“HEARST” for Borderland Beat
Cartel hitmen abducted a group of five male friends from Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. A new video shows that one of the five men was forced (by his kidnappers) to kill the other four victims.
Text on the video seems to imply that Mayo Zambada hitmen were the perpetrators, although some media outlets claim it was CJNG hitmen.
The Disappearance
On Friday, August 11, 2023, a group of five friends traveled to the Lagos de Moreno look out point at Mirador de la Santa Cruz where they planned to meet up with a man.
The men were:
Uriel Galván González
Jaime Martínez Miranda
Roberto Olmeda Cuellar
Diego Lara Santoyo
Dante Cedillo Hernández
They drove to the look out point in two vehicles. One vehicle was a brown Jetta with the license plate JTJ8638. Details about the second vehicle were not released.
PubliMetro reports that the men were intercepted by armed men while they were driving.
On Saturday, August 12, relatives of the five men reported them as missing to authorities. These relatives later said they were discouraged by the lack of urgency displayed by law enforcement, who they say were slow to start the investigation.
Relatives and friends of the victims became frustrated with law enforcement, so they began demonstrating, demanding that law enforcement review the government’s traffic camera footage.
On Sunday, August 13, agents from the state Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and soldiers from the National Guard searched the area where the men were last seen in – the Mirador de la Santa Cruz. The FGE later released a public statement about their search of the area.
The victims’ brown Jetta was later found at an unspecified location within Mirador de la Santa Cruz. The vehicle was said to contain “no traces of violence or signs of robbery.”
The Reappearance
During the late-night hours of Monday, August 14, a photo and video of the victims in captivity was posted to social media. it’s likely that it was anonymously posted in a channel on platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram.
In the photo posted, all five victims are seen kneeling on the ground in an outdoor location, with a red brick wall in the background. It appears to be nighttime. Each victim has silver duct tape over their mouth and their hands appear to be tied behind their backs.
Footage from the video can be seen below. Its unclear if this is the entire video.
Warning: The footage below is graphic. Some images below this point are graphic.
The hands of the victim in the Buccaneers sweatshirt, seen on the far right, are no longer bound.
He is seen attacking one of the victims while the bloody bodies of two deceased victims are seen in the bottom of frame.
The behavior of the attacker is shaky and frantic. The captors appear to have forced the man to kill the other victims.
His initial attack of the victims was shown in a different video clip. In it, he was seen attacking another victim – first stabbing him with a knife and then bashing his head with a rock.
This clip has been removed from online sources and is currently unavailable. Frames from it are shown below.
The text on the video reads “puro MZ” – which would seem to imply that it is the work of hitmen working under Sinaloa Cartel’s Mayo Zambada.
SDP Noticias, however, is currently claiming the perpetrators may be CJNG. They don’t offer a reason for their claim, but it may stem from an alternate reading of “puro MZ” wherein they are labeling the victims as Mayo Zambada’s men.
It’s worth noting that the victims are all believed to be native to Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco.
The newspaper Heraldo de Mexico, reported that the victims’ “family members received a video in which the five young men appear visibly injured and gagged. […] The video shows the men being forced to attack each other, using stones and a knife.”
The video above shows the moments right after the family received the video. The sound of a parent’s anguish transcends all language barriers.
The case has drawn a lot of media attention, with newspapers like Reforma publishing it as their front-page story.
The day after the video was released, on Tuesday, August 15, one of the victims’ vehicles was found burning on the side of Highway 45. The vehicle is presumably the other one used in their drive to Mirador de la Santa Cruz.
The car was parked near the shopping center Plaza Nuevo Milenio, in the town of Encarnación de Díaz, Jalisco. Firefighters had to be called to the scene to extinguish the flames before the vehicle could be searched. Burnt human remains were found inside the vehicle.
Law enforcement has not yet released information on just how many sets of remains were found in the vehicle.
Members of the state Attorney General’s Office (FGE) held a press conference later that same day. The FGE panel told reporters that their investigation had found blood stains at the Mirador de la Santa Cruz.
They presented images of some of the evidence they documented at the Mirador, which can be seen above.
The panel added that the investigation had also located a “property of interest”.
In the property, police officers found several vehicle and motorcycle license plates. When the plate numbers were run through the system, they found that the original vehicles all had theft reports from other states.
Police also found cell phones, a firearm, ammo, a DVR, and a large number of baggies full of drugs, as if they were prepped for street sales. The panel did not give any indication of where this property was located during the press conference.
Blanca Trujillo, the Special Prosecutor for Missing Persons, was asked about the video during a press conference. She stated that relatives of the victims had “seen the video that circulated online yesterday, where two men appear dead and another man is murdered, and they believe that it is indeed them.”
It’s worth noting that Lagos de Moreno lies between two contested areas: Encarnacion de Diaz and Leon, Guanajuato.
Encarnacion de Diaz is contested between the CJNG and Sinaloa Cartel – Chapitos affiliate Mario Gonzalez.
Leon is contested between CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel (unclear if Mayo or Chapitos) and Union de Leon – a local Guanajuato gang.
It’s also worth noting that the vehicle with human remains was found in Encarnacion de Diaz.
It is worth considering the possibility that the group named could be a misdirection.
However, it would be a very odd misdirection for them to choose because Sinaloa Cartel Mayo forces are not generally known to be present in the area.
Blood Sport
Forcing kidnapping victims to fight one another to the death is, unfortunately, a tactic that has been used by Mexican cartel groups before.
In March 2011, a number of buses traveling on Highway 101, through the town of San Fernando, were stopped by hitmen from the cartel group Los Zetas.
After the bus was stopped, hitmen would board and select passengers, forcing them – at gunpoint – to come with them.
The selected victims were driven to a ranch in the town of San Fernando. Women who had been selected were raped and then killed by cartel members.
Men who had been selected were forced to fight each other to the death. The men were sometimes given weapons, such as knives, hammers and machetes. The fights were watched by Zetas hitmen, as if for entertainment.
Courtroom testimony and articles by the Houston Chronicle, allege that fights were conducted “gladiator style” and the last man standing was allowed to live but forced to work as hitmen for Los Zetas.
The Houston Chronicle clarified that these last-man-standing were used by Los Zetas as canon fodder – oftentimes sent on suicide missions into enemy territory.
The bodies of 192 victims were found on the ranch in San Fernando.
Sources: SDP Noticias, PubliMetro, Heraldo de Mexico, M Lopez San Martin, Antonio Aranda, El Heraldo de SLP, Tribuna de la Bahia, El Pais, Reforma
San Fernando Sources: CNN, Police1, Houston Chronicle, The Atlantic