On the day she was to travel to London to prepare for the Miss World Pageant, police announced they had recovered the bodies of Miss Honduras and her sister from a shallow grave on a riverbank.  Investigators had already arrested the sister’s boyfriend who led them to the graves.

19-year old Maria Jose Alvarado and her sister 23-year old Sofia Trinidad were last seen a week ago at a hot springs in the town of El Aguagua in the mountainous Santa Barbara region of Honduras.  They were getting into a car that had no license plate.  Four people were arrested, including Trinidad’s boyfriend Plutarco Antonio Ruiz and Aris Maldonado.  Police believe they are the last people to have seen the women alive.

At first, police believed they had a good chance of rescuing the women.  No bodies were found and no ransom remand had been made.  The arrests of Ruiz and Maldonado changed that.  There are reports that Ruiz saw Ms. Trinidad dancing with another man.  The tip-off for investigators was that Ruiz was getting ready to sand and repaint the bed of his pickup truck, as if to eliminate trace evidence.

“I want the world to know that they are good people and they always thought others were like them,” the two missing women’s elder sister Cory Alvarado said before the bodies were recovered.  “They were honest and happy and trusting.”