With little to lose, Mrs. Rodrguez asked for a meeting with members of the local cartel, the Zetas, and to her surprise, they agreed. She wrote of his increasing wealth at a time when the state debt soared without a clear explanation. Instead of answers, the family received threats, anonymous calls and messages warning them to stop the search. She said it matter-of-factly, as though describing her sleep. Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Someone broke in through the metal door from her beloved garden patio, the tiny patch of tranquility that kept her from . I wont make the same mistakes as my mom, Luis said. They had a sort of buzzer for giving electric shocks, and they put it on my chest and gave me shocks. I would love to meet you one day.. After the shooting, the deputies found Mr. Moses, who was uncooperative, the sheriff said. No one challenged organized crime, never mind put its members in prison. MEXICO CITY When Gildo . She wrote everything down and stuffed it into her black computer bag, building her investigation and tracking them down, one by one. Lpez Ramrez had made a career from defending some of Mexico's most infamous cartel leaders, representing clients such as the leader of Los Zetas . As a private lawyer, he was also representing the LeBaron family, a family with dual US-Mexico citizenship that lost nine. Borbolla had other problems with the crime investigation, which was supposed to be done jointly with state authorities. 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. Graphics by Daniela Santamaria. In reality, organized crime is a middleman. Indian . Duarte, had used public funds to purchase fake chemotherapy medication for children. Three people, including a reporter and a 9-year-old girl, were shot and killed, and two others were shot and injured in a series of shootings in . In June 2011, the deputy editor of the largest newspaper in the state, Notiver, was shot dead in his home along with his wife and son. The National Press Club said in a statement that it was horrified to learn about the shooting. Homicide January 16 Drive-by shooter empties shotgun at British funeral mourners; girls, 7 and 12, among six wounded A gunman fired multiple shotgun rounds into a gathered crowd of funeral mourners. He called his mother and followed him, careful not to lose him before the police arrived. Sheriff Mina said his office would be conducting additional ballistic testing on the recovered gun. Even young women who attended their sex parties. She was an incorruptible, professional journalist.. By the 2000s, the state of Veracruz, with its huge Gulf of Mexico port, oil industry and hidden trails, had become a key part of the route from South and Central America for cartels smuggling people, drugs and other contraband north to the United States. Law enforcement officers at the scene of a shooting in Pine Hills, Fla., on Wednesday. Duarte was taking money from everyone, said Kirk Seeley, a former DEA special agent and supervisor with 16 years of experience, much of it investigating drug crimes in Mexico. The 19-year-old suspect is in custody, police said. In 2015, Pea Nieto gave Herrera a consul position in Barcelona even though he had no diplomatic experience. Anabel Garza Rivera and Luciano Leal Vela kneeling before the coffin of their murdered son. 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. Bullet holes pockmarked the outer walls of the adobe house, remnants of a gunfight months earlier. The warning. This man is having his genitals eaten by a dog. vila is the stuff legends are made of - one of the few women with access to the highest levels of cartel life. Update: An Orlando reporter is mourned as local journalists face more danger on the job. Families have suffered kidnappings and cartel-imposed curfews much as big city residents endure traffic and pollution. She had been hunting him for a year, stalking him online, interrogating the criminals he worked with, even befriending unwitting relatives for tips on his whereabouts. Drivers circled town playing it over a loudspeaker. to do drilling, to do cleanup, things like that anything that the government hired them to do, the accountant testified. There is a drug war in Nuevo Laredo between rival drug cartels that . Many bars and restaurants had closed for fear of shootouts. The intersection where Mrs. Rodrguezs daughter, Karen, was kidnapped. (Miguel Tovar/LatinContent/Getty Images) RIGHT: Martnezs gravesite in Xalapa, Mexico. The relatives took precautions, at times monitoring their children with an intensity that bordered on surveillance. De Dinechin, of Forbidden Stories, and Espinosa, of Proceso, reported from Mexico. She worked to show that government forces were secretly burying hundreds of disappeared people in mass graves. I want to end this. She is one of three people to testify in front of the Border Security and . He had his child back, in some way. Karens father dropped off a bag of cash near the health clinic, then waited in vain at the local cemetery for the kidnappers to free her. Authorities told. A month before she was killed, Mrs. Rodrguez broke her foot chasing down one of the last targets on her list, a young woman who had left town and begun working as a live-in nanny for a family in Ciudad Victoria. The series examines the power and activities of Mexican cartels and their collusion with corrupt government officials. When professors at the University of Veracruz would not stop publicly criticizing him, he denied the university millions in state funds and created a new university where he handed out credentials to students loyal to him, according to press accounts at the time. The details and information gathered by this woman, working all alone, were incredible., She had gone to every single level of government and they had slammed the door in her face, he recalled. Meanwhile, she wrote in 2006, Herrera assures Veracruz that nothing is happening, that there is social tranquility in the state. And they already did that to us.. At the burial site, as a crowd surrounded the rectangular pit, he stood to the side, weeping. Dead.. Just as she had with the ice cream shop, Mrs. Rodrguez waited for weeks outside of the prison during visiting hours until Ms. Betancourt finally showed. The vicious Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are considered the most dangerous and powerful criminal enterprise in Mexico. Farmers and politicians. Logan was in Cairo covering. Warning: CARTEL violence. They stripped their hopes to something far more basic the return of their son. Her story offers a singular account of Mexicos deterioration by 2020 into an anguished nation, beset by cartel-corrupted government institutions and haunted by thousands of killings and disappearances. A colleague of Martnez said that she had calculated that the number of dead had increased tenfold in Veracruz between 2000 and 2012, a toll not reflected in official records. Just before her killing, Martnