Beauty queen found murdered days before Miss World event
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A BEAUTY queen has been found murdered just days before she was due to compete in the Miss World pageant in London, police said yesterday.
The bodies of Maria Jose Alvarado, 19, and her sister Sofia were found buried near a river in the mountainous region of Santa Barbara, about 180 kilometers from the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, said Leandro Osorio, head of a criminal investigation unit.
Alvarado, a student who aspired to become a career diplomat, had been due to take part in the Miss World events that start tomorrow and culminate in the final in London on December 14.
She and her sister had been missing since last Thursday, when they were seen leaving a party in a car without a license plate.
“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.
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.
Alvarado was crowned Miss Honduras World 2014 in April, beating 18 other contestants to the top spot. She could not live without lip gloss or the website wikipedia.org, according to her official bio on the Miss World competition page.
Organizers of the event, which began in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Honduras is the world’s most violent country with a murder rate above 90 people per 100,000, about double the rate of its closest peers Venezuela, Belize and El Salvador.
Mexico’s drug cartels have expanded into Honduras in recent years, making the impoverished Central American nation a major thoroughfare for trafficking South America cocaine to the United States and driving a surge in violence.
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