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Esmeralda's partially clothed body was found in the cotton field's irrigation ditch eight days later, along with those of the two other women. Her pants removed and blouse and bra pulled up to her neck, Esmeralda was lying face up in the ditch, hands tied behind her back. Part of Esmeralda's right breast had been hacked away, the nipple of the other sliced off. The body was badly decomposed. The Inter-American Court found that Esmeralda and the two other girls had disappeared separately and had been held in captivity before being murdered. All three likely were raped and tortured by their captors for an unknown number of days, the court said. "The treatment they experienced during the time they remained kidnapped before their death caused them, at the very least, severe mental suffering," the court stated in its ruling, adding that Mexican officials deprived Esmeralda and the others of "the rights to life, personal integrity and personal liberty." Encouraged not to view Esmeralda's body, Monreal identified her daughter by the clothes police said she was wearing, including her socks. But even as she buried her daughter, positive identification had not been conclusive - not until four years later - when an Argentine forensics crew confirmed the murdered girl's identity with DNA testing. More bodies, same field The body of Laura Berenice Ramos, 17, a third-year high school student, also was found that day; she hadn't been heard from since calling a friend to say she was heading to a Saturday night party. Her breast also was mutilated and skin had been torn from her body. The third woman was Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 20, who on the day she vanished had been sent home from her factory job after arriving two minutes late. She, too, had been tortured, one of her arms severed. Soon after, searchers recovered the remains of five more women in another corner of the field. They had been dead much longer; the killing had been going on for some time. Within three days

The tuition was daunting - about $41,000 for a 14-month program - but he said the admissions recruiter portrayed it as the entrance price to a stable life. "The recruiter said, 'The way the economy is, with the recession, you need to have a safe way to be sure you will always have income,' " Mr. Newburg said. " 'In today's market, chefs will always have a job, because people will always have to eat.' " According to Mr. Newburg, the recruiter promised the school would help him find a good job, most likely as a line cook, paying as much as $38,000 a year. Last summer, halfway through his program and already carrying debts of about $10,000, Mr. Newburg was alarmed to see many graduates taking jobs paying as little as $8 an hour washing dishes and busing tables, he said. He dropped out to avoid more debt.