The Lagos de Moreno Five: Their Remains May Have Been Found & More on CJNG’s El Loco

“HEARST” for Borderland Beat

El Universal presents a conflicting version of events involving the victims seeking out jobs as “private security” and meeting up with a CJNG figure at the Lagos de Moreno fair.

Then, more details on the CJNG figures known to have operated in the area, like El Loco and his brother El Anestesia, who was a close confidant of El Mencho.

Finally, all the latest information on the bones that investigators have found which may be the victims’ remains.

Private Security Recruiting and the CJNG

The newspaper El Universal reported that according to anonymous federal security sources they spoke with “two days before they disappeared, at least two of the five young men from Lagos de Moreno contacted a person they knew, who had connections at a call center, looking for a temp job as a private security guard.”

Call centers and “private security” jobs are heavily associated with cartel activity. El Universal highlights that “private security” job listings can sometimes be traps set up by cartel members who will forcefully recruit applicants.

Security analyst David Saucedo alleges that “for about two years in different regions surrounding Lagos de Moreno there have been training and recruitment centers” for the CJNG. Saucedo adds that he believes the CJNG were behind the kidnapping and murder of the men.

The El Universal article continued, saying “the young people allegedly met the person they knew at a location within the town fair and that was the last time they were heard from. […] The reports state that one of the people they were going to meet with is identified by authorities as a CJNG operator in Lagos de Moreno and Encarnación de Díaz.”

This federal security source presents a logical version of events – but it doesn’t line up with a key piece of physical evidence.

As noted in previous articles, the theory that the victims were last seen at the Lagos de Moreno fair, which was held from July 28 to August 13, has been largely debunked because there was bloodstain evidence found at the Mirador San Miguel.

Mirador San Miguel isn’t near the designated fairgrounds, which are located in the neighborhood of La Esmeralda. It instead lies in the San Miguel neighborhood.

This version also doesn’t line up with the allegations of a different El Universal writer, Hector de Mauleon, who wrote that: “They were not intercepted on the highway, nor in the vicinity of the [Lagos de Moreno] fair. A blood stain was left in the stands [of Mirador San Miguel],” later adding that “several witnesses saw it happen: the men went directly to the stands where five young men were sitting.”

So, on one hand we have a federal intelligence source saying the victims were last seen meeting a CJNG figure at the fair in the neighborhood of La Esmeralda.

On the other hand, we have witnesses alleging they saw hitmen arrive and abduct the victims at the Mirador San Miguel in the neighborhood of San Miguel.

This type of discrepancy, which comes from the same newspaper, embodies the dizzying amount of conflicting and unverified information which surrounds this case.

It’s important to note that forensic experts were seen photographing evidence, which included a bloodstain, at the Mirador San Miguel, which would seem to corroborate Hector de Mauleon’s version of events.

It is always possible that both of these accounts could be true, with the victims meeting a CJNG figure at the fair, then being instructed to wait at Mirador San Miguel, where the actual kidnapping occurred.

But reconstructing the victims’ movements during the hours before the kidnapping (hopefully using locational data from their cellphones) is going to be essential to finding the perpetrators.

The Possible Source of La Voz del Pueblo’s Information

It’s still unclear who kidnapped and filmed the five victims from Lagos de Moreno. As previously reported, La Voz del Pueblo, a prominent cartel news account on Twitter (X), has claimed that it was CJNG behind the video, specifically alleging the involvement of CJNG figures:

Eduardo Pizano Jiménez
David Jimenez Padilla
Arturo Alvarado Pérez
Rogelio Márquez Montoya

It’s been a few days since La Voz published their claim and they’ve offered no further evidence which supports the belief that the four men were involved.

It’s worth noting that all four men that La Voz named were listed out as CJNG figures connected to Lagos de Moreno on a very outdated Army (SEDENA) intelligence chart that was leaked by Guacamaya. The chart listed out:

The chart listed out:

Enrique Alejandro Pizano Jiménez (Detained)
Eduardo Pizano Jiménez
Alexis Delgado Torres (Detained)
David Jiménez Padilla
Arturo Alvarado Pérez
Rogelio Márquez Montoya

La Voz may have simply plucked out the names of the four non-detained figures and presented them as the creators of the video. This would be very irresponsible to do because:

We don’t know if CJNG was the group behind the video.
The chart is very outdated and there may be entirely different CJNG figures currently in Lagos de Moreno who should be named instead.

How do we know that chart is outdated? Because there are a number of egregious discrepancies such as it listing Mencho’s son-in-law, Julio Alberto Castillo Rodriguez, as being involved in the Guadalajara Metropolitan area when we know he’s actually in charge of Colima (according to an Army press conference given in 2022).

The chart also inaccurately lists El Jardinero as being involved in the Guadalajara Metropolitan area when we know he’s actually involved in Nayarit, Zacatecas, and Aguascalientes.

But regardless of whether the guys La Voz named are actually involved in the video, it seems clear that the men they named were at some point important to the region where the video was filmed, so let’s look further into them and their criminal history.

CJNG Figures: El Loco & His Brother

Eduardo Pizano Jiménez, alias “El Loco”, is the brother of another CJNG figure named Enrique Alejandro Pizano Jiménez, aliases “El Anestesia” and “El Sacristán”.

Strangely enough, one of the only sources which still has information about El Anestesia’s early life is the UK publication The Daily Mail. El Anestesia was born in 1973 and reportedly joined the CJNG in 2007, when he was 34 years old.

