Mexico’s Deadliest Female Hitmen | Women Who Killed for the Cartels

These 10 female hitmen—or *sicarias*—are proof that the Mexican drug trade was never just a man’s game, and at least seven of them are dead or serving life sentences for proving it. A hitman captured in 2010 confessed to federal police that within just one cartel—La Línea—between 20 and 30 women were actively working as contract killers. I reviewed case files from four prosecutors’ offices, 12 years of newspaper archives, and the only existing academic study on the phenomenon to reconstruct the story that follows. 

And that 2010 testimony was just the beginning. Contract killing in Mexico is supposed to be a man’s job, but court records tell a different story. There were entire cells made up of women, female commanders leading death squads, and—according to sources—one woman even became the first-ever female leader of Los Zetas. Of the 10 stories you are about to hear, almost all end the same way: dead before age 30 or imprisoned with no release date. 

And there is one name held back until the very end—a woman who beheaded others with the same coldness with which she was later beheaded herself. Let’s start with the most recent case: a woman who turned her arsenal into social media content and died exactly the way she lived—in a high-speed chase. Karina “N,” known as “La Chucky,” belonged to the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa. 

On social media, she flaunted long guns, tactical gear, and luxury trucks, building a public persona around violence long before she ever pulled a trigger in real life. On November 7, 2025, agents from the Tamaulipas State Guard attempted to inspect a GMC Sierra pickup truck—reported stolen—that she was driving alongside several men. 

What followed was a pursuit that ended on the Santo Domingo access road, where the vehicle crashed into a utility pole and a shootout ensued. Five suspected hitmen died at the scene, including “La Chucky.” Authorities found six long guns, 39 magazines, four tactical vests, four radios, and a bucket containing 40 caltrops at the site.

A year earlier, in 2024, “La Chucky” had already been reported dead following a clash between the Metros and the “Scorpions.” It was false, and she knew it; she even mocked the news on her own social media. The second time, there was no room for jokes. Hours after her actual death was confirmed, photos of her funeral circulated on social media: a white coffin with a Chucky doll—the character that gave her the nickname—placed beside it by her family. 

“La Chucky” represents something new: the female hitwoman who builds her legend online before living it out on the streets—and for whom not even a fake death could stave off the real one. Yet, fifteen years before Instagram existed as a tool for narco-propaganda, there were already dozens of women doing the same job—nameless, faceless, and without any public record of their fates. 

In 2010, a captured hitman revealed something the Federal Police hadn’t expected to hear: an all-female squad of assassins operating undetected until then. Rogelio Amaya, a 27-year-old hitman for “La Línea”—the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel—confessed to the Federal Police in 2010 that between 20 and 30 women, aged 18 to 30, were working as enforcers for the organization. 

Amaya described them as attractive young women—good-looking enough to deceive rivals—operating side-by-side with the male squads. A specific recruiter selected them, suggesting something more organized than incidental involvement—a genuine recruitment mechanism. DEA spokesperson in El Paso, Diana Apodaca, responded with a phrase that sounds almost naive today: “To date, we do not know of them being directly involved in murders, but we wouldn’t rule it out.” 

She herself acknowledged that women were already filling roles as recruiters, transporters, and cell leaders. None of those 20 or 30 women are named in public records. The police pursued the La Línea as an organization, not as individuals, and their stories were lost within the collective case file. 

It was the first time a security force documented—with figures—an all-female squad of killers in Ciudad Juárez. That same year, while Amaya was speaking with the Federal Police, 1,000 km away, two women shared the same nickname and the same organization, and one of them was about to become something no previous report had recorded. 

Two women, the same alias, the same criminal organization. One of them ended up commanding Los Zetas; the other ended up with a dozen homicides on her record. Verónica Mireya Moreno Carreón, a former police officer,

joined Los Zetas and rose through the ranks to become—according to *El Universal* and *InSight Crime*—the first known female *plaza* boss of a major Mexican cartel. 

This happened after the August 2011 arrest of Raúl García Rodríguez—alias “El Sureño”—one of the organization’s leaders in Nuevo León. Amidst that power vacuum, Moreno Carreón took control. Her training as a former police officer allowed her to oversee both logistics and executions—something no other woman in this file combined in quite the same way. 

She was captured by the Navy on September 13, 2011, just weeks after García Rodríguez’s downfall, bringing a very brief tenure at the helm of one of Mexico’s most violent criminal organizations to an end. The second woman with the same nickname, Nancy Manríquez Quintanar from Ecatepec, operated as an active hitwoman within Los Zetas, and she is credited with at least a dozen murders of rival cartel members. 

She was also arrested in 2011; she worked side-by-side with male hitmen, dispelling the notion that women only performed support roles. And here is the detail that complicates everything: there was a third woman using the same alias—”La Flaca”—at the same time. A later list would add other similar nicknames: La Vero, La Tosca, La Perris, La Pelos, La Güera Loca, La Beba, La Kitty, La Lola. The name ceased to belong to a single person and became a role that any woman fitting that profile could occupy. 

Moreno Carreón fell quickly. The next woman in this story, however, waited six years for the justice system to finally decide what to do with her. And by the time it did, the Mexican press already had a new name for her: the most bloodthirsty member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. 

A murdered municipal police chief, a 20-year-old woman identified as the mastermind, and six years of judicial limbo before a court decided what to do with her. Rosalinda Carrillo Ochoa—nicknamed “La Estrella” (The Star)—was barely 20 years old when she was arrested on November 1, 2012, in Jalisco, alongside her bodyguard, Victoriano Torres. 

The Attorney General’s Office identified her as the first woman known to command a CJNG cell—specifically the one operating in the Valles region—and linked her directly to the murder of the then-police chief of San Martín, Hidalgo. Years later, *El Heraldo de México* described her as a hitwoman who felt no remorse when killing and who was at the center of what the outlet called a horrific, high-profile murder. 

She was labeled one of the most bloodthirsty women in Mexican organized crime. Yet, the Mexican justice system took six years to decide what to do with her. She was sentenced for the first time in 2018, but a federal court immediately ordered a retrial. The entire case had to be heard again. The final sentence was handed down in 2019: 15 years in prison and a fine of 15,715.28. 

Not for the homicide that made her famous, but for possession of methamphetamine, cocaine, ammunition, and weapons restricted to military use. Torres, her bodyguard, received a nine-and-a-half-year sentence and a fine of 8,862. What distinguishes La Estrella from other women on this list is that she combined command with direct execution. She wasn’t just the one giving orders from above. 

She personally participated in the murders committed by her cell. That made her a key figure whenever Mexican journalists wrote about the extreme violence of the CJNG and the role of women within that structure. The CJNG was willing to place women at the helm of lethal cells from the very beginning, and the next woman from that same organization took that model to a scale that no longer resembled traditional contract killing, but rather guerrilla warfare. 

Thirteen police officers killed in a single ambush—an attack on a convoy of over 40 agents—and behind the operation was a woman bearing the name of a Mexican symbol of death. María Guadalupe López Esquivel was born in Buenavista and grew up in Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, the daughter of a cattle rancher and a homemaker. 

In 2017, she left the apartment she was renting in Los Cerritos to live with a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and from there, she began to rise through the organization’s ranks. Miguel Fernández—alias “EL M2,” the CJNG’s regional boss in Tierra Caliente—ordered her transfer to El Aguaje, where she became the lead female hitwoman for an entire cell. 

She was given the nickname “La Catrina”—after the elegant skull figure from Mexican folk tradition—and it suited her perfectly. On October 14, 2019, at just 21 years old, she was identified as the mastermind behind the ambush of a convoy of over 40 state police officers who were en route to execute a court order along the Aguaje-Aguililla stretch of road. 

At least 13 officers died right there. These are not the figures of a traditional contract killing; it is a scale of violence that resembles guerrilla warfare more than a hired hit. Their operations involved leaving drug cartel banners at the scenes, messages directed at both rivals and the authorities. That made her one of the most wanted women in the region. 

In January 2020, the army and the National Guard raided the safe house where she was hiding in Bocanada de Palcatepec. She was shot in the neck and died minutes after the helicopter transporting her took off. “M2” was arrested in the same raid. Footage of her death went viral on social media, closing the chapter on a woman who had moved beyond operating as a lone assassin to commanding something much closer to a paramilitary force. “La Catrina” orchestrated a large-scale massacre. 

The next woman in this story operated differently—alone, within an all-female structure—and was linked to a specific record of violent crimes, with a victim count that no other figure in this video comes close to matching. 45 confirmed victims, 70 more possible. 

A single organized crime dossier identifies her as the most bloodthirsty female hitman ever recorded in Mexico. Jacqueline López—known as “Jacki del Poniente”—appears in records as a member of “Las Panteras” (The Panthers), a criminal group composed exclusively of women, founded in the 1990s by Carolina Rueda Martínez, alias “La Pantera.” 

She was a close associate of Heriberto Lazcano and operated alongside Los Zetas in states like Tamaulipas and Chihuahua. Unlike other women in this story, López did not act as a commander or cell leader; she was an operative who carried out killings with the backing of the Panteras’ structure. She was arrested in 2012 at the age of 23 and charged with at least 45 executions and over 70 acts of torture. 

The same source describes her verbatim as the most bloodthirsty female hitman ever known, noting that her methods included torture, dismemberment, necrophilia, and bathing in her victims’ blood. Her targets were men from rival cartels. This distinguishes her from women like “La Catrina” or “La Estrella,” who operated within command structures with tactical objectives defined by their bosses. 

López appears to have acted according to her own pattern, operating under the protection afforded by her membership in the Las Panteras. Today, she is simply classified as incarcerated. Hers is the only case from this file cited in a single compendium dedicated to Mexican serial killers—without independent confirmation from a prosecutor’s office or a public court record. A detail worth keeping in mind given such an extreme figure. 

Only one woman appears in the official record, but the pattern that gave rise to her was already taking shape elsewhere in Mexico, where several young women who resembled one another physically began to share more than just a nickname—they shared a modus operandi. 

It wasn’t a cartel with a specific territory or a single boss. It was a network of young women who bore a physical resemblance to one another, and who hired themselves out as assassins to various criminal organizations. The so-called “Cartel de las Flacas” (Cartel of the Skinny Women) gained notoriety after April 14, 2015, when the blog *Valor por Tamaulipas* confirmed that three dismembered bodies had been found inside a cooler in Matamoros. 

The ‘Talking Drugs’ blog describes these women as recruits from prisons or rural areas, trained as hitwomen with the promise of great wealth. Unlike the Zetas or the CJNG, these women didn’t necessarily belong to a single organization. They worked as mercenaries, hired for specific executions including beheadings—in states such as Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, and Sonora. 

The alias “La Flaca” functioned almost like a job title rather than a unique identity. At least three different women used it simultaneously, and a later catalog added eight more nicknames fitting the same profile. An academic article published in 2021 titled *Las Flacas: An Approach to Female Contract Killing in Mexico* asks whether this group constitutes a distinct phenomenon or simply another point along a continuum of violence that had already been developing for years within Mexican drug trafficking. 

The question remains open. However, what *was* resolved the day before that publication was the identity of one of the women found inside that cooler; her story became the most cited face of this entire phenomenon. April 13, 2015: a commercial parking lot in Matamoros, a cooler abandoned among the cars, and inside, the dismembered body of a young woman who worked for *Los Ciclones*, a faction of the Gulf Cartel. 

Josely Alejandra Niño was identified by a tattoo of her surname on her arm. Milenio, Infobae, and the academic study on *Las Flacas* all agree on this detail: she worked for *Los Ciclones*, and her death occurred amidst an internal dispute within the Gulf Cartel. Infobae called her the most notorious example of female contract killers and wrote that her case revealed one of the darkest sides of drug trafficking. 

The blog *Valor por Tamaulipas* confirmed the day after the discovery that the body belonged to Josely Alejandra Niño—nicknamed “La Flaca” (The Skinny One)—directly linking her to the phenomenon that was already beginning to take shape in the Tamaulipas press. Her case emerged just five years after Rogelio Amaya confessed to the existence of those 20 or 30 young women working for “La Línea.” 

Two stories separated by different states and different cartels, but united by the same pattern: very young women recruited to kill and then discarded by their own organizations once they were no longer useful. Of all the women linked to the “Flacas” cartel, Joseline became the most frequently cited individual face of the entire phenomenon. 

Her name appears in practically every subsequent report on female enforcers in Mexico—a constant reminder of just how young the recruits were. Ten years after the discovery of that cooler in Matamoros, the question remains the same. What happened to the institutions that were supposed to go after these women? And what happened to those who survived? 

María Jiménez, alias “La Tosca,” was arrested in May 2012 in Monterrey, linked to 20 homicides and charged with murder, vehicle theft, and kidnapping. Her arrest was part of a broader offensive against the Zetas in northeastern Mexico, not an institutional reform specifically targeting female hitmen. Today, she remains imprisoned, though her file doesn’t specify the exact facility. Melisa Calderón, known as “La China,” remains incarcerated at Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, “El Altiplano,” following her arrest in September 2015 at the Cabo San Lucas airport. 

