Juana Barraza was born in 1956 to a teenage mother who became an alcoholic and sold Juana off to a man when she was 12, allegedly for three beers. She blamed her childhood trauma for her crimes. “I hated old women because my mom mistreated me,” Barraza told investigators (via Oxygen). “She always cursed me. She gave me away to an old man and I was abused.”
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Before she was identified as the Mataviejitas (the Little Old Lady Killer), Barraza was known by another name — La Dama del Silencio, or Lady of Silence, a wrestler who wore a pink mask with a butterfly design. Besides wrestling, Barraza, who was a single mother, sold popcorn on the streets of Mexico City, per El Pais. Police said she also dressed up as a home aid worker, got inside the homes of elderly women, and strangled them to death with whatever was available, including stockings and electrical cords.
