After trying to become a mother for years, Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza had just experienced her third miscarriage in 2009. So, she concocted a grand scheme to pretend she was still pregnant—and kidnap another woman’s baby to pass off as her own. However, Mendoza’s plan was far from foolproof, and she was soon arrested at a hotel in Mexico City just hours after the abduction.
The shocking crime is explored in the new Netflix documentary A Child of My Own, which offers fresh insight into the nearly two-decade-old case through both real-life interviews and reenactments.
Here’s everything we know about Mendoza’s life and time in prison.
Who Is Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza?
Born and raised in Mexico, Mendoza was just 17 years old when she married her husband, Arturo Calderón Gamiño, in 2000. At the time, she was already pregnant and her husband was desperate for a child. After suffering a miscarriage, Mendoza underwent IVF in her 20s, but this was followed by more loss.
Facing pressure from both her family and society to become a mother, she decided not to tell her husband about her third miscarriage at age 26 and instead faked a full-term pregnancy. Working as an administrator at Mexico City’s Hospital General de México, she soon developed a plan to kidnap a newborn from the hospital’s maternity ward, which she carried out in June 2009.
How Was Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza Caught?
While Mendoza claimed she made an arrangement with expectant mother Mayra to adopt her baby five months before her due date, Mayra’s witness statements tell a different story. According to Mayra, she only met Mendoza for the first time after she had already given birth, when Mendoza posed as a social worker and kidnapped her baby girl.
As captured by CCTV footage, Mendoza walked out of the hospital with the child in a large gift bag, where her husband was waiting for her. It was only when he saw the newborn that he realized his wife had not been pregnant after all.
Authorities quickly identified Mendoza as a hospital employee and traced calls to her parents’ house to pinpoint her location. Within hours, both she and her husband were found and arrested at Hotel Hollywood Villa & Suites in Mexico City.
Mendoza was convicted of kidnapping, or the illegal deprivation of liberty of a minor, in 2011, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Her husband, Arturo, however, was acquitted of any wrongdoing after spending two years behind bars.
Where Is Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza Now?
Now in her 40s, Mendoza is currently a free woman. After serving her full sentence, she was released from prison in 2023. Nearly two decades after the crime, Mendoza is publicly opening up about her crime in the new documentary A Child of My Own, providing insight into her mindset at the time.
“I felt pressurized to please his family,” she recalls in the film. “It was such a strong desire to be a mom that I got drawn into problems that got bigger and bigger, and I started taking decisions and actions that got more complicated. Until there was no way out and no turning back.” According to director Maite Alberdi, however, Mendoza maintains she made a prior agreement with Mayra to take her child, contrary to the evidence against her.
How to Watch A Child of My Own
A documentary and drama hybrid, A Child of My Own explores Mendoza’s fake pregnancy and kidnapping scheme through interviews with Mendoza and her victim, Mayra, as well as actors’ reenactments of the events surrounding the case. The film begins streaming on Netflix August 13.
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
