4‑Year‑Old Girl Vanished From Her Room And Days Later Was Found Lifeless Under Her Own Bed — Parents Accused

16 years ago, on March 21, 2010, 4-year-old Paulette Gebara Farah went to bed inside her family’s apartment in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico.

By the next morning, she had vanished without a trace.

The family’s nannies immediately alerted her parents, Lizette Farah and Mauricio Gebara, telling them they had searched everywhere, including the sheets and under the bed.

Paulette was not there.

Soon, the search became a matter of national obsession. For nine days, authorities circulated Paulette’s face across Mexico City and the State of Mexico. Her family covered streets with missing-person posters and banners. Relatives pushed her image across social media under the plea “Paulette, come back.”

But Paulette had never left.

She was found lifeless in her own bedroom, wedged between the mattress and the structure of the bed.

Overnight, Lizette and Mauricio went from victims to potential culprits — The case resolution remains a bitter pill to swallow for many Mexicans to this day.

16 years ago, 4-year-old Paulette Gebara was put to bed and was never seen alive again

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

Paulette was born on July 20, 2005, in Mexico City, to attorney Lizette Farah Hernández and businessman Mauricio Gebara Joubrán. She was the younger of two daughters and lived with her family in an upscale apartment complex in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico, inside the exclusive Interlomas area.

Her life was shaped by a motor and language disability. She walked with difficulty, communicated mostly through gestures, and depended heavily on adults for care.

Image credits: N+ UNIVISION

On the evening of March 21, 2010, Paulette returned home from a three-day trip to Valle de Bravo with her father, Mauricio, and her older sister, Lisette.

The mother, Lizette Farah was already at the apartment. According to the family’s version, she put both girls to bed that night. The household also included two full-time nannies, Erika and Martha Casimiro, who were part of the girls’ daily routine.

By the next morning, everything had changed.

Image credits: El Universal

On Monday, March 22, nanny Erika entered the girls’ room to wake Paulette for school.

Her sister was still asleep, but Paulette was gone. Erika later said she lifted sheets and pillows while searching the bed, but found no trace of the child. She and Martha searched the apartment, then common areas of the building, including elevators, the pool, playground, parking lot, and other spaces inside the residential complex.

Paulette was nowhere.

Image credits: MILENIO

The nannies alerted Lizette. Mauricio contacted his sister, who reached local authorities in Huixquilucan. The municipal government then notified the State of Mexico Attorney General’s Office.

At the time, Huixquilucan’s mayor was Alfredo del Mazo Maza, who informed then-State of Mexico prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz Sacal. Within hours, the Gebaras’ internal family emergency became a matter of national interest.

The lack of clues soon led investigators to focus on Paulette’s own family, especially her mother, Lizette Farah

Image credits: MILENIO

From the beginning, the facts seemed difficult to reconcile.

The apartment was inside a guarded luxury complex. The family said Paulette could not have left on her own because of her disability. There were also no forced locks, no broken windows, no obvious signs of a robbery, and no ransom demand.

The building had cameras, but the family later learned they did not record footage and were used only for live monitoring. Nothing showed Paulette leaving alone or with anyone.

The family launched a public campaign. Paulette’s face appeared on missing-person posters across Mexico City and the State of Mexico. Her aunt Arlette Farah posted her picture on social media.

The phrase “Paulette, come back” began circulating everywhere.

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

The family became regulars on television. Mother Lizette pleaded with whoever might have taken her daughter and promised there would be no reprisals if the child was returned.

At first, the country watched as though Paulette had been kidnapped. Then everything changed.

The lack of clues forced investigators away from the abduction theory. As more and more information became known, public suspicion began to fall on the people closest to the child.

The mother, especially, became the face of that suspicion after several televised appearances in which viewers accused her of looking too calm, too rehearsed, or even emotionally detached.

Image credits: MILENIO

Making things even more suspicious, both of Paulette’s nannies, Erika and Martha, claimed that the missing girl’s parents seemed overly calm while everyone else was frantically searching for her.

