An Arizona Morgue Kept a Mother From Identifying Her Deceased Daughter’s Body for Over a Year. Now She — and the FBI

Rosa, an American citizen, decided several years ago to move her four children from their home in one of Arizona’s most populous cities, to Rocky Point, Mexico, with the hope of giving her kids a better life. Rocky Point, or Puerto Peñasco as it's known to locals, is a burgeoning, beach-filled tourist destination in the North of Mexico, just a few hours south of Phoenix on Interstate-10.

Rosa, whose real name is being withheld at this time, has asked that her family members’ identifying information, including their hometown of origin and the year they moved to Mexico not be made public, for fear of retaliation.

The family of five settled smoothly into their new home life in Rocky Point. Rosa’s youngest daughter, Carmen, 15, who was outgoing and made friends quickly, appeared to make the transition especially well. Being in a new country didn’t stop the exuberant, if slightly naive, teen from making new friends around the neighborhood.

In hindsight, Rosa says she does recall some red flags from that time period, but she had no idea how much danger her youngest daughter was actually in. She thought maybe Carmen had just fallen in with a bad crowd when she noticed her daughter’s usually kind and gregarious demeanor begin to change. Then the girl started coming home speckled with fresh marks and bruises.

Though some details are unclear at this time, all signs seem to indicate Carmen fell victim to a sexual predator, or multiple, who probably intended to groom and traffic the young American girl for their own profit. Luring, grooming and trafficking vulnerable victims, like Carmen, is a staggeringly common practice among human traffickers who are operating at unprecedented rates throughout the world. The internet’s boundless potential has made it easier than ever to coordinate trafficking operations of all scales.

One night in September 2019, Carmen asked to go out to meet friends for dinner. Rosa gave her daughter two hours in which to be home. But Carmen never made it home that night. Carmen was never seen alive again.

For Rosa, who had allowed herself to believe her daughter was now on the right path, a parent’s most unthinkable nightmare was just about to begin.

Despite its reputation as a sun-splashed tourist definition, Rocky Point is no stranger to the same kind of ruthless cartel violence that haunts other parts of Mexico, and the rest of Central and South Americas. In fact, in October 2019, volunteer searchers found 42 bodies in the desert near Rocky Point. The bodies were found by a group made up of the relatives of missing people who investigate “reports of clandestine burial sites.” Carmen’s was not one of the bodies found in these mass graves, but other trafficking victims’ remains were discovered there.

The search had to be temporarily suspended following the discovery of the mass graves because the morgues in Rocky Point were already past capacity.

Drug cartels and gangs use burial pits, like the ones found near Rocky Point, to dispose of the bodies of their victims and rivals. Volunteer search groups have cropped up as a grim necessity across Mexico because of inadequate, corrupt or nonexistent police investigations into murders and disappearances.

Three days after Carmen disappeared, Rosa got a call from the Rocky Point Police saying they had found her daughter’s body, but they would not permit her to ID it. Instead, they showed Rosa items of clothing that had supposedly been on her daughter’s body. After three months’ worth of attempts to identify her daughter, Rosa finally managed to have Carmen's body transferred back to a morgue in Arizona, where it would be held for close to a year.

Every time Rosa attempted to contact the morgue, she was confronted with another excuse for why she could not see her daughter’s remains. For an excruciating ten months, Rosa was not allowed the closure of verifying that the body in the morgue was indeed that of her daughter, let alone getting any information on her murder.

In a desperate gesture, Rosa reached out to non profit private investigation organization, the Anti-Predator Project, which immediately sought the involvement of the FBI. Finally, after more than a year without answers, Carmen’s body was released into FBI custody. The FBI is now charged with investigating what happened to Carmen back in Rocky Point, and why officials across international jurisdictions refused, for over a year, to let a mother have the peace, respect and dignity of identifying her dead child.

The investigation into Carmen’s death remains open.

More details on this case are forthcoming. Please also check back for the link to donate to a funeral and burial fund for Carmen’s family.