Klaus Haas’s accusation of the Uribe brothers turns his confinement into a platform for naming men he says are responsible for the killings of women in Santa Teresa and its surroundings. He identifies Antonio and Daniel Uribe, links them to wealth, cross-border commerce, and criminal connections, and insists that the murders have continued despite his imprisonment. The accusation is not confirmed by the authorities or independently substantiated in the press conference; its force lies in the clash between Haas’s specific account and the institutions’ denials, evasions, and uncertainty.

Background and the prison press conference

The accusation emerges amid a pattern in which the killings repeatedly become news and then recede from public attention. Chucho Flores describes that cycle to Oscar Fate: when the numbers rise, reporters and residents talk about the deaths, but attention melts away and people return to work. He compares the killings to a brutal strike, an image that makes visible both their disruption and the rapid restoration of ordinary routines. Earlier, a young man had told Jean-Claude Pelletier and Manuel Espinoza that more than two hundred women had been killed since 1993 or 1994, perhaps as many as 250 or 300, though the true number would never be known. The precise scale remains uncertain even as the deaths accumulate.

Haas’s first public allegation develops through a series of prison press conferences. In January 1996 he asks how murders can still be occurring when the supposed killer—Haas himself—is behind bars. He draws attention to matching knots in the ropes used to bind Michelle Requejo and Estrella Ruiz Sandoval, and notes that Estrella was the only victim who had direct contact with him, because she was interested in computers. His challenge is not merely a denial of guilt: he argues that the continuing crimes and the details of the cases point away from him.

At a later appearance, Haas says that the people who killed Estrella Ruiz Sandoval are the same people who have killed at least thirty young women in the city. He claims he has investigated from prison, received tips, and learned that nothing stays secret there. When a reporter prompts him for the name, Haas identifies Antonio Uribe and extends the accusation to women killed outside Santa Teresa as well as within it. He says he met Antonio once, but does not present the meeting as the whole basis of his knowledge; he invokes information gathered through prison contacts and friends of friends.

The Uribe family and the accusation’s reach

Haas describes the Uribes as a family whose business and social influence crosses the border. Antonio and Daniel are Mexican-American and, according to Haas, live in Santa Teresa while also having another house in Phoenix. Antonio is the son of Pedro Uribe, who owns more than a hundred cargo trucks transporting goods from maquiladoras in Hermosillo and Santa Teresa across the border as often as every half hour. Pedro also owns property in Phoenix and Tucson. Haas identifies Daniel as the son of Pedro’s brother Joaquin, who owns hotels in Sonora and Sinaloa and a chain of coffee shops in Santa Teresa.

He distinguishes the two young men as well as connecting them. Antonio has siblings and formerly worked in his father’s offices in Hermosillo; Daniel is an only child. Haas calls both men protégés of Fabio Izquierdo, whom he describes as a drug trafficker working for Estanislao Campuzano, and says it is rumored that Campuzano is Antonio’s godfather. Their companions, Haas alleges, include other wealthy young men, Santa Teresa police officers, and drug traffickers. He characterizes the brothers as spenders who move easily among money and power, then concludes that they are the serial killers. These are Haas’s allegations as reported to the assembled journalists, not findings established by the press conference.

The cross-border details give his claim a wider scope than a simple accusation against two individuals. Haas connects family businesses, transport routes, property, and criminal affiliations, describing a network that operates across Sonora and Arizona. The reporters recognize the name Pedro Uribe from references to a powerful shipping businessman in Hermosillo. That moment of recognition does not verify the alleged crimes, but it gives the accusation an identifiable public and commercial context rather than leaving it as an unnamed prison rumor.

Evidence, denial, and skepticism

The exchange over proof exposes the central weakness and tension in Haas’s account. Asked what evidence he has, he answers that a person hears everything in prison. A reporter from El Independiente de Phoenix rejects this as an urban legend and argues that prisoners hear only what passes through the prison walls. Haas responds that prison provides knowledge of what happens outside the law. The two dispute not only whether his information is true but whether prison can function as a source of knowledge at all. The scene leaves the claim contested rather than settled.

Haas later says he has known the information for a long time but needed to verify it. Asked how verification is possible in prison, he points again to sources, friends, and people who hear things. He says the Uribes disappeared from Santa Teresa six months earlier, while acknowledging reports that they were seen in Tucson, Phoenix, or Los Angeles. His proposed check is to obtain their parents’ telephone numbers and ask where they are. The answer is confident, but the conversation supplies no independently confirmed location for either brother.

The press and police response further complicate the accusation’s public life. Six newspapers send correspondents to the prison. Before publishing, five reporters seek comment from the police, who, like the major national newspapers, deny that Haas’s account has credibility. Reporters who contact the Uribe family receive shifting explanations: Antonio and Daniel are said to be traveling, no longer living in Mexico, or studying in Mexico City. Mary-Sue Bravo of El Independiente de Phoenix tries to interview Daniel’s father, Joaquin Uribe, but repeatedly finds him unavailable. The account records obstacles to verification without proving that any particular explanation is false.

The lone reporter who does not seek an official police response is from La Raza de Green Valley, exposing himself to possible legal action from the Uribe family and Sonora state agencies. Bravo later sees him dining with a muscular man whom she thinks looks like a police officer, but when she returns, the man is gone. That encounter remains an uncertain impression rather than proof of surveillance or collusion. Its placement alongside the reporters’ cautious procedures nevertheless underscores how reporting the allegation is shaped by legal risk, official authority, and the difficulty of establishing what is happening behind the public account.

Consequences and significance

Haas’s accusation does not produce a confirmed resolution in these scenes. The authorities deny its credibility; the Uribe family’s explanations vary; and Haas’s information is challenged as rumor. Yet the allegation changes the terms of the public discussion by naming two suspects, connecting them to influential families and criminal figures, and insisting that the killings extend beyond the city. It also presses a question his imprisonment makes especially sharp: if the incarcerated man is the killer, why do women continue to be murdered?

The episode places the serial killings inside competing systems of narration. Local reporting can make the deaths briefly prominent, as Flores observes, but the story’s attention ebbs. Official statements can discredit a claim before its supporting details are tested in public. A prisoner may possess information unavailable to reporters, yet his position also makes that information easy to dismiss. The accusation remains unresolved, and that unresolved status is consequential: rather than offering a clean solution, it shows how the search for responsibility is entangled with the same institutions, economic networks, and uneven access to credibility that surround the crimes.