crimes.
If the death of Debanhi Escobar is not clarified, if there is no justice for such a mediatic case and with all the federal support, if in this case there is at least one corpse, not like in thousands of other disappeared women, what can wait for the rest?
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