Couple caught with pram full of body parts in Mexico 'may have killed 20 women'

'I would say he actually seemed happy to have done this,' says prosecutor

The couple are accused of crimes that 'disrespected the dead', Mexican prosecutors said (@FiscalEdomex)

Authorities say that a couple arrested in Mexico pushing a baby carriage full of human body parts may have killed as many as 20 women.

The two suspects were detained on Thursday in a Mexico City suburb on suspicion of having killed 10 women. But the male suspect later claimed that they had killed double the number of women authorities originally suspected.

The pair, identified by Mexican authorities as “Juan Carlos N“ and his wife ”Patricia N”, were initially targets of suspicion in an investigation for three missing women and an two-moth-old baby.

State of Mexico prosecutor Alejandro Gomez said the man initially said that he had killed 10 people, and later said that his wife had killed the same number of people, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

An investigation into the couple discovered eight plastic buckets full of dismembered body parts and cement in their home.

Police originally stopped the couple in the suburb Ecatepec, and had hoped to find the missing child in the stroller.

Instead, they discovered body parts in the carriage.

“He described it in a completely natural way ... I would say he actually seemed happy to have done this,” Mr Gomez told Mexican media, according to AFP. ”He wants people to see his picture, to know his name ... I would obviously classify this person as a murderer, a serial killer.”

The murders have spurred protests in the the area, with hundreds of demonstrators marching with white flowers and candles to demand justice and protection for women and girls.

Between 1986 and 2017 there were 52,210 women and girls killed in Mexico, according to a 2017 report compiled by the Mexican Interior Department, UN Women, and the National Women’s Institute. In 2016 alone, seven women and girls were killed each day in the country.