Erika said that when she had woken Lizette on March 22 with the news of Paulette being missing, the mother had seemed unconcerned, enjoying her morning coffee and cigarette before doing anything else.

Prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz publicly identified Lizette as the only suspect in the homicide investigation

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

Lizette’s own remarks deepened the backlash. At one point, she joked, “I’m coming to the conclusion that [Paulette] was captured by UFOs!”

In another widely cited line, she said, “Harry Potter made her disappear.”

Clips also circulated in which she allegedly asked to rehearse before going on air. Another report claimed she asked one of her friends whether it would be a good idea to cry to make the interview look “more realistic.”

Image credits: N+ UNIVISION

between Lizette and her older daughter. In the audio, Lizette instructed the child to say only that her little sister had been lost.

“That’s all you have to say, sweetheart, because otherwise things start getting misinterpreted. They could accuse us of stealing her ourselves or accuse you of pushing her outside to get rid of her,” Lizette was heard saying.

By late March, authorities were no longer treating the case as a disappearance. The State of Mexico Attorney General’s Office began investigating a possible homicide.

On March 25, prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz made what would later be known as the most controversial statements of his career. 

He publicly identified Lizette as “the only suspect.”

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

The parents and nannies were taken for questioning and placed under arraigo, a form of preventive holding used in Mexican investigations, over alleged inconsistencies and false statements. They spent hours in custody before being moved to a hotel while prosecutors continued their work.

For days, the public was told that investigators, forensic teams, trained dogs, family members, journalists, and others had searched the apartment.

Television crews filmed interviews inside Paulette’s bedroom, unaware that her body was still there

Image credits: MILENIO

Mexican outlets wasted no time capitalizing on the outrage.

Viewers came to know Paulette’s bedroom as if it were their own. The room was not sealed off from the spectacle. Current Senator and then-journalist Lilly Téllez was among those who entered the space before Paulette’s body was found.

Interviews took place there. The bed appeared on camera. Authorities searched it. People stood beside it.

Yet the child remained hidden there.

On March 31, nine days after Paulette was reported missing, investigators returned to the apartment for a reconstruction. Around 2 am, one of the experts detected a foul smell coming from the room.

The mattress and bed frame were moved again.

It was then that Paulette’s body was finally found, wedged between the mattress and the foot of the bed, wrapped in sheets, in a narrow space where authorities said she had been the entire time.

The discovery shocked the country. Then came embarrassment and disgust, as many Mexicans asked how so many people had failed to see the truth hiding right beside them. Disgust then gave way to mistrust.

Image credits: UniversalEdoMex

The autopsy concluded that Paulette had passed away from mechanical asphyxiation due to obstruction of the nasal cavities and thorax-abdominal compression.

In plain terms, authorities said she had suffocated after becoming trapped in the bed structure, with her nose blocked and her body compressed. No signs of external violence were reported. No toxic substances were found. Prosecutors also said the body had not been moved.

That conclusion did little to calm the country.

Bazbaz was forced to abandon his original theory, and Paulette’s passing was ruled an accident

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

At first, prosecutor Bazbaz had treated the incident as a homicide and placed Paulette’s family under public suspicion. Then, weeks later, the same office reversed course.

The official theory became that Paulette had turned or slipped in bed, fallen into the gap between the mattress and the bed frame, and been unable to get out because of her disability.

Prosecutors claimed the tragedy was nothing more than an accident. The explanation was impossible for many Mexicans to accept.

Image credits: El Universal

How could a child be missing for nine days from a room that had already been searched?

How could trained dogs, forensic personnel, relatives, and reporters fail to detect her?

How could a national search end under the mattress where it began?

Image credits: Maria Candelaria/Flickr

On April 4, 2010, a judge granted freedom to Lizette, Mauricio, and the nannies, with precautionary measures still in place while the investigation continued. They were not allowed to leave the country.

