Authorities in El Salvador said 14 bodies were excavated at the home of a former police officer who was arrested this month for killing two women, BBC reported on Saturday.
El Salvador police said Thursday the house in the municipality of Chalchuapa contained as many as 40 bodies, most of them believed to be women or girls.
Police believe the discovery of the graves reveals a secret murder group operating for many years. Exhuming all the bodies could take another month, they said.
Hugo Osorio Chavez, the former police officer, was detained and charged earlier this month in the murder of a 57-year-old woman and her 26-year-old daughter. Chavez, 51, confessed to killing the two. He had previously been investigated for sex crimes.
Forensic teams who searched his house found at least seven pits containing bodies, some of which may have been buried as long as two years ago, BBC said.
"There's hope of recognizing a family member, even among the corpses... that's why I'm here," Marleny Barrientos, 50, who carried a photograph of her son, who disappeared in 2015 said in remarks quoted by Reuters.
According to Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro, the skeletal remains will be reassembled and subjected to DNA test to determine their identities. The depth of the pits where the bodies were recovered suggests more than one person was involved in burying them, he said.
At least 10 people are now facing charges, including former police officers, former soldiers and human traffickers, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, chief of El Salvador's national police, said, based on reports by La Prensa newspaper.
Chicas said Chavez was terminated from the police force in 2005 and may have been killing people for a decade.
Violence against women in Latin America has escalated during the pandemic, with 70 women killed last year, according to aid organizations.
