No one challenged organized crime, never mind put its members in prison. Proceso paid a very high price for covering these issues: kidnappings, murders, threats, said Carrasco, the Proceso editor, who left the country temporarily after receiving death threats when he tried to investigate Martnezs homicide. By the next morning, the kidnappers stopped answering their phones and the family knew Luciano was not coming home. They either purge it and try to move on from their loved ones, or they sustain it, and it destroys them. In 2011, the group announced it would begin releasing the names of cartel members and their accomplices in government, which it had obtained through hacking. She stopped every few minutes to catch her breath and study the photo of her next target: the florist. Anyone can read what you share. The day came on July 8, 2020, with an agreement to meet briefly in a park. Mrs. Rodrguez, already separated from her husband, moved in with her older daughter, Azalea. Since that day, theories have proliferated as to who fired. She needed a name. A man who fatally shot a 38-year-old woman on Wednesday morning in Orange County, Fla., returned to the scene later in the day and went on a shooting spree, the authorities said, killing a 24-year-old TV news reporter who had been covering the original homicide and a 9-year-old at a nearby home. As Mrs. Rodrguez sat outside the interrogation room, the teenager asked whether he could see his mother. In 2015, Virginia reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot and killed during their live TV broadcast for CBS affiliate WDBJ7. Benjamin LeBaron, an anti-crime activist who founded neighborhood patrols against cartels, was killed in 2009. Additional charges were expected for the other shootings in Pine Hills, about five miles west of Orlando, said the Orange County sheriff, John Mina, who said at a news conference on Thursday that he was 100 percent confident the gunman would be charged with homicide for the murders of Mr. Lyons and Ms. Major. Eight years after Martnezs homicide on April 28, 2012, a team of reporters from Mexico, Europe and The Washington Post has picked up where Martnez left off. Armed with a handgun, a fake ID card and disguises, Miriam Rodrguez was a one-woman detective squad, defying a system where criminal impunity often prevails. During the 16 months Martnez was alive under Duartes tenure, she chronicled an escalation in violence, with mutilated bodies dumped in public almost weekly. Veracruz receives partial information and even lies, she wrote in 2011. Like everyone else in the city, Lucianos relatives knew the story of Karens kidnapping and Mrs. Rodrguezs tragic heroism. The government said nothing about how it had found the grave site. Last month, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) drug cartel, which is among Mexico's most powerful, released shocking footage of a rival gangster being interrogated and then slaughtered. Martnezs homicide shocked many who assumed a reporter at such a respected national outlet was too high-profile to be killed. Instead of answers, the family received threats, anonymous calls and messages warning them to stop the search. And then, by pure chance, Sama turned up. This is the first in a series of five articles, called "The Cartel Project," involving 60 journalists from 18 countries. A MEXICAN cartel leader's sister was shot and killed at the church altar on her wedding day by rival gangsters, it has been reported. Mr. Moses was taken to a hospital, where Sheriff Mina said he fought with hospital staff and was restrained, before being transported to the Sheriffs Office. Shop clerks brought them water in the 100-degree heat. I died the day they killed my daughter. He also said hed had good luck since childhood, which is how he explained twice winning the national lottery, pocketing $6.8million in 2008 and $3.6million the following year. Azalea hugged Lucianos mother for more than a minute, weeping. It was a witchs brew, said Seeley, who now runs Constos Global Risk Management. Her death gave shape to the impunity that twists everyday life in Mexico, and the government scrambled to react. Farmers and politicians. A mother of two sons killed by fentanyl gave emotional testimony Tuesday at the House Homeland Security hearing on the border crisis. The lifeless body of the young woman had signs of torture and was found with gunshot wounds Sunday morning. Circumscribed by the violence, many live reduced lives. Duarte had none of Herreras political charm. You have all taught my family that together we can fight back, she said. Within a few months, it arrested two of the culprits, and killed another in a gunfight. The suspect killed a woman near