Police: Miss Honduras, sister found shot to death

SANTA BARBARA, Honduras (AP) — The dark-haired beauty was to have flown to London Wednesday to compete in the Miss World pageant — the high point of her reign as Miss Honduras. Instead, the beauty queen and her sister were found shot to death along a remote river bank.

Police said the sister's boyfriend confessed to shooting the women, jealous that his girlfriend had danced with another man.

Bodies believed to be 19-year-old Maria Jose Alvarado and her 23-year-old sister, Sofia, were discovered buried near the spa where they disappeared a week earlier while celebrating the boyfriend's birthday.

At some point during the night of Nov. 13, a heated argument broke out and Plutarco Ruiz pulled a gun, firing first at his girlfriend and then at Alvarado as she tried to flee, said National Police director, Gen. Ramon Sabillon. Alvarado was hit twice in the back.

Their bodies were discovered early Wednesday after Ruiz led investigators to the remote gravesite where he and an alleged accomplice buried them in a mountainous area of Santa Barbara, about 240 miles (400 kilometers) west of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. The accomplice, Aris Maldonado, was also in police custody and authorities were searching for other suspects.

Alvarado's body, wrapped in brown plastic, was loaded into the back of a pickup truck just hours before she was to have boarded a flight to London to compete in the Miss World pageant. A winner will be crowned Dec. 14.

"We had her gown ready and her traditional dress costumes," said television personality Salvador Nasrallah, who employed Alvarado as a model on his TV game show, X-O Da Dinero.
[/size]"This is not a crime of passion; this is machismo," added Nasrallah, a former presidential candidate.
[/size]Honduras pageant organizer Eduardo Zablah said the country will not compete this year because of the tragic death of Alvarado, who according to her pageant profile played volleyball and soccer and wanted to be a diplomat after graduating university.
[/size]The sisters' mother, Teresa Munoz, told Televicentro that Ruiz called her the morning after her daughters disappeared, acting nervous and claiming the young women had left the party in a car with some other people.