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Miss Honduras winner and sister found dead Miss Honduras winner and sister found dead
(35 minutes later)
A Honduran beauty queen has been found murdered days before she was due to compete in the Miss World pageant in London, police have said. Police in Honduras have found the bodies of a beauty queen and her sister, six days after the two young women disappeared from a party.
The bodies of María José Alvarado, 19, and her sister Sofía were found buried near a river in the mountainous region of Santa Barbara, about 110 miles from the capital Tegucigalpa, said Leandro Osorio, head of the criminal investigation unit. María José Alvarado, 19, had been due to travel to London today in preparation for the Miss World pageant in December. Her body was found buried near a river near the northern city of Santa Bárbara, alongside that of her 23-year-old sister Sofía, police said on Wednesday.
Alvarado, a student who aspired to become a career diplomat, had been due to take part in the Miss World events that start on Thursday and culminate in the final in London on 14 December. “I can confirm that the Alvarado sisters have been found,” Leandro Osorio, head of the criminal investigation unit told Honduran TV.
She and her sister had been missing since Thursday, when they were seen leaving a party in a car without a licence plate. María José and Sofía went missing on Thursday night after attending Sofía’s boyfriend’s birthday party in a spa on the outskirts of Santa Bárbara where the family home is also located.
“I can confirm that the Alvarado sisters were found … We also have the murder weapon and the vehicle in which they were transported to the site where they were buried,” Osorio told local television. Police said the boyfriend, Plutarco Ruíz, is the prime suspect in the murder and has been arrested along with another man identified as Valentín Maldonado.
The interior minister, Arturo Corrales, told Honduran media that Plutarco Ruiz, the boyfriend of the beauty queen’s sister, was responsible for the crime. Police arrested Ruiz and another man on Tuesday, confiscating two pistols. “We have the author of this abominable act, Mr Plutarco Ruíz,” Osorio said. “We also have the murder weapon and the vehicle used to transport the victims.”
Alvarado was crowned Miss Honduras 2014 in April, beating 18 other contestants to the top spot. Local media reported that police had confiscated two pistols from the detainees. There were also reports that they had led police to the graves.
Organisers of the Miss World event, which began in the UK in the 1950s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The disappearance and subsequent murder of the Alvarado sisters has shocked Honduras, a country already struggling with a deep security crisis and the worst murder rates in the world for several years.
Honduras is the world’s most violent country, with figures for 2012 showing a murder rate above 90 per 100,000 people. The national homicide rate in Honduras 2013 stood at 83 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, about double the rates in Venezuela, Belize and El Salvador – Latin America’s other most violent countries.
Mexico’s drug cartels have expanded into Honduras in recent years, making the Central American nation a major thoroughfare for trafficking South America cocaine to the US and driving a surge in violence. The murder of the Alvarado sisters stands out both because of María José’s position as a representative of the country, as well as because of the absence of any suggestion that the two women were in any way linked to the turf battles between street gangs that is usually blamed for the majority of the country’s violence.