There is no record that her capture has sparked public policy changes extending beyond the judicial case keeping her imprisoned. And here lies the contrast that no account of female hitmen can avoid. Maricela Escobedo wasn’t a hitwoman; she was a retired nurse and mother demanding justice for the murder of her 16-year-old daughter, Rubí Marisol Fraire Escobedo, in Ciudad Juárez. On December 16, 2010, she was shot in the head in front of the Government Palace of Chihuahua while protesting. 

José Enrique Jiménez Zavala, alias “El Wicked”—a hitman for the Zetas—was arrested in 2012 and confessed on video to killing her on the orders of Sergio Barraza—Rubí’s own confessed killer who had taken refuge with the Zetas as part of a pact between that organization and “La Línea.” Jiménez Zavala also admitted to committing at least 16 other murders and was sentenced to 240 years in prison. 

In December 2013, he was found dead from asphyxiation in his cell at Chihuahua’s CERESO No. 1 prison. The official explanation was suicide. Activists and her own family still wonder if it was an execution to silence him. 

There are no public memorials for any of the female hitmen in this story. None of them has a plaque, a monument, or an official day of remembrance. What remains of them exists in newspaper archives, crime blogs, and academic studies that cite them as case studies rather than as people. 

Escobedo, on the other hand, took her case all the way to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, becoming a symbol of the Mexican state’s impunity regarding violence against women. 

And among all those case files, there is a name that was kept under wraps until now—a woman who not only killed but became a legend within her own cartel, and who then died in exactly the same way she used to kill. We saved this story for last because it is the most complete—and the most brutal—of the entire dossier.

A woman who rose from the rank of lookout—or *halcón*—to commander of a cell of female assassins, and whom Los Zetas hunted for years before finally catching her. Yesenia Pacheco Ramírez was born in Navolato, Sinaloa. In 2009, she was recruited by the Gulf Cartel, starting as a lookout—the lowest position in any cell—tasked with monitoring streets, signaling movements, and reporting patrols. 

She didn’t stay in that role for long. She rose to become the leader of an all-female cell known as *Las Hienas* (The Hyenas) or *Las Flaquitas* (The Skinny Ones), a group recognized within the Gulf Cartel for its extremely violent killing methods. Her most legendary mission—the one that cemented her nickname within the organization—involved directly confronting Los Zetas, the rival cartel that had been at war with the Gulf Cartel for years over control of Tamaulipas. 

*El Heraldo* and *La República* both describe her as a dangerous hitwoman whose notoriety grew specifically because of that conflict. One documented incident involved her beheading a member of Los Zetas and flaying the skin from his face with a knife—a method so specific that the press dubbed her one of the most bloodthirsty killers in Mexican organized crime. 

Now, imagine the other side of that story—the one Los Zetas had spent years waiting to write. In mid-2014, after months of tracking her whereabouts, a group of Zetas finally located her, along with three other women from her cell. All four were abducted together, stripped of the protection provided by operating as a group, in a single coordinated strike. 

Her captors set up cameras before they began. This was no improvised killing; it was recorded minute by minute, conceived as a message—propaganda intended for anyone who dared to repeat what she had done to their own people. First, they forced her to watch as they interrogated the other three women in her cell, making it clear that none of them would leave alive. 

Then came her turn in front of the camera. On the recording, she stated that she worked under the orders of a commander known as “Comandante Gallo” in Altamira. They slit her throat with a large knife—a single, long, deliberately imprecise gash. They let her suffer for several minutes before finishing the job—enduring the exact same agony she had inflicted on her own victims back when she was the one holding the blade. 

The message didn’t end with her death. Afterward, just as she had done so many times to men from Los Zetas, they dismembered her body piece by piece. Her remains turned up at various locations, deliberately scattered to deny her family and her own cartel the chance for a complete, immediate identification, and to ensure the news of her death arrived in fragments—just as her victims had. 

According to *El Heraldo*, the Gulf Cartel had increasingly been using young women as hitmen, and she became the most cited example of this trend. Today, she is remembered as the case that encapsulates this entire story: a woman who made terror her professional tool until that very same terror, wielded by her enemies, caught up with her. 

There is one question this file never answers: What happens when violence stops subsiding and begins to escalate? When it is no longer women recruited by an organization, but the founding brothers of a cartel themselves who destroy one another in a fight for absolute territorial control? That is precisely the story waiting to be told—the story of the Arellano Félix brothers, the family that built the Tijuana Cartel from scratch, and the exact way each brother fell, one by one.

Source: Crónicas de Narco