True Crime Database

Paulette Gebara Farah

Known by some as the Mexican JonBenet Ramsey, the two cases hold a huge number of similarities. Both were young girls who came from affluent families, both were initially reported as missing, both of their bodies were found somewhere in the house afterwards and the parents were labeled as the prime suspects. The difference is that while JonBenet Ramsey's death was listed as a homicide and remains unsolved, Paulette's death was considered to be accidental, though many believe there is much more to the story...

Paulette Gebara Farrah was born on 20th July 2005 in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico City to parents Lizette Farah Farah and Mauricio Gebara Rahal. With Lizette coming from a wealthy family herself and Mauricio being a successful businessman, the couple had a lot of money to their name, enough to hire nannies for their two daughters: Lizette, the eldest and Paulette. Paulette was born at 25 weeks and weighed only 800 grams – doctors did not initially believe she was going to survive. She did, but as a result of her premature birth, Paulette suffered from a physical disability, not being able to walk (though this changed with the help of horse therapy), and speaking problems. Nevertheless, Paulette persisted as a strong and happy toddler, able to sit in a classroom with children her age and who loved horses.

The last time Paulette was ever seen alive was on 21st March 2010, when she was 4 years old. She had been with her father and sister that weekend on a trip while her mother went on a separare trip with a friend. They had both returned to their home on the same day, Paulette arriving at about 9pm. Her mother alleged that she had tucked Paulette into bed and given her a kiss goodnight. The next morning, when the nannies had sent the eldest sister off to school on the bus and they went to wake up Paulette, she had mysteriously vanished. There was no sign of her in her room, her parents room, her sisters room or the rest of the apartment for that matter. When it was then discovered that no one in the building had seen her either, the police were called.

When the police arrived, they ruled out the idea that there had been a break in and someone had kidnapped her as there were no signs of forced entry anywhere within the apartment. There were no signs of her taking anything with her, no ransom note, no phone call and no forensic traces. Due to the case of a young missing child tugging on the heartstrings on people across Mexico, the story reached major publicity. Her parents made multiple television appeals to help find their daughter, often taking place in her room and sitting on her bed. People searched her room and the entire house from top to bottom, even cleaning and sorting out Paulette's room and making her bed, which is what makes the whole case so interesting. The Attorney General for the State of Mexico announced that her parents and the maids were to be rooted for falsehoods and inconsistences in their stories, and demand a reconstruction of the night Paulette was last seen take place on the 30th of March.

On the 31st March 2010, Paulette's body was discovered – she was found lodged between the mattress and the frame of her bed at the foot of it, face down, suffocated. Her body was already going through major stages of decomposition, meaning a strong smell of putrification with it. She had been covered by blankets which had become bloodied from the decomposition. The coroner had ruled her death as an accident and that she had rolled over in the middle of the night and had gotten herself stuck between the frame and mattress of her bed, where she subsequently suffocated. It was also his belief that her body had not been manipulated with post mortem and had remained there for 9 days without anyone noticing. This confused a lot of people, especially considering trained sniffer dogs, forensic teams, police and family had been in and out of the room multiple times. Her bed had also been previously made by the maids during several reconstructions – the bed had been taken apart and searched multiple times by investigators and Lizette was specifically shown as sitting on it during her multiple public appeals. So how did her body go unnoticed for so long? The coroner claimed the blankets also helped to mask the smell of putrification, although many also disagree with this – for that to have happened, her body would have had to have been there for a maximum of three days, meaning the body must have been moved.

Many believe that Paulette's parents were hiding more than they were willing to admit. While Lizette and Mauricio were being interrogated the day before Paulette's body was found on the basis of falsehoods within their story, their behaviour was noted as odd by investigators. Lizette seemed to appear cold and indifferent towards her daughter's disappearance and hardly affected by it – she was described as being defensive, anxious, angry and having little to no empathy. Mauricio remained evasive and anxious also. Falsehoods in their stories did also come to light – the parents claimed they were the ones who searched the house from top to bottom when it was actually the maids who had done so. Mauricio's sister was also the one who alerted the authorities rather than Mauricio himself. It also came to light that the marriage was failing – the couple had financial troubles and Lizette revealed she had been away with her lover the weekend Paulette was last seen alive. On March 23rd, Lizette had gone out for several hours with her eldest daughter, though no one is sure as to what they did throughout that time.

It was also revealed that the investigation process itself was handled poorly: investigation teams were under orders to only look for signs of forced entry when first stepping onto the scene and deputy attorney Alfredo Castillo, had ordered them to stop not long after arriving. The crime scene had not been closed off, meaning many people were free to walk around the house and contaminate a potential crime scene. A friend of Lizette's had even slept in Paulette's bed while the investigation was ongoing. It was also revealed that the head of Mexico's Financial Crimes Unit, the man who had presented the autopsy reports and had been a huge part of the investigation himself, named Alberto Bazbaz, was a good friend of Mauricio's. This would explain why Bazbaz came out with theories of Lizette and the nannies being the perpetrators behind Paulette's death and clearing Mauricio of any wrongdoing. Mauricio went along with this idea while Lizette, on the other hand, labelled Mauricio as the mastermind. The two had turned on each other, but the public, fuelled by the cold appearances they had seen of Lizette on TV,were quick to also label her the main suspect. The police and law officials had also gone against her – Lizette testified in an interview that law enforcement had threatened her multiple times and even held her at gunpoint at one moment in time. However, no substansial evidence has been found to implicate Lizette, even less that implicates the maids also, so no arrests were therefore made.

The most common theories surrounding Paulette's death are that: Lizette killed her, after having too much trouble coping with her disabilities, and initially hiding her body in the elevator of the apartment complex or an air duct; it was a staged kidnapping gone wrong in order to save the family from financial troubles, in which Paulette was hidden in an air duct and suffocated as a result; her elder sister, feeling jealous of additional attention Paulette was receiving, killed her in the night. Either way, the people of Mexico and those around the world who know of the case do not believe that her death was an accident and there was definite collusion surrounding her death, maybe even corruption amongst senior figures in law enforcement agencies. The parents still continue to blame the other to this day and, if it is indeed a murder, it seems highly unlikely in the near future that the truth will ever come out.