Murdered Woman Called a ‘Martyr’

Grieving relatives and friends of Irene Franco, the 20-year-old woman who was brutally raped and murdered after being kidnaped from a Carson drive-in last week, cried out for the arrests of her killers Friday at church services in which she was called an “innocent martyr.”

“I want justice,” sobbed Luisa Franco, an aunt of the slain woman who came from the Mexican town of Tepatitlan, near Guadalajara. “I want justice.”

Irma Plascencia, Irene Franco’s closest friend, who shared an apartment with her in Wilmington, added, “I hope the conscience of the men who did this will force them to face up to what happened.”

These were the sentiments repeatedly voiced among 150 mourners who attended a funeral mass at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington for the perky woman who came to Los Angeles ten months ago, hoping to further her dreams of studying medicine.

“Why is she dead?” a middle-aged woman asked in Spanish of anyone who would listen. “Why?

Sheriff’s homicide detectives Friday reported no new leads into the hunt for the three men who abducted Franco and her date, Jesus Martinez, 26, at the South Bay Six drive-in last Friday night. “We’re still working on it,” a sheriff’s spokesman said.

Three armed men took the couple from the movie complex near the Harbor and San Diego freeways and drove them to an alley in an industrial area near of Carson. There, the three severely beat Martinez and tied him with an electrical cord. Before the assailants drove away with Franco, they told Martinez not to worry about her safety.

The following morning, the woman’s body was found in a South Los Angeles field. She had been severely beaten and then shot in the head.

The mourners, mostly from Mexico, tried to grapple with the senseless murder. The words spoken about the area’s rising violence came in spurts with the tears and abrazos (hugs).

Martinez, sporting a visible scalp wound and a black eye, broke down in tears when his girlfriend’s casket was opened at the end of the mass. He then left without speaking to anyone.

Father Luis Vilbuena told the mourners that they needed to band together to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

“We can do nothing about what’s going on Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua,” the priest said, “but there’s something we can do here. Irene was an innocent martyr. What is her death telling us? We have to ask ourselves what’s going on in our society.

“I pray these men throw their drugs and guns into the ocean and go back and make this a better world.”

An anonymous donor paid for most of the funeral expenses, including the shipment of the woman’s body back to Mexico, Vilbuena said. Officials of the Simpson-McGee Mortuary in Lynwood, who handled the arrangements, donated their services, he added.

Plascencia, Franco’s close friend, said she would accompany the body back to Tepatitlan, where interment was scheduled today .

“I made her a promise that we would spend the holidays together,” she said. “I’m not going to leave her now.”