The last civilian execution in Mexico was in Sonora

The last execution by firing squad in Sonora took place during the early hours of June 18, 1957, against “sátiro” Juan Zamarripa and Francisco Ruiz Corrales, for sexual assault and murder of two minors.

Two cases of sexual violence against minors in Sonora in the 1950s led both perpetrators to the old execution wall. State Penitentiary of the city of Hermosillo, at the foothills of Cerro de la Campana, to carry out the last recorded execution by firing squad in the state, on July 17, 1957.

Despite many people possibly thinking they were criminals who acted together, these are separate and isolated cases from each other. One of them occurred in 1950 in Vícam; the other, in 1956, in the city of Hermosillo.

Ignacio Lagarda Lagarda, the municipal chronicler of Hermosillo, reported that these types of criminals were called “satyrs” due to the lascivious, obscene, and atrocious acts that resulted in the deaths of two minors.

The body floating in the Yaqui River

The first one occurred in the year 1950, in Vícam, a town in the municipality of Guaymas, when the lifeless body of a girl was found floating in the waters of a canal in the Yaqui River and was reported by a couple of indigenous people.

The investigations pointed to Don Juan Zamarripa, a soldier from the military barracks of Esperanza but stationed in the mountains, who, in a state of drunkenness or under the influence of some drug, entered a house where he found a girl, about 3 years old, whom he took, violated, and killed, before throwing her remains into the river.

“That man was sentenced and it was fully proven what he had done, and he was interned in the old penitentiary of Hermosillo, on Cerro de la Campana,” the chronicler commented.

The tomato girl

Later, around 1956, a neighbor from the 5 de Mayo neighborhood in the city of Hermosillo took advantage of a 7-year-old girl who was helping her mother, a waitress at the ‘Gandarita’ bar in the downtown area, by selling tomatoes. 1 / 2

The laborer Francisco Ruiz Corrales kidnapped her and took her to what is now the Country Club, near the Devil’s Casino, where he abused her before taking her life.

After conducting the investigations, the authorities caught the murderer, and he was arrested to be imprisoned in the same penitentiary while his sentence was being dictated, which in this case was death by firing squad.

The early morning of the last firing squad execution

In Sonora, several similar cases of sexual crimes and other assaults occurred, prompting Governor Alvaro Obregón to commit to carrying out the execution of criminals after being sentenced by the courts.

It was during the early morning of June 18th, 1957 when the order for the last legal execution by firing squad in the state of Sonora was carried out, and the firing squad proceeded with the execution of Don Juan Zamarripa and Francisco Ruiz Corrales at 5:05 a.m.

“After the legal execution, they were buried in the cemetery on Yáñez Street, next to the west wall, and paradoxically, nearby was buried the Hermosillo tomato-selling girl, which, by the way, inspired a novel titled ‘The Tomato Girl’ by a writer from Hermosillo,” he said.

The crimes committed by the “satyrs” against both girls shocked society, however, years earlier, there had already been various legal executions for other types of crimes in 1931.

Lagarda Lagarda emphasized that later, in 1974, the penal code in Sonora was reformed, and the death penalty by firing squad was abolished in the state.