CBS News
Clandestine burial pits, bones and children’s notebooks found in Mexico City, searchers say
Volunteer searchers said they have found a clandestine crematorium on the edge of Mexico City, the latest grim discovery in a nation where more than 100,000 people are listed as officially missing.
It’s the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the capital. Collectives searching for missing persons say that drug cartels and other organized crime gangs often use drums filled with diesel or caustic substances to burn or dissolve bodies to leave no trace — but up to now, there has been little evidence of that in Mexico City.
Ceci Flores, a leader of one of the groups of so-called “searching mothers” from northern Mexico, announced on social media late Tuesday her team had found bones around a charred pit on the outskirts of the city.
Flores said the team had found bones, clandestine burial pits, ID cards and children’s notebooks at the site in a rural area of the city’s south side.
“I am not looking for justice, just for a mother to know where to tuck her son in for the last time,” she wrote. “I want to cry, this country is not right.”
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
Mexico City prosecutors issued a statement saying they were investigating the find to determine the nature of the remains found, and whether they were human. The prosecutors office said it was also reviewing security camera footage and looking for possible witnesses.
The discovery, if confirmed, would be a political embarrassment for the ruling party, which has long governed Mexico City and claims the capital has been spared much of the drug cartel violence that afflicts other parts of the country.
That is largely due to the city’s dense population, notoriously snarled traffic, extensive security camera network and large police force, which presumably make it hard for criminals to act in the same way they do in provincial areas.
But while the city is home to 9 million residents and the greater metropolitan area holds around 20 million, large parts of the south side are still a mix of farms, woods and mountains. In those areas, it is not unheard of for criminals to dump the bodies of kidnapping victims, but they seldom burn or bury them.
Volunteer searchers like Flores often conduct their own investigations, sometimes relying on tips from former criminals, because the government has been unable to help. The searchers have been angered by a government campaign to “find” missing people by checking their last known address, to see if they have returned home without advising authorities.
Activists claim that is just an attempt to reduce the politically embarrassing figures on the missing.
The searchers, mostly the mothers of the disappeared, usually aren’t trying to convict anyone for their relatives’ abductions. They say they just want to find their remains.
The Mexican government has spent little on looking for the missing. Volunteers must stand in for nonexistent official search teams in the hunt for clandestine graves where cartels hide their victims. The government hasn’t adequately funded or implemented a genetic database to help identify the remains found.
Victims’ relatives rely on anonymous tips, sometimes from former cartel gunmen, to find suspected body-dumping sites. They plunge long steel rods into the earth to detect the scent of death.
If they find something, the most authorities will do is send a police and forensics team to retrieve the remains, which in most cases are never identified. But such systematic searches have been rare in Mexico City.
At least seven of the activists searching for some of Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people have been killed since 2021.
In March, a group of relatives searching for missing loved ones said they discovered around two dozen bags containing human remains in a clandestine cemetery at a ranch in El Salto in the western state of Jalisco. In the same region in February 2023, 31 bodies were exhumed by authorities from two clandestine graves.
In 2018, a woman named Maria told CBS News she joined a group of volunteers to look for the remains of her son, who she saw grabbed off the street and thrown into a white van.
“They had taken him. He was in a truck a street away,” she said. “Like I have my son, others have their children, their siblings, their spouses, their parents. There’s every kind of person. That’s why we’re here — to search.”
The Emmy Award-winning “CBS News Sunday Morning” is broadcast on CBS Sundays beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. “Sunday Morning” also streams on the CBS News app beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET. (Download it here.)
Hosted by Jane Pauley
Trinity Church
COVER STORY: The story of Handel’s “Messiah”
Since its premiere in 1742, George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” a 3.5-hour work for chorus, soloists and orchestra that includes the “Hallelujah Chorus,” has become one of the most-heard pieces of classical music on Earth. Correspondent David Pogue looks back on the creation of this masterwork with author Charles King and conductor-musicologist Jane Glover, and examines how Biblical passages assembled by a wealthy English landowner suffering from doom and despair would, in the hands of the German-British opera composer, become a timeless message of hope, and a Christmas tradition.
For more info:
ALMANAC: December 22
“Sunday Morning” looks back at historical events on this date.
ARTS: In Asheville, N.C., gingerbread houses reflect community spirit
For more than three decades, Asheville, North Carolina, has hosted the National Gingerbread Contest, a celebration of Christmas, creativity and carbohydrates. The flooding brought by Hurricane Helene this past fall cancelled the contest, but what had been a destination event for bakers and spectators has become an ad hoc celebration of Asheville. Forty-one gingerbread creations have been placed around town to help bring holiday cheer (as well as attract donations and tourist dollars) to the struggling city. Correspondent Conor Knight reports.
For more info:
CBS News
MOVIES: Werner Herzog keeps working, predicts: “You have to carry me out from a set feet first”
Visionary director Werner Herzog has made more than 20 feature films and more than 30 documentaries. But it wasn’t movies that prompted the German-born filmmaker to move to Los Angeles; it was love. He talks with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz about his recent memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All”; about the epic making of his 1982 classic, “Fitzcarraldo”; and why he enjoys acting – when he gets to play the villain.
For more info:
HEADLINES: Why drone hysteria has taken off
By most accounts, alleged drone sightings have been multiplying exponentially, with more than 5,000 reported in just the past few weeks. But experts say the majority of reports about unusual lights in the sky are probably anything but drones. Correspondent Tom Hanson reports.
For more info:
PASSAGE: In memoriam
“Sunday Morning” remembers some of the notable figures who left us this week.
WORLD: West Bank settlements, and the expanding divide of Israelis and Palestinians
Inside the occupied West Bank, the Israeli settlement of Karnei Shomron is one of more than a hundred carved into Palestinian land. Today, upwards of 700,000 Israelis live in communities scattered inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the United Nations calls illegal. About 15% of settlers are Americans. Correspondent Seth Doane talks with two settlers, originally from West Virginia and Detroit, and with Palestinians in the West Bank now living on the other side of an Israeli security barrier.
For more info:
MGM/Criterion
COMMENTARY: Bob Dylan’s enduring love affair with the movies
The iconic Bob Dylan has long been a silver screen presence – as an actor, a subject of documentaries, and as portrayed by Hollywood heavyweights, from Christian Bale to Timothée Chalamet (star of the new biopic “A Complete Unknown”). But as historian Douglas Brinkley points out, Dylan’s love of movies has been a recurring theme in his art, and his persona, all his life.
To watch a trailer for “A Complete Unknown,” click on the video player below:
For more info:
SUNDAY PROFILE: Darren Criss
Kelefa Sanneh reports.
You can stream the holiday album “A Very Darren Crissmas” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
For more info:
MUSIC: A Darren Criss performance
COMMENTARY: Reflections on the messages of Christmas and Hanukkah
Wednesday will mark both Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah. Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and author and rabbi Steve Leder, of Los Angeles, offer their thoughts on what the holiday season means to us all.
For more info:
MUSIC: Darren Criss performs with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
NATURE: TBD
WEB EXCLUSIVES:
FROM THE ARCHIVES: Hollywood Legends IV (YouTube Video)
Watch more classic “Sunday Morning” interviews with some of the film industry’s most luminous stars. From 2014, Leonardo DiCaprio talks about the making of “The Wolf of Wall Street”; from 2012, Jane Fonda discusses what she calls her “third and final act”; from 2015, Russell Crowe talks about his first film as a director, “The Water Diviner”; from 2010, Harrison Ford describes stardom and his responsibility to his audience; and from 2018, Denzel Washington discusses his career on screen and on stage, as he appears in a Broadway revival of the Eugene O’Neill classic, “The Iceman Cometh.”
The Emmy Award-winning “CBS News Sunday Morning” is broadcast on CBS Sundays beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. Executive producer is Rand Morrison.
DVR Alert! Find out when “Sunday Morning” airs in your city
“Sunday Morning” also streams on the CBS News app beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET. (Download it here.)
Full episodes of “Sunday Morning” are now available to watch on demand on CBSNews.com, CBS.com and Paramount+, including via Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon FireTV/FireTV stick and Xbox.
Follow us on Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; YouTube; TikTok; and at cbssundaymorning.com.
You can also download the free “Sunday Morning” audio podcast at iTunes and at Play.it. Now you’ll never miss the trumpet!
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit Thursday against a former aide who alleged he sexually harassed her in 2020. His legal filing came just days after she withdrew her own lawsuit against him.
In the filing, Cuomo’s lawyers claimed Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant in his office, lied about him making sexual advances toward her.
“Governor Cuomo did not make any sexual advances toward Bennett and did not sexually harass her,” his lawyers wrote in a notice filed in New York state court on Thursday.
Bennett was the second woman to accuse the then-governor of sexual harassment, which she said included telling her he was “lonely” and asking her if she would be open to sex with an older man. She described Cuomo as “a textbook abuser” who made her “deeply uncomfortable.”
After Bennett went public with her allegations in March 2021, Cuomo held a press conference where he said he felt “embarrassed” and that he “never knew at the time I was making anyone feel uncomfortable.”
In Thursday’s filing, his lawyers wrote the former governor faced “a cascade of harm” as a result of Bennett’s allegations.
Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that concluded he had sexually harassed at least 11 women, including Bennett.
When that investigation came out, Cuomo denied ever sexually harassing women. “The facts are much different than what has been portrayed,” Cuomo said at the time. “I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances.”
Last week, Bennett dropped a separate federal suit she had filed in 2022 accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment. In a statement posted by her attorney on X, Bennett cited “invasive discovery requests” made by Cuomo’s legal team that included her medical records from more than a decade ago.
In their filing today, Cuomo’s attorneys note that their discovery requests fell “under the rules that govern all federal lawsuits. They alleged Bennett dropped her suit to avoid being deposed and to “shield the overwhelming evidence of her false claims from ever becoming public.”
Cuomo’s notice said “Bennett’s claims were … exposed as a sham through the discovery process.”
As part of her statement last week, an attorney for Bennett said she would still be pursuing a case against the state of New York, her employer at the time of the alleged harassment. In a separate statement, Bennett called Cuomo’s legal filings “abusive.”
“Throughout this extraordinarily painful two-year case, I’ve many times believed that I’d be better off dead than endure more of his litigation abuse, which has caused extraordinary pain and expense to my family and friends,” Bennett said. “I desperately need to live my life.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