Orlando on Wednesday morning, then returned later in the day and killed a 9-year-old girl and a journalist who was covering the original shooting, the authorities said. When Borbolla transferred jobs in late 2015, she insisted Martnezs case remain open because we have those two fingerprints that implicated someone, and we didnt know who he was.. He slowly shrank, physically and spiritually, until his children struggled to recognize him. There was never a single illicit penny in my campaign, he told the outlet Grupo Frmula in 2014. I am a man with clean hands.. It was a company to build highways the woman would have been killed in retaliation after the United Cartels did the same with a CJNG hit man identified as La Guadaa. The four other parts can be found at forbiddenstories.org. By Eduardo Medina,April Rubin and Christine Chung. The government dispatched convoys of soldiers, police officers and investigators to San Fernando. The cemetery emptied, but they stayed, clinging to the moment. That Karen and Mrs. Rodrguez now lay together was a small solace. Without showering, she threw a trench coat over her pajamas, a baseball cap over her fire engine-red hair and a gun in her purse, heading for the border to find the florist. Mrs. Garza ignored the calls, as Mrs. Rodrguez had, but the family asked for security from the government. He had learned the lesson her murder was meant to impart: one could only push so far for justice, at least publicly. After that, the woman fled to Veracruz, where she drove a taxi while raising her young son. She invented excuses to meet their families, unsuspecting grandmothers and cousins who gave her details, however small. Jesse Walden, the News 13 photographer who was shot, remains hospitalized but is speaking to detectives, Sheriff Mina said. Herreras presence set off alarms. Luis said he had to sneak onto the street to give her a jump. That case has stalled. Her colleagues were right to be worried. The presence of multiple, competing cartels provoked turf battles and an increase in killings. insider. The suspect killed a woman near Orlando on Wednesday morning, then returned later in the day and killed a 9-year-old girl and a journalist who was covering the original shooting, the authorities said. When they arrested him in the central plaza, Sama kicked and screamed, claiming he had a heart condition. The Zetas, once an armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, had been warring with their one-time bosses for years. I knew her quite well, he said of Martnez, who had covered one of his earlier campaigns. Mr. Moses had walked into a brown house nearby and shot the 9-year-old girl and her mother, he said. Gunmen killed nine people in an attack on a house in central Mexico, in the latest outbreak of violence linked to suspected drug gangs, authorities said Wednesday. Her friends often wondered if she was going too far. The killers covered the site with trash to throw off anyone searching. Dec. 6, 2020. The police came and arrested her, later discovering that some of the ransom calls had come from her house. and he used them to keep order in some regions of the state., In 2012, after Martnezs death, Herreras name also surfaced in sworn testimony at the U.S. money-laundering trial of Veracruz oilman Francisco Colorado-Cessa in U.S. District Court in Austin. She told her daughter that she would not rest until she found the people who had taken Karen. They needed a bit more money, they said, just $500. Martnez was considered by her peers to be the leader of a group of five journalists whose reputations were above reproach. His son, Javier, said via Twitter that his father was ill and unable to comment: My father has been in a hospital since April; this is a fact that you can easily corroborate; he suffered a stroke in April and has been in intensive care ever since. The Barcelona City Council and Catalonian police launched confidential inquiries looking at Herreras links to people in Barcelona with their own legal problems, according to documents and interviews. To pay the first ransom, Mrs. Rodrguezs family took out a loan from a bank that offered lines of credit for such payments. He has since been charged with kidnapping and murder. The National Press Club said in a statement that it was horrified to learn about the shooting. The police said they sent periodic patrols by her home and work. They did that, but I didnt see who, since I was blindfolded. La Voz is one such example of this, as the newspaper is not real . Her stunning campaign recounted in case files, witness testimony, confessions from the criminals she tracked down and dozens of interviews with relatives, police officers, friends, officials and local residents