Arrest made in murder of 'Sally' Grace Eiler

Police in Mexico arrest alleged killer of US woman
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 28, 2008
MEXICO CITY: Authorities in southern Oaxaca state said Saturday they have arrested a man who allegedly raped and killed a U.S. woman.
Omar Yoguez Singu, 32, told police he had consensual sex with Marcella Grace Eiler, 20, of Eugene, Oregon, and then killed her with a machete after an argument on Sept. 15, Oaxaca State Attorney General Evencio Ramirez said.
Eiler's badly decomposed body was found Wednesday in a shack 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Oaxaca City, near the town of San Jose del Pacifico.
Ramirez said Singu was turned over to police on Wednesday in Mexico City by friends who first beat him up after he confessed to the crime.
Eiler's father, John Eiler, of St. Louis, Missouri, said his daughter was a dance teacher and social activist in Oaxaca City, where she had lived on and off for the past three years.
"She was really trying to spend her energy as an observer for an indigenous rights organization," John Eiler said in a telephone interview.
Eiler had traveled to San Jose del Pacifico to dance at a fundraiser, said Miguel Cruz of Oaxaca's Popular Indigenous Council, an organization with which he said Eiler had worked since 2007.
She also had lived for about a month with the family of a witness in the killing of Bradley Roland Will, a volunteer for Indymedia.org, Cruz said. Will was fatally shot in October 2006 in Oaxaca City while filming protests by activists demanding the ouster of the state's governor.
Will's family said last year that they believed state officials were probably involved in his killing. State investigators arrested two town officials in 2006 but later released them after then-state Attorney General Lizbeth Cana suggested Will may have been shot by a protester.
Cruz said Eiler had complained that police in civilian clothes often sat in a parked car outside the witness's family's house and that they followed her.
Calls to Oaxaca's state police department were not answered Saturday.
"We're asking authorities to conduct an efficient and transparent investigation and that they not taint her image because she dedicated herself to defending the rights of women and of indigenous people," Cruz said in a telephone interview.
John Eiler said his daughter's remains would be cremated and returned to the United States.
Read previous articles about Sally's murder at: www.narconews.com/

Sally's murder: 'Meant to terrorize a population'

Hasta Siempre Sally Grace: Another US Activist Murdered in Oaxaca
by Kristin Bricker
Narco News

In my memories of Sally Grace, she looks just like the photograph of her that her friends published along with the communique denouncing that she was raped and murdered--laughing and smiling with a camera in her hand ...
Sally's raped and decaying body turned up in a cabin 20 minutes outside of San Jose del Pacifico. A neighbor noticed the smell and called the police.
According to the friend who identified the body, her face was unrecognizable: it was black as if it had been burned, and all of her hair was gone as if it had been ripped out. But Julieta Cruz recognized Sally's tattoos.
Read article in Narco News:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2008/09/hasta-siempre-sally-grace-another-us-activist-murdered-oaxaca