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Parents in police custody in Mexico missing-girl case

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Here’s a story that has gripped news attention in Mexico in recent days: Paulette Gebara, a bright-faced little girl, her eyes set slightly unevenly due to a disability, went missing from her house on the night of March 21 or early the next morning in Huixquilucan, a suburb of Mexico City in Mexico State.

People go missing all the time in Mexico, of course, and the general public rarely even looks up from their busy lives. Rows and rows of missing-person signs, on black-and-white sheets of paper, hang on bulletin boards in Mexico City metro stations. But Paulette’s case immediately caught the attention of the Mexican press for the same deeply problematic reasons that certain missing-person cases in the United States attract more attention than others.

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Paulette was not poor or brown. She was blond and fair-skinned, and just 4 years old. She vanished from her home in a secured apartment building in an upscale community known as Interlomas. For days, her teary-eyed mother told visiting reporters that when they awoke that Monday morning, Paulette had simply disappeared. (All links here in Spanish.)

News of the case spread rapidly across the Internet, bouncing among social networking sites, e-mail strings and message boards. The call went out; signs were hung over bridges and balconies featuring a photo of a smiling Paulette: Help bring me home.

From the start, seen through the prism of famous missing-persons cases in the U.S., the story unraveled like the JonBenet Ramsey mystery. To the public’s great horror, that’s what it has come to resemble.

Mexico State authorities announced Monday that they were detaining Paulette’s parents, Mauricio Gebara and Lisette Farah (pictured above), and two nannies, Ericka and Martha Casimiro, after inconsistencies and contradictions arose during their interviews. The adults were caught in lies while speaking to investigators, said the attorney general of Mexico State, Alberto Bazbaz.

The authorities emphasized that Paulette’s parents were not officially under arrest, and not suspects in the girl’s disappearance. Rather, they said, investigators needed to make sure the adults stuck around until the inconsistencies could be cleared up.

Then, the worst possible development.

The body of Paulette Gebara was found early Wednesday inside her home, police said, stuffed in a black plastic bag and wedged between her bed and the flooring. Paulette’s parents were present in the room with investigators, reports said, as they attempted once more to recreate the events of the night of the girl’s disappearance.

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Videos are now circulating of Farah, Paulette’s mother, giving interviews about the disappearance while sitting on her daughter’s bed. Lisette Farah, the Mexico State attorney general said Wednesday, may suffer from a ‘personality disorder.’

Bazbaz told reporters during a crowded news conference that Paulette had been asphyxiated. Crime-scene investigators are once again combingthe Gebara apartment, leading reporters and Twitter users to question how the girl’s body could have gone unnoticed for 10 days.

It is not clear yet when Paulette died, whether she was killed there in her bedroom or elsewhere, or who did it, Bazbaz said.

While Twitter users are expressing shock and outrage over the discovery of Paulette’s body, the girl’s parents remain in police custody.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City.

Photo above: Lisette Farah pleading for her daughter’s return. Credit: Reforma.com. Photo below: Reproduction of a Paulette missing-person photo. Credit: El Universal.

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