Police in Honduras have found the bodies of a Honduran beauty queen and her sister after both of them disappeared on Thursday. Now they have arrested two men in connection to their deaths.
Maria Jose Alvarado Munoz, 19, and her sister Sofia Trinidad, 23, were last seen leaving a party near the mountainous region of Santa Barbara in northwest Honduras. Doug Stanglin of USA Today reports that Trinidad's boyfriend, Plutarco Antonio Ruiz, 26, confessed to the killings and led authorities to the bodies, according to Honduras National Police director Gen. Ramon Sabillon.
"I can confirm that the Alvarado sisters were found," Leandro Osorio, head of the National Directorate of Criminal Investigation, said to local Honduran TV. "We also have the murder weapon and the vehicle in which they were transported to the site where they were buried."
Gustavo Palencia of Reuters mentioned that the alleged murder weapon and vehicle included two pistols and a pickup truck. Police also say that they arrested a second man, Aris Valentin Maldonado, who was an alleged accomplice to Ruiz, according to Stanglin.
Stanglin reports that Sabillon cited witness statements where Ruiz allegedly became angry when Trinidad danced with another man at his birthday party. This event supposedly led to Trinidad being shot to death by Ruiz alongside her sister Munoz, who tried to flee the scene.
Sabillon described the killings as an "act of passion" pumped up by jealousy.
Elwyn Lopez and Greg Botelho of CNN report that Munoz's family originally reported their disappearance on Sunday. Their mother, Teresa Munoz, told a Honduran website that Ruiz supposedly called her the morning after they disappeared in a nervous matter and claimed they went out with other people in a car.
"They were not very astute about assessing the people around them. They were just friendly," Teresa said. "They were taken out by people they hadn't known very long."
Palancia reports that Munoz had worked as a model for local department stores and was the daughter of a lower middle class family from that region. A Miss World bio page indicated that she aspired to be a career diplomat and could not live without either lip gloss or Wikipedia.
The BBC reports that Munoz was set to compete in the upcoming Miss World pageant in London. Organizers of the pageant issued a statement that expressed their condolences and announced a tribute this weekend in their honor.
Julia Morley, chair of the Miss World Organization, stated that the group was "devastated by this terrible loss of two young women, who were so full of life."
The BBC cited a United Nations report saying that Honduras has the world's highest homicide rate, with 90.4 people murdered per 100,000 of the population. This country is also used by drug cartels to send cocaine from South America to the United States, according to Reuters.
