A horrible murder compounded by police negligence: How Sheyla Cóndor was killed in Peru

A 26-year-old woman named Sheyla Mayumi Cóndor Torres went missing last Wednesday. She left her home in the Santa Anita district, east of Lima, and strangely did not show up at her uncle and aunt’s restaurant, where she worked as a cashier. Her family began looking for her that same night, but at the district police station they were told that “she was already of age, that she had surely gone off with some boyfriend and that she would be back soon. These things happen.” Her mother, Elsa Torres Vivanco, insisted, but the police chief refused to file the parents’ complaint. Shocked by the police’s negligence, she continued to investigate on her own. She had a bad hunch.

On Friday, a friend of Sheyla’s logged into her computer and noticed that she had left her WhatsApp open. Her last conversation had been with a man named Darwin Condori. The messages revealed that he had invited her to his house, in the Comas district, and that she had accepted because she wanted to meet his dog. She told him that she would only stay until 4 p.m., but he insisted on having a drink. Those would be the last images of Sheyla, captured by security cameras: entering the Las Praderas condominium, carrying a small white dog, in the company of a thin man with a serious look on his face.

The victim’s family returned to the Santa Anita police station, hoping that having concrete information about her possible whereabouts would raise the alarm and that law enforcement would begin searching for her. But the officer in charge told them that it was not his jurisdiction and that they should go to the police station closest to the spot where she was last seen. At the Santa Luzmila police station, the obstacles continued. Officials tried to dissuade the parents, telling them that if their daughter showed up after all, the parents could face a defamation suit. By that time, it was already known who Darwin Marx Condori Antezana was: a 25-year-old, third-class non-commissioned officer who had belonged to the Terna Group—an intelligence regiment with camouflage skills—and was currently part of the Green Squadron, a police unit that fights petty crime and small-scale drug trafficking.

In the meantime, a police officer telephoned Darwin Condori to ask about Sheyla’s whereabouts. He excused himself, saying that she had left home on Wednesday afternoon. The victim’s relatives would later claim that the call alerted him and gave him time to escape. It was not until early Sunday morning, after a complaint from some neighbors of the Las Praderas condominium in Comas about a foul odor coming from one of the towers, that they entered the policeman’s house. It was Elsa, the mother, who found the dismembered remains of her daughter in a suitcase under the bed and in a package in the bathroom. There was no trace of the murderer.

“They didn’t pay attention to me. Maybe we would have gone that day. I already knew where my daughter was. Only God knows if I would have found her alive,” laments Elsa, destroyed by the pain. The police raided the apartment and arrested a woman who was renting one of the rooms as well as five men, all of them students at the Public Naval Technological Higher Education Institute. They claim that they had been at a meeting and had not noticed anything strange in the apartment. They were later released by order of the Prosecutor’s Office.

Outrage grew when Darwin Condori’s background became public news. In early 2023 he was denounced by three women, who claim that they were drugged and raped by him and by another police officer. One of them even told her tragedy on television, without showing her face. That time Condori only spent two weeks in jail and then continued patrolling the streets. “We have waited to get to this situation, for that young lady to be killed, for her to be dismembered. I don’t know why the justice system, why the judge hasn’t done anything, why they only detained him for 15 days, released him and he rejoined the police force,” said one of his victims.

In the district of Comas, a mass march was held to protest the murder of Sheyla Cóndor and also the actions of the police officers who hindered the investigation. Feminist organizations raised their voice on social media to underscore that they do not feel safe with the institution that should be protecting them. The former Minister of Women, Gloria Montenegro, said in this regard: “The Police is unfortunately contaminated. It is a sexist and misogynistic institution, and even more so in rural, Andean areas. Women who arrive at the station after being beaten are told to go home, nothing more.”

On Tuesday morning Darwin Condori was found dead, tied to a TV rack inside a hostel in the district of San Juan de Lurigancho. He had a deep wound on one of his wrists. His badge and documents were on a nightstand and he left a letter that has not yet been made public. His weapon was not found. A video was leaked on social media, showing the police officers finding him, cutting the belt that tied him, placing him on the bed, and later taking him to a hospital where his death was confirmed. Experts feel that the scene was contaminated and that the police should have waited for the forensic experts and the prosecutor on duty.

The incident has raised suspicions in Sheyla Cóndor’s family, who will report the police for various irregularities. “It must be verified whether it was a deliberate murder, that is, whether there was a murder to silence him or, on the contrary, whether it was a suicide,” said the victim’s lawyer, Aarón Alemán. The journalist Manuela Camacho, herself a victim of harassment, has also been clear about her suspicions: “Nothing fits in the death of the non-commissioned officer who committed femicide, and it will not be enough to silence us. We want to know who his accomplices were, who covered it up and what else he knew that it was so urgent that it not be known. We are fed up with the police minimizing our complaints. They do not watch out for us, they do not look after us, but they do protect themselves,” she said.

Sheyla Cóndor was buried on Tuesday in her home land of Tarma, in the province of Junín, in the Angel de La Paz cemetery. As for Darwin Condori, the Ministry of the Interior has ordered that the remains of the non-commissioned officer not receive any kind of honor and, in addition, police officers have been prohibited from attending the burial.

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