Sharif Abdul Latif Sharif:

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"Several mishandling of events have worsened the rift between city's poor and disenfranchised, and the police. For instance, when the body of 17-year-old Sagrario Gonzalez was found 20 miles from Rio Grande, police informed the media before notifying her next of kin. And when they did finally contact her family they suggested Sagrario had been trying to earn extra money turning tricks, even though she was last seen getting on the bus after her shift in a maquiladora factory. Enraged by the apathy of city officials, Sagrario's sister, Geeyamina, started painting black crosses on the municipal lampposts to symbolize the senseless loss of her sister's life. Now, most posts in the Juarez sprawl are covered with the crosses. And many makeshift altars have been made in street corners and in police stations.

The first suspect arrested in the case was Sharif Abdul Latif Sharif, an Egyptian-born chemist living in one of the city's wealthy neighborhoods. Sharif was taken into custody in 1995 after a prostitute accused him of raping her at his home. In custody Sharif allegedly confessed to five killings. Since then he has staunchly maintained his innocence. "I am innocent," claimed Sharif in a prison interview, "they are pinning this all on me because I am a foreigner... I'm just a drunk, I'm not a murderer." In 1996 a judge dismissed six murder charges against Sharif, then prosecutors filed new murder charges and threw him back in jail. On March 3, 1999 Sharif was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of 18-year-old Elizabeth Castro Garcia and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

A quick look into Sharif's past reveals a man of great scientific genius as well as a rapist and possible serial killer. By the time Sharif arrived to Ciudad Juarez he was no stranger to sexual violence against women. The Egyptian immigrant had several run-ins with the law in the United States before relocating to Mexico. He had two sexual battery convictions in Florida -- in Gainsville and Palm Beach -- resulting in six years in prison. A third rape charge in Brownsville, Texas pushed him across the border. He also had a history of drunken-driving arrest in New Jersey, Florida and Texas and a 1984 jailbreak charge in Florida that somehow went unpunished.

According to all who worked with Sharif, he was a man of scientific genius as well as a hard-drinking, womanizing charmer who was personable and funny. Several U.S. oil companies considered him a genius of the laboratory and sought his services, regardless of the cost. He was a chemist who, according to a colleague, "could make a bomb out of Bisquick." One Midland, Texas, company even hired him from prison, overlooking his obvious psychopathic behavior and helping him fight off deportation. Sharif, in fact, was lucky beyond belief, taking full advantage of his personal magnetism as well as the loyalty of his employers. After two rape convictions he somehow eluded deportation despite a law calling for the banishment of any legal alien who committed two crimes of "moral turpitude."

On May 1981, Sharif punched and raped a 23-year-old neighbor in Palm Beach, then claimed they had consensual sex that had gotten a little rough. With the help of his boss Jim Gambale, the owner of Cercoa Inc., Sharif was able to hire Greg Scott, a highly regarded Palm Beach defense lawyer. Scott was able to plea-bargain the rape charge to five years probation. On August 13, the night before he pleaded guilty to sexual battery, Sharif attacked another woman at her home in West Palm Beach. "I was on the floor between the bed and the bathroom," she wrote in her police statement. "He began telling me to take my clothes off. I asked him please for a towel, and he said no, kicked me once or twice and said he was going to kill me, and hit me again several times." Then he calmed down, asked her to fix him a drink, then even asked her for a date the next night.

"The suspect in this case is Sharif Sharif," an investigator wrote after she reported the attack. "He... has current sexual battery charges pending, using the same motive." Inexplicably the second attack was never reported to the prosecutors handling the first rape case. That same day he was released on parole on the first charge he was arrested and charged with false imprisonment and battery. Then he was quickly released on bail so he could return to work. Eventually, on January 11, 1982, he was found guilty of battery for a second time and sentenced to 45 days in jail.

After getting fired from Cercoa, Sharif relocated with two co-workers to Gainesville where they formed their own firm. In Gainsville Sharif ended a short-lived marriage by beating his wife senseless. A few weeks later he attacked a college student who answered his ad for a live-in housekeeper. "If you try to escape, I will murder you like the rest of them," he allegedly told the terrified 20-year-old. "I will bury you out back in the woods. I've done it before, and I'll do it again." After his arrest for the Gainesville attack several other women called police to report they had been terrorized by him. "All were so frightened that they were afraid to come forward," Gainesville police Captain Sadie Darnell wrote 10 years later to an El Paso federal judge during deportation proceedings against Sharif. "Some indicated they thought he would kill them if he found out."

In light of the murder charges against Sharif in Mexico, U.S. authorities have been looking into several unsolved murders in Florida and New Jersey that might have involved the Egyptian chemist. One case on particular, the 1977 abduction-murder of 30-year-old Sandra Miller in New Jersey, points at Sharif as a viable suspect. Miller was attacked the night of January 3, 1977, when she returned home from her job with Eastern Airlines at the Newark Airport. Her killer apparently was waiting for her when she pulled up to the remote farm where she lived with her 5-year-old daughter. Evidence found outside the farmhouse suggest a fierce struggle ensued between Miller and her assailant.

Miller was eventually overpowered and driven away in a car a few miles across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania where she was either dumped on the side of the road, or jumped from the car in an attempt to escape. She died - of a single stab wound - just as a police officer reached her. After learning of Sharif's incarceration for a series of rape-murders in Juarez, New Jersey State Police Detective Chris Andreychak established that Sharif worked at a chemical plant two miles from Miller's home, and they both frequented the same bar. Considering Sharif was an obsessive womanizer and Miller a pretty brunette, undoubtedly they would have met. Comparing her case to other known attacks committed by the brilliant chemist, one cannot avoid suspecting his involvement in her untimely demise.

With Sharif in jail the killings came to a momentary halt, then continued at a faster pace. Authorities theorize that Sharif hired a gang called "The Rebels" to continue murdering women. In April 1996, police detained nearly 200 men in a raid on several bars in Juarez. Among those arrested was Sergio Armendariz, a nightclub security guard and leader of the Rebels, and six fellow gang members. Police claim Armendariz -- also known as El Diablo -- and his gang were hired by Sharif to ritually kill at least 17 girls. Fortunately El Diablo and The Rebels enjoyed the job torturing the women on a concrete sacrificial slab before murdering them. Several of the victims had bite marks all over their bodies, three of them matching El Diablo's own teeth. Most of the victims had their skulls caved in. Though investigators believe Sharif, Armendariz and the Rebels are responsible for at least 17 murders, their arrests still failed to stop the bloodshed."

http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/juarez.html