Before Juana Barraza Samperio became known across Mexico as “La Mataviejitas,” — Spanish for The Elderly Woman Slayer — she had another name. In wrestling circles, she was “The Lady of Silence,” a woman drawn to the masks, belts, pageantry, and theatrical violence of lucha libre.
Those who knew her in that environment later remembered her as calm and friendly, an image that would sit uneasily beside the crimes eventually linked to her name.
By 2008, that same woman had received the longest sentence in Mexico’s history: 759 years in prison.
