Juana Barraza

In September 2015, Barraza was highlighted in the Investigation Discovery series Deadly Women, in an episode titled "Payback".

Barraza was highlighted in the documentary Instinto Asesino which aired on Discovery en Español in 2010. The episode was entitled, "La Mataviejitas". Juana Barraza was also highlighted on the show La Historia Detras Del Mito, the episode was also entitled "La Mataviejitas".

Barraza was tried in the spring of 2008, the prosecution alleging she had been responsible for as many as 40 deaths. She admitted to one murder, that of Alfaro, and told the police her motive was lingering resentment regarding her own mother's treatment of her. On 31 March she was found guilty on 16 charges of murder and aggravated burglary, including 11 separate counts of murder. She was sentenced to 759 years in prison. Since sentences imposed in Mexican courts are generally served concurrently, but the maximum sentence under Mexican law is 60 years, she will most likely serve the full sentence in prison.

A major breakthrough in the case occurred on 25 January 2006, when a suspect was arrested fleeing from the home of the serial killer's latest victim, Ana María de los Reyes Alfaro, who lived in the Venustiano Carranza borough of Mexico City. Alfaro, 82, had been strangled with a stethoscope.

The authorities were heavily criticised by the media for dismissing evidence that a serial killer was at work in Mexico City as merely "media sensationalism" as late as the summer of 2005. Soon after setting an investigation in motion, the police incurred further criticism by launching what one journalist described as a "ham-fisted" and unproductive swoop on Mexico City's transvestite prostitutes.

By November 2005, the Mexican authorities were reporting witness statements to the effect that the killer wore women's clothing to gain access to the victim's apartments. In one case a large woman in a red blouse was seen leaving the home of a murdered woman. Two months later, police began checking the fingerprints of bodies in the city's morgues in the apparent belief that Mataviejitas might have committed suicide.

She was first portrayed in a TV series called "Mujer casos de la vida real" in the early 2000s. Mexican producer Pedro Torres brought the story to television on an episode of the 2010 Mexican television series Mujeres Asesinas 3 that was produced by Televisa. The episode is called "Maggie, Pensionada" starring the Mexican actress Leticia Perdigón as Maggie and Irma Lozano, Ana Luisa Peluffo and Lourdes Canale as victims.

Juana Barraza (born 27 December 1957) is a Mexican former professional wrestler and serial killer dubbed La Mataviejitas (Sp. "The Old Lady Killer") sentenced to 759 years in prison for killing between 42 and 48 elderly women. The first murder attributed to Mataviejitas has been dated variously to the late 1990s and to a specific killing on 17 November 2003. The authorities and the press have given various estimates as to the total number of the killer's victims, with estimates ranging from 24 to 49 deaths.