The reigning Miss Honduras, Maria José Alvarado, and her 23-year-old sister, Sofía Trinidad Alvarado, have been found dead, days after the two women disappeared in Santa Barbara, Honduras, according to the BBC. The siblings vanished on Thursday, shortly before the 19-year-old beauty queen was set to leave for London to compete in the Miss World pageant. They had attended a birthday party for Sofía Trinidad’s boyfriend that night and were never heard from again. Police said early Wednesday that Plutarco Ruiz, boyfriend of Sofia, and an accomplice, Aris Maldonado, have been arrested.
Sabillon said Sofia’s boyfriend, Plutarco Ruiz, confessed and led authorities to the bodies buried in a river bank in a mountainous area of Santa Barbara, about 240 miles west of Tegucigalpa.
The sisters
Sabillon said the two men allegedly buried the bodies near the river so they would decompose quickly.
Both women, who grew up in the area, were shot to death and appeared to have been killed the night they disappeared, Sabillon said.
He said Ruiz allegedly shot his girlfriend, Sofia, because she was dancing with another man. After a fierce argument, he pulled out a pistol and fired at Sofia first, then at Miss Honduras as she tried to flee. Munoz said Ruiz called her the following morning, acting nervous and claiming the young women had left the party in a car with some other people.
“They were not very astute about assessing the people around them. They were just friendly,” the sisters’ mother Teresa Munoz told Televicentro. “They were taken out by people they hadn’t known very long.”
Alvarado had been scheduled to leave for London on Sunday to compete in the Miss World 2014 pageant. A pageant representative said Honduras would not compete in the contest this year, given the tragedy.
Julia Morley, chairman of the Miss World Organization, which began in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, told Reuters the group was “devastated by this terrible loss of two young women, who were so full of life.”
The organization would say prayers for the dead women in a service on Sunday and hold a fundraiser to donate money for a children’s home in Honduras chosen by their mother, she added.
The two women were last seen Thursday in a spa in Santa Barbara, about 240 miles west of Tegucigalpa, where they had gone to celebrate Ruiz’s birthday.