The director of a women’s rehabilitation center in a Mexican border town and her friend allegedly murdered a patient and then put her dismembered remains in a blender.
Claudia Rubi RE, 43, and her employee Diana Paola EL 28, who she also dated, allegedly beat Celia Castañeda, 35, to death at the Monarca Recovery Center on May 18 and then transferred the body to their home in Ciudad Juárez, where she cut up the body parts, including several that were discovered in a blender.
Castañeda returned to the northern frontier town after living in Wichita, Kansas for 10 years, where she developed a serious drug and alcohol problem, local media reported.
She lived with her boyfriend for a month before the relationship ended due to her addiction. She moved in with her aunts and asked them to admit her to the rehabilitation clinic on May 17.
The next day she was murdered.
Claudia Rubi RE, the director of the Monarca Recovery Center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is charged with the May 18 murder of Celia Castañeda, a former resident of Wichita, Kansas, with the help of her friend. Castañeda was beaten in the center and then taken to Claudia Rubi’s house, where she was dismembered.
Diana Paola EL faces a femicide charge in connection with the death of Celia Castañeda, who was murdered at a drug rehabilitation center in a border town in northern Mexico and then dismembered in the home rented by the suspects
On the morning of May 18, her family received a call from the clinic’s director, Claudia Rubi, warning them that Castañeda had run away of her own free will hours after she was registered.
On May 19, police launched a search and visited the clinic, where they discovered traces of blood in the kitchen and two rooms where the patients rested.
That same day, neighbors in Cuauhtémoc’s Ciudad Juárez neighborhood called 911 to file a noise complaint, saying they heard the loud noises of music, a power saw, and “a falling and breaking chair.”
Police visited the property and were led to the house by the owner, Francisco Irigoyen. They climbed an outside staircase and found a pair of pajamas and slippers stained with blood.
Diana Paola received the police at the door and evaded police questions together with Claudia Rubi. The couple, who were dating, ran out of the house but were immediately arrested in the backyard.
While searching the house, the police made the gruesome discovery that Castañeda’s head, genitals and limbs had been removed from the torso, which had been found in the bathtub.
Celia Castañeda, a former Kansas resident, was murdered May 18 at the Monarca Rehabilitation Center
Part of the leg was still attached to the torso. The hands, feet, kneecaps and skins of other parts of the body were in a bag.
As police continued to search the apartment, Castañeda’s guts were dumped into several buckets and one of her organs and human flesh were in a blender on the counter.
Police also found a bucket of acid that the suspects planned to use to dissolve the victim’s body.
Claudia Rubi and Diana Paola appeared in court last Friday and received five months of pre-trial detention.
“The victim wanted to improve her life and died,” Judge Brisa Meraz said at the hearing.
They each face 60 years in prison if convicted of femicide.