Mexican family killed children as demons

Times Online:

A JUDGE ordered eight adults to be committed to a prison psychiatric facility for 40 years for the grisly exorcism and murder of a 7-month-old baby and a 13-year-old girl in a remote mountain community in western Mexico.

The baby was cut to pieces and the teenager was stoned to death by their family in Guanajuato state. Officials say the killers included the victims’ parents and grandparents who were convinced the girls were possessed by the devil. The ritual killings were accompanied by the sacrifice of farm animals.

A ninth suspect, an aunt described as the alleged instigator of the killings, has been confined at a psychiatric hospital, reportedly in an even worse state of mental illness.

Judge Ana Maria Raya Razo, who ordered the family’s incarceration, said that members of the extended family had admitted carrying out the killings. They said they were convinced that they had to save themselves from demons.

“The psychiatric testimony showed that they were suffering from a delusional psychotic state,” she said. “They said they had the faces of monkeys, that they had demons inside.”

Police were tipped off by an anonymous phone call. They travelled on foot — the only way to the three-house hamlet where the family lived — and found the baby girl mutilated and the body of Juana Perez Frausto tied to a stake and battered to death.

About ten members of the same extended family of about 30 were found locked into a house, where they had been confined for three days, apparently because they, too, were suspected of being possessed.

Following brutal slayings, 8 from small town jailed