American woman killed in San Miguel Allende

An American woman has been found dead in her house in Santa Teresita de Don Diego, in the Municipality of San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato.

It is believed she was killed last Friday, February 1^st, but it wasn’t until yesterday that the state Attorney General’s office confirmed the death of the woman, identified as Ms. Joyous Heart, 53. 


Message board posts describe her as a loving woman devoted to her adopted daughter. One post from a couple who claim to have known her says she was in fact 59.

According to the initial investigative reports robbery has not been ruled out as a motive.

Ms. Heart, who had lived in the area for the past six years, was stabbed to death and her throat slashed with a razor.

Police have determined that Ms. Heart lived alone, but that she rented rooms in her house to foreigners unable to find hotel accommodation, or who were well known to her and frequented the area.

Neighbours expressed concern at the news of Ms. Heart’s death, and the fact that it happened in her home.

“She was a very friendly woman, but we never chatted with her,” a neighbour told the Mexican newspaper Reforma. “It was just to say hello. We knew through people who worked for her that she had decided to live alone. She talked to her maids, and told them that she was a woman from up north and had no one here. Only that. She lived alone and rented rooms, but only to Americans. She always had people living with her. They were always people from her own country.”

In 2011 two other foreigners were killed in San Miguel. On January 18, 2011, the American Peter C. Mudge, 85, was found dead in his home in the Allende neighbourhood. And on June 29, 2011, the Canadian Judith Zena Bailes, 64, was killed in her home in the Atotonilco neighbourhood.

(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)

Twitter: @TimothyEWilson

Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com

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