A 4-Year-Old Girl Vanished from Her Bed and Was Later Found Dead There. What Happened to Paulette Gebara Farah?

The 2010 missing persons case led Mexican officials on a nine-day search that ultimately led back to the girl's bed

Nearly a decade and a half ago, a nine-day search for a 4-year-old girl with disabilities gained extensive attention in Mexico and around the world.

The desperate search for Paulette Gebara Farah became widespread, leading to a viral campaign around the country as the public tuned into news reports and social media to learn more information on how and why the child went missing.

Here’s what happened.

Who Was Paulette Gebara Farah?

Paulette was a 4-year-old girl from Huixquilucan de Degollado, Mexico, who was discovered dead on March 31, 2010, following a nine-day search amid suspicion that she was kidnapped. Paulette was unable to speak and needed help walking due to developmental disabilities, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At the time of her disappearance, Paulette lived with her parents, businessman Mauricio Gebara and lawyer Lisette Farah, her 7-year-old sister Lisette, as well as two nannies, Erika and Martha Casimiro, according to CNN.

Paulette’s Disappearance

Paulette was discovered missing on the morning of March 22, 2010. Her parents told police they had put her to bed the night before after she, her father, and her older sister Lisette had returned home from a three-day vacation, CNN reported at the time. By the next morning, however, the family said that they discovered Paulette was missing, prompting a manhunt and public pleas for anybody who might have taken her to bring her home.

However, after the search for Paulette went viral over the next nine days, investigators began to retrace their steps and ultimately discovered Paulette’s body wedged between the mattress on her bed and the bed’s frame, according to CBS News, which reported her body was wrapped in sheets.

A coroner ruled that the 4-year-old girl had died by suffocation and that her body had not been moved after the time she died, according to CBS, prompting officials to believe that she had died after moving herself in bed and accidentally falling into the space between her mattress and the bed frame, dying of suffocation.

The coroner’s report's finding that Paulette's body was not moved between her death and the time she was discovered were in opposition to growing public theories that her body may have been placed there by a killer, according to CBS. Many people began to suspect the girl's parents.

Reactions and Suspicion About Her Death

Paulette’s death and the fumbled investigation prompted outrage across Mexico, leading many to criticize the government’s criminal justice system, according to The L.A. Times. After initially saying “without question” that Paulette had been murdered, Mexico Attorney General Alberto Bazbaz wound up reversing course and defending the coroner's finding that said Paulette had died by accident, pointing to forensic evidence.

The attorney general did admit the investigators’ shortcomings by “not having searched the child’s bed and bedroom fully,” leaving Paulette's body to go undetected in her bed for more than a week before being discovered.

After Paulette’s body was found, tensions rose within the family as speculation about foul play began to circulate publicly. Gebara and Farah were both placed under house arrest during the investigation into their daughter’s death, and they later began to blame the other for being responsible. During the investigation, the couple became estranged, the L.A. Times reported.

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CNN reported that Bazbaz, the prosecutor, had initially called Paulette’s mother, Farah, “the only suspect” in what he initially believed to be Paulette's murder case, fanning theories among those following the story. One popular theory among those following the case in Mexico was that Farah began to see caring for Paulette as a burden because of her daughter’s disabilities, although the mother later said she would never think of her later daughter as a burden, according to the Boston Globe.

However, no charges were ever filed against Paulette’s parents. Investigators disavowed their suspicions that Farah had a hand in her daughter’s death once the coroner's report found Paulette had died by accidental asphyxiation.

Aftermath

Paulette’s parents went on to have a bitter fight for the custody of her older sister, the then-7-year-old who like her mother was named Lisette. The L.A. Times reported that Farah was ultimately granted custody of her older daughter.

Gebara, Paulette’s father, continued to speak out about his belief that Farah was to blame for their daughter’s death. "The only thing I can say is that for me, it wasn't an accident," he told the local Televisa network in April 2010, according to the Boston Globe. "I can only speak for myself."

The public’s attention on the case was reignited a decade later when Paulette’s death became the focus of a Netflix examination during a 2020 episode of its Crime Diaries series.

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