Over the next seven years, Anestesia rose in rank within the group. By the year 2014, he was tasked with taking out the mayor of Ayutla, a city which lies within the state of Jalisco which is the heart of CJNG territory.

Anestesia planned for an August 3rd attack on the mayor, who was named Juan Manuel Gómez Torres, by working with two associates of the mayor: Jose Alfredo Sanchez Dueñas, the mayor’s former political advisor, and Luis Alberto Zepeda Grajeda, the second-in-command of the municipal police.

Jose Alfredo Sanchez Dueñas aided Anestesia by providing him key information about the mayor, meanwhile Luis Alberto Zepeda Grajeda allegedly told municipal police officers to remain in their headquarters on the day of the murder.

When the day came, mayor Gómez Torres was gunned down, along with one of his bodyguards, near his vehicle. Both Sanchez Dueñas and Zepeda Grajeda claimed that one of the gunmen was Sergio Hernández González, alias “El Comandante Sergio”, a former director of police turned CJNG hitman.

In addition to the complicated hit on the mayor, El Anestesia was “known to have had a role in the May 2015 attack that took down an Armed Forces helicopter and left eight soldiers and one federal cop dead during an operation to capture El Mencho.”

But in all fairness, during the years right after the failed 2015 attempt to capture Mencho, many arrested CJNG figures – who were not previously named in connection to the incident – were suddenly said to have had a role in the attack… right after their arrest was announced.

This gave the distinct impression that the government was misattributing attack involvement in order to keep up the appearance of making meaningful arrests and making overall progress in seeking justice.

A similar pattern was seen after the 2019 LeBaron attack, wherein all arrested Linea members were labeled as co-conspirators in the LeBaron attack despite never being named in connection to the incident before.

Regardless of Anestesia’s degree of involvement in the 2015 attack, it’s clear that Anestesia had become important within the CJNG.

El Financiero described El Anestesia as one of Mencho’s top personal security leaders, meaning he was involved in managing the security detail that protects Mencho. They said that he selected properties for future safehouse use and that a number of these properties were used for storing precursor chemical used in drug production.

Meanwhile Union Jalisco described him as the “secretario” of Mencho, a position that is similar to a personal assistant. Univision added that El Anestesia was “a personal confidant of Mencho.”

After the 2015 attempt to capture Mencho which ended in the helicopter crash, law enforcement heat rained down those close to Mencho. Federal agents tracked El Anestesia down to a hotel called La Hacienda in the town of Anoca, within Techaluta de Montenegro municipality, located in the state of Jalisco.

The agents approached El Anestesia within the hotel, hoping to surprise him and lessen the violence but El Anestesia was accompanied by five other CJNG members who opened fire on the agents.

The scene turned into a gun battle which battered walls and broke windows of the hotel. Ultimately, though, the hitmen were forced to surrender and all of them were detained.

El Anestesia was found to be accompanied by Alba Priscila Zamora Santana, Juan Carlos Rodrígeuz García, Francisco Javier Vázquez Vázquez, José Candelario Sandoval Alanis, and Enrique Alejandro Pizano Jiménez.

Once the six were handcuffed, they were driven to the nearest airport, with two military helicopters flying over top of the convoy, guarding it from above.

When they reached the airport, the detainees were loaded into a federal helicopter and flown to Mexico City, where they were interviewed by federal agents and officially arrested. In May 2020, El Anestesia contracted COVID19 and died during an outbreak of the disease in Puente Grande prison.

In 2022, Expansion.mx and other news outlets published the aforementioned Army intelligence chart which named El Loco and his brother as CJNG figures in the area.

There is barely any information available on Loco himself and the degree to which he was involved in his brother Anestesia’s business is unclear.

Incinerated Remains & Bone Fragments

The FGE recently announced that the incinerated body, found inside the burning car on Monday, August 15, was genetically tested and found to not match any of the five victims.

Through testing, they were able to determine that the body inside the car belonged to someone who was over 30 years old, while all of the five were between 19 to 22 years old.

El Pais writes that the burning car probably belonged to Diego Alberto Lara Santoyo, one of the victims.

On Thursday, August 16, someone reported the discovery of charred human remains which they spotted on a farm in the town of La Troje, located in the municipality of Lagos de Moreno – near the state border with Aguascalientes.

The FGE went out to search the property and found four burned skulls and a number of burned bone fragments. The remains were collected for genetic testing. No photos of the location were released.

The FGE later confirmed the discovery on Twitter. The FGE showed pictures of the remains to relatives of the deceased. El Pais alleges that the results did not recognize the bones and noticed discrepancies.

Juan Martínez, the father of Jaime Adolfo, said he did not think the remains were the victims because “one of the bodies [in the photos] had plaques/plates from an injury – like the ones they apply when a bone is broken.”

These remains are currently undergoing genetic testing to see if they match with any of the victims. The results are still pending.

On Monday, August 21, the FGE announced on Twitter that they had discovered a new property of interest that was found to contain human remains. This property was located near the intersection of Real de Zacatecas Street and El Sabino Street, which is located in the city of Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco.

The FGE tweeted that they had “conducted a search [of the property] and seized five machetes, two sharp weapons, a chainsaw, a hammer, among other evidence, as well as multiple bone fragments.”

El Financiero wrote that the bone fragments could be from several different individuals, so the fragments were sent to the local morgue where they will undergo genetic testing.

Additional Images of the Filming Location