The Murder of Mara Fernanda Castilla

Disappearance after a ride home

Mara Fernanda Castilla Miranda was a 19-year-old student at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla. In the early hours of September 8, 2017, she requested a ride after spending the evening with friends in the San Andrés Cholula area. The driver assigned to the trip was Ricardo Alexis Díaz López.

Mara did not arrive home. Her disappearance prompted a search, and investigators focused on the route taken after the ride began. Her body was found days later in Puebla. This page omits graphic details of the injuries and recovery.

Investigation and prosecution

Díaz López was detained in September 2017. The procedural history was lengthy: litigation over the charges and pretrial rulings delayed the oral trial, and earlier judicial decisions required parts of the process to be repeated. Those delays are one reason contemporary reporting from 2020 still described the case as awaiting trial.

By April 2021, however, the case had reached a merits judgment. A trial court found Díaz López guilty of feminicide. On April 12, 2021, the court imposed a 50-year prison sentence and ordered financial reparation.

Appeal

The defence appealed. In September 2022, a second-instance chamber in Puebla upheld the 50-year criminal sentence. The reported appellate result is important to the archive classification: the conviction was not merely a first-instance allegation left unresolved.

Later Supreme Court litigation

Separate litigation continued over the amount and legal framework for compensation to Mara's family. In 2024, Mexico's Supreme Court considered an amparo concerning the statutory cap used to calculate moral damages and ruled in favor of a broader right to integral reparation.

That later proceeding concerned reparation, not whether Díaz López's feminicide conviction should be erased. The distinction is preserved here so that civil or constitutional compensation litigation is not misreported as a new criminal trial.

Why the case mattered

Mara's murder became part of a wider national debate in Mexico about violence against women, passenger safety in app-based transport and institutional responses to disappearances. The social impact of the case does not replace the criminal record; the core factual status rests on the conviction, sentence and appellate confirmation.

Current status

This case is classified as Solved / Adjudicated. Ricardo Alexis Díaz López was convicted of feminicide in 2021 and sentenced to 50 years in prison. A second-instance court upheld that sentence in 2022. Later reported Supreme Court proceedings addressed the family's right to adequate reparation rather than overturning the criminal conviction.