changed San Fernando, for a while at least. Under Duarte, now 47, corruption and violence increased dramatically. Last year, one female killer known as "La Peque" was captured by the authorities for her work for the Sinaloa Cartel in north-western Mexico. On Feb 24, the Gothika. Luciano was kidnapped in one of the familys own trucks, just like Mrs. Rodrguezs daughter had been. Just before her killing, Martnez had begun visiting pauper cemeteries in Veracruz to compare the number of bodies buried to official death records. The weeks after Karens abduction had become knotted into a single, nauseating progression of calls, threats and false promises. We felt that, on one hand, I was being told, Yes, of course, prosecutor, whatever you need. And I would turn around, and he would be talking to them and telling them not to give us anything.. (Miguel Tovar/LatinContent/Getty Images) RIGHT: Martnezs gravesite in Xalapa, Mexico. Her articles had an outsize impact. Others called, claiming to be the kidnappers. Forbes magazine had by then dubbed him one of the 10 most corrupt Mexicans. But Pea Nieto argued that Herreras business acumen made him the perfect choice for the job. Mrs. Rodrguez stalked the store for weeks until she knew the womans hours by heart, and waited outside each shift until Sama showed. One official claimed that investigators had managed to triangulate the location based on cellphone tower pings. Prosecutors said the woman who waved her arms, Christina Langford Johnson, was. A 31-year-old journalist was shot dead on Monday in the central state of Guanajuato while he was reporting on the discovery of human remains dumped on a road in the city of Salamanca. For the next several hours, Lucianos family fanned out across the city on a manic hunt. The parent company of Spectrum News 13, Charter Communications, said in a statement on Wednesday night that we are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and the other lives senselessly taken today, the TV station reported. Cinemas, nightclubs and shops were almost empty, a consequence of the violence, she wrote. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced he is now permanently deploying National Guard troops to Cancun in a bid to curb the rise in crime. Many bars and restaurants had closed for fear of shootouts. He pleaded guilty to some charges and admitted to working with criminal elements. He was sentenced to nine years in prison but has appealed, and media reports say he could be released early. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. Men claiming to speak for Mexico's most powerful drug cartel have released a video threatening to murder a prominent female news anchor over what they deem to be unfair coverage. Family members said Dawna Langford's 13-year-old son, Devin, watched his mother die and then hid his six. His grandfather, Luciano, ran a trucking business he started from scratch, and a prosperous cinder block factory. (Flix Mrquez/AP). In 2010, federal authorities discovered the corpses of 72 Central American migrants at a ranch on the citys outskirts, believed at the time to be the most savage killings ever perpetrated by a cartel. Her mother was a different person after that. Some 50 young women disappeared over a three-day period after attending parties with Zetas and local officials, according to media accounts. She knew their habits, friends, hometowns, childhoods. He lashed out at critics. She was murdered by Los Pepes for being "Pablo's whore" in 1993. Someone wanted to stop the news reports about the executions. But it came with a price. They knew they were among the fortunate few who at least had somewhere to mourn them. Zetas kill and behead 4 women. But even he had learned the lesson his mothers murder had been meant to impart: only push so far for justice. So many families never found their loved ones. Both were taken to a nearby hospital, where the girl died. The cartel never had intended to keep him, and after they let him go Mrs. Rodrguez mined his memory for everything he had heard or seen. On the drive back from the ranch, Mrs. Rodrguez passed a barbecue restaurant near the entrance of the dirt road to the ranch. The extortion of 80 small-town mayors. If it was only a matter of time. A day after Coronel Aispuro's court appearance, Jessica Oseguera, the 34-year-old daughter of El Chapo's rival cartel boss, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, was sentenced to two and a half years in. In Mexico, politicians rely on narcos for campaign funds. Martnez reported it all: The rape and homicide of a 72-year-old Indigenous woman by army soldiers. LEFT: Writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska holds a photo of Regina Martnez during