Eye Witness to Kidnappings and Murders

José Navarrete was 15 when he killed for the first time and it felt, all things considered, pretty good. "I shot him in the back and he fell. Then I went over and put one in his face. In that moment I felt the best." The dead boy was also 15 and belonged to a group that had gatecrashed a birthday party organised by Navarrete's street gang. Shouting turned to shoving and Navarette decided to use the 9mm he kept in his waistband to frighten shop owners. "All my friends congratulated me. They said it showed I really belonged in the gang. I felt a part of the neighbourhood." All these years later he can still feel the tingle. It was the start of a long, dark journey into the business of kidnapping, mutilating and murdering fellow inhabitants of Ciudad Juárez, centre of Mexico's drug war and by some measure the world's murder capital. The scale and sadism of the violence bewilders outsiders. We see the corpses, the ambulances and the police but what of the killers? Who are they? Why do they do it? Read more here:

Eye Witness to Kidnappings and Murders