Body of Girl Slain in Baja Returned

The body of a Santa Ana teenager was returned Thursday to her family after it laid unidentified in the Ensenada municipal cemetery for two years and then languished there for a third year as the family lobbied for its release.

Family members were present when the body of Lillian Serianne was exhumed Wednesday in Mexico, said Liza Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana.

Serianne disappeared July 3, 2001. Her family learned last summer that the 16-year-old had been slain in Baja California and buried in an shallow grave before authorities discovered the body two days later and moved it to the Ensenada cemetery.

Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said Thursday that Serianne’s body will be held for about two days while the county coroner’s office decides whether to conduct an autopsy.

Mexican authorities concluded that Serianne had been beaten with a tire iron and left at El Mirador, a well-known outlook between Tijuana and Ensenada. Two years later, Mexican authorities matched photos of the body found in Baja California to a description of a missing girl being sought by Santa Ana police.

But even after Serianne was identified, family members were not allowed to return the body to the United States because, under Mexican law, a body can’t be exhumed until seven years after burial.

Davis said Mexican authorities, contacted by the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana and the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana, made an exception because the body was identified through a photograph after the burial.

The girl’s father, Frank Serianne, sought help through the U.S. Consulate, while his former wife and the girl’s aunt, who are Mexican citizens, sought help through the Mexican Consulate.

Family members could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro, the Mexican consul in Santa Ana, had said last week that Mexican officials were reconsidering their position because of the various requests to bring the body to Orange County. “It doesn’t matter now whose request was the one that changed their minds,” he said Thursday. “What matters is that she’s coming home.”