a 2017 protest in Mexico City calling for an end to violence against journalists. Veracruz, once best known for its thriving port, lush beaches and colonial architecture, got a new name: The mass grave of Mexico.. Townspeople, long accustomed to looking away in silence, watched the funeral procession crawl through the streets, slow enough for the hundreds of mourners on foot to keep up. Dead.. Priest reported from Washington. Valeria Velez worked as a news anchor during the early 1980s, and in 1981 she interviewed the famous cartel boss Pablo Escobar, forming a romantic relationship with him. When she returned, the officer asked her what she had been thinking. Mexican marines had killed six of the accomplices, Cristian said in his statement. The gunman, a former reporter for the TV station . LEFT: The family of slain Proceso photojournalist Rubn Espinosa during his funeral in Mexico City in 2015. She wrote of his increasing wealth at a time when the state debt soared without a clear explanation. The corpses of 72 Central American migrants were discovered at this ranch. [The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels], The violence became news all over the world. Since then, at least 39 more journalists have been murdered. Luis, Karens older brother, had moved away to escape the danger. Forensic agents claimed that Karen was not among the dozens of bodies they had identified at the ranch. In December 2011, a bombshell news story described cartel penetration of the government in Veracruz, based on a still-confidential report by the Mexican Attorney Generals Office. In retaliation, the Zetas kidnapped several members to threaten them and to learn the names of people who had access to the hacked information. The Client Who Got Him Killed. A scarf that belonged to Karen and a seat cushion from her truck lay near the top. Crime scene where El Diario Newspaper Crime Reporter Armando Rodriquez was murdered outside his home while warming up his car. [The search for the disappeared points to Mexicos darkest secrets], Martnez contacted photographer Julio Argumedo to take pictures for Proceso. Reporter Dylan Lyons and a photographer were on scene reporting sometime around 4:00 p.m. when they were shot while reporting on a homicide of a woman in her twenties, which occurred at approximately 11:00 a.m., WCJB noted. We dont care about the rain, or anything else, Lucianos mother told local television reporters as her group sheltered under downtown awnings. Mrs. Rodrguezs son, Luis, 36, could not help but see the parallels, and wept when he heard the news. But you respected her mission.. Off the motorways, dirt roads in the scrubland provide a web of smuggling routes ideal for traffickers. The city lies along a principal route north through the state of Tamaulipas. Authorities told. A lot of Narcos: Mexico is based on truth and is a retelling of historical events, but not everything is actually what happened. Bullet holes pockmarked the outer walls of the adobe house, remnants of a gunfight months earlier. Two weeks later, the tortured and decapitated body of Notivers police reporter was discovered. When he finally did, she followed the couple home and marked their address. A catalog of objects recovered by families of Veracruz journalists slain over the past decade. Abigail Geiger contributed reporting from Orlando, Fla. New Details Emerge in Killing of Reporter, Woman and 9-Year-Old, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/us/florida-shooting-news.html. Some of the culprits were dead, others in jail. It was headline news in Mexico, with calls for a thorough investigation. Many of her peers believe he or Herrera was behind her homicide. He was like a clown in a rodeo. When the police finally arrested the young woman outside the home, Mrs. Rodrguez tripped as she ran toward them, fracturing her foot. But Ms. Betancourt played dumb, which Mrs. Rodrguez had thought was odd. In September, when the state police detained a cartel leader in San Fernando, he refused to cooperate. Now she finally had one a widow called to tell her that he was peddling flowers on the border. Halle Berry has done it again: she's turned every head and made every jaw drop with a series of new bikini snapshots that show she's a confident superstar in every season. He had one last customer, a young, slender man browsing hats. She was identified as Christina Langford Johnson. The brutal killing and mutilation of a 25-year-old woman in Mexico has sparked outrage and prompted calls for a change in the country's law, after several media outlets published a leaked. She sat down with a slender young man at El Junior, a restaurant in town. 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