On April 5, the parents gave separate statements. By then, the marriage was openly breaking apart.

Image credits: Investigadores Criminales

Lizette said Mauricio was trying to blame her for Paulette’s passing. Mauricio, meanwhile, said he did not believe the official accident theory.

“The only thing I can say is that for me, it wasn’t an accident,” he told Televisa in April 2010. “I can only speak for myself.”

As her parents fought among themselves, preparations were being made for Paulette’s funeral.

Paulette’s parents divorced while prosecutor Bazbaz resigned under public and political pressure

Image credits: Iván Martínez/Wikimedia

Paulette was buried on April 6, 2010, at the Panteón Francés in Mexico City.

The Gebara family did not attend.

Lizette and Mauricio separated shortly after. Lizette sued and won custody of their older daughter. Mauricio retaliated with a separate complaint.

Two months after Paulette vanished, prosecutor Bazbaz formally closed the case. There would be no criminal charges against the parents or the nannies. No one was charged.

The prosecutor’s reversal came at a political cost. Bazbaz had first pushed the public toward a homicide narrative and then asked the same public to accept an accident.

Image credits: MILENIO

Critics, including opposition politicians and federal voices, accused the State of Mexico prosecutor’s office of incompetence and lack of transparency.

The mishandling of the apartment, the public accusation against Lizette, and the late discovery of the body damaged the office’s credibility. On May 25, 2010, Bazbaz resigned, acknowledging that the institution had lost public confidence.

The legal case was closed, but the public argument never ended.

Conspiracy theories claimed Paulette’s parents wanted to get rid of her to avoid the burden of caring for a child with disabilities

Image credits: Netflix

Over the years, several theories continued circulating. One claimed the parents had financial problems and orchestrated Paulette’s passing to avoid the cost of her care.

Another focused on the nannies’ early statements, some of which fed suspicion against the parents, but prosecutors found no evidence that Paulette had been murdered.

Others argued the crime scene had been contaminated so badly that the official conclusion could not be trusted.

The official record still held: accidental asphyxiation, no third-party involvement, no movement of the body, no evidence of homicide.

Image credits: Netflix

For many Mexicans, that official record was never enough.

The case remains a symbol of institutional failure, media excess, and class suspicion to this day. 

Paulette’s family was wealthy, connected, and socially visible. The case unfolded in the State of Mexico under then-Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, who would later become president. That political context fed claims that the family received preferential treatment.

In 2017, Paulette’s remains were exhumed and cremated because authorities no longer considered her body evidence.

A decade after Paulette’s passing, Netflix revived the story with the 2020 limited series History of a Crime: The Search

Image credits: Netflix

The production brought Paulette’s case to a new generation and reignited scrutiny of Lizette, Mauricio, Bazbaz, and the official version. For viewers who had lived through the original coverage, it reopened one of Mexico’s most painful media memories.

Then, in late 2025, Lizette Farah filed a civil lawsuit against Netflix and the production company Dinamo. Her claim alleged moral damages, improper use of her name and image, and revictimization through the dramatization of her family tragedy.

Her legal team reportedly sought up to 40% of the profits generated by the series, arguing that the production used a private tragedy without proper consent and caused renewed harm.

Image credits: Netflix

The controversy gained another layer in November 2025, when Aldo Farah Navarro, a writer who identified himself as Paulette’s cousin, publicly challenged the official account.

In a Facebook post, he accused authorities of manipulating the investigation and said the parents had been protected because of their political connections.

“They did not want to take responsibility for my little cousin, and the government protected them. They contaminated the scene, and the investigation was manipulated to close the case quickly,” he wrote.

Aldo also claimed that speaking about Paulette became taboo inside the Farah family. He said some relatives asked him not to mention his connection to her because it affected the family’s image and businesses.

He said his reason for speaking out was justice.

“If there is something worth more than a last name, it is life itself,” he wrote. “It is never too late to demand justice.”

“It was her family.” The official story remains challenged to this day

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