Javier Mendez Ovalle was turned in by his parents after calling them from San Juan del Rio (Picture: CEN)

A ‘genius’ physics student who murdered a girl he lured to his home has been arrested a year after changing his identity and fleeing Mexico City.

Javier Mendez Ovalle, an award-winning scientist who had represented Mexico in international physics competitions, admitted to strangling and chopping up 19-year-old Sandra Camacho after police tracked him down to a cafe where he was working under a different name.

The 23-year-old had lured Camacho to his house under the pretence that he would get her modelling work but killed her when she found out and confronted him.

‘He met the victim on a social network where he pretended he could help her find a job,’ Mexico City’s attorney general Attorney General Rodolfo Rios Garza said.


Family members created this poster when Sandra went missing (Picture: El Universal)

‘He says that when she realised there was no job they started to argue and then he pushed her and injured her head.



‘Moments later the girl started to scream and then he strangled her until she was dead.’

Mendez Ovalle, whose friends say he often complained that he didn’t understand women, dismembered the body and put the pieces into rubbish bags in a panic before fleeing the city.

Police found the bags a few days later scattered near his flat.

Mendezs Ovalle was found in San Juan del Rio working as a waiter after he called his parents and they told police.