Family Wants Girl’s Body Returned From Mexico

For two years, the family of a lost 16-year-old Santa Ana girl prayed she would return alive, only to learn last summer that she had been slain in Baja California and buried in an unmarked grave. Now they want to bring the girl’s body home -- a task that could take years.

Lillian June Serianne disappeared July 3, 2001. Two days later, her body was found by passersby on the highway between Ensenada and Tijuana. She had been beaten by a tire iron and left on a well-known outlook known as El Mirador. Mexican authorities identified the body two years later.

It wasn’t until August 2003 that her parents found out that she had been buried in the Ensenada municipal cemetery shortly after the body had been discovered.

But that knowledge was not enough to allow them to bring her home. Family members must persuade Mexican officials to allow Lillian’s body to be exhumed for a more elaborate burial in the United States.

They learned that Mexican law could force them to wait seven years from the time the girl was buried.

“I want my daughter back, even if it’s just her body,” said Frank Serianne. “I don’t go to sleep without seeing [her] picture, and I don’t wake up without wanting to see it again. She was my baby.”

Serianne, who is separated from Lillian’s mother and lives in Riverside County, said that for months after the girl’s disappearance he put up signs at bus stops throughout Orange County, hoping she was alive. He never imagined she was in Mexico.

Neither did Santa Ana police, who are still investigating the case although its jurisdiction has not been determined because it is unknown where the girl was killed.

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Carlos Rojas said the disappearance became a murder case in June 2003 after Mexican authorities recognized that photos of the body found in Baja California matched a description of the missing girl.

After traveling to Mexico to see the grave, family members were told that Mexican law prohibits exhuming a body until seven years after it is buried. Mexican authorities told the family that the body could not be taken because it might be needed for evidence, Serianne said. Pleas to Mexican government officials to take the body to the United States were ignored, he said.

Soon after locating his daughter’s grave, Serianne contacted Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), whose office asked the U.S. consulate in Tijuana for assistance.

Consular spokeswoman Liza Davis said her office will help the family apply to the Mexican government for an exemption that would allow them to exhume the body -- but that family members have not approached them to begin the process.

“Exhumations are a big deal here. There aren’t too many exceptions made to the rules,” Davis said. “We work on a lot of cases like this.”

Nancy Robles, an attorney for the secretary of health in Baja California state, also said the body could be exhumed sooner than seven years after burial if the family requests an exception. She said the family had not appeared at her offices and had not submitted a petition.

Frank Serianne, however, said the family has indeed applied to the Mexican government and U.S. consulate for permission to exhume the body.

“It’s been frustrating to deal with the Mexican government,” Serianne said. “The runaround has been unbelievable, and all we want is our daughter.”