Mexican prosecutor quits amid outcry over case of girl found dead in bed after 9-day search

Mexico prosecutor quits in outcry over dead girl

TOLUCA, Mexico — A Mexican state attorney general resigned Tuesday amid a public uproar over his handling of the case of a little girl whose body was found in her bed nine days after parents launched a wide-scale search.

The case provoked widespread incredulity when prosecutors announced last week that 4-year-old Paulette Gebara had accidentally smothered and had been in her own bed during the nine days that police and family were looking for her.

It is one of a string of high-profile cases that have recently damaged the credibility of Mexico’s police and justice system. Investigators in Cancun have been unable to resolve the slaying of a U.S. television producer’s wife nearly a month after her body was found in a sewer at a luxury resort. And the disappearance of a former presidential candidate earlier this month renewed anger over Mexico’s high kidnapping rate.

Alberto Bazbaz, the attorney general of the state of Mexico, which borders the country’s capital, said he stood by his agency’s conclusion that Paulette’s death was an accident. But he said he was stepping down because his agency had lost credibility and the trust of the public.

“The trouble over this case has damaged the ties that should exist between this agency and society,” Bazbaz said.

Paulette’s parents reported her missing March 22, launching a media campaign that included billboards and advertisements pleading for her return. Sympathizers were shocked when police found her body nine days later wedged between the mattress and frame of her bed in the family’s luxury apartment on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Police struggled to explain why her body wasn’t found sooner during multiple searches.

Her parents and two nannies were detained for questioning, then released pending an investigation. At the time, Bazbaz declared the case a “homicide investigation,” saying the parents and nannies had made contradictory statements about the day Paulette disappeared.

But last week, he said an autopsy and interviews with dozens of experts indicated Paulette had somehow moved to the foot of her bed, where she smothered. He insisted Tuesday that the investigation had been conducted “in strict compliance with the law.”

Paulette’s father, Mauricio Gebara, has said he accepted the results of the investigation, while her mother, Lizette Farah, has expressed doubts and demanded to see the case file. The two nannies have long expressed doubt that Paulette’s body could have been in her bed for nine days, insisting they thoroughly searched her bedroom.

“How are we supposed to believe that, as Bazbaz says, that little body was at the foot of her bed for nine days, dead, when the place was searched by dozens of police, experts, dogs, criminologists, reporters and relatives?” wrote Martin Moreno, a columnist for the newspaper Excelsior. “Nobody saw anything? Maybe because it wasn’t there.”

Moreno suggested in his column that the case could be a blow to political aspirations of Mexico state Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, who is an early favorite to become the 2012 presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Bazbaz was appointed by Pena Nieto.

Cesar Nava, the leader of the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon, has demanded that Pena Nieto order a new investigation “and rectify this absurd and improbable story” of how Paulette died.

On Tuesday, the governor told local media that the case had become politicized.

“I regret the attitude that some political parties and some politicians have adopted in the case of this tragedy, the death of a little girl, to seek political gain and use it politically, without any apparent interest in learning what really happened,” Pena Nieto said.

Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont acknowledged Monday that the image of Mexico’s police and justice system has taken a beating. He, too, criticized the handling of the Paulette investigation, although he stopped short of questioning its findings.

“I would cite the case of Paulette as a tough example,” Gomez Mont said Monday during a forum on security. “The only thing that was created was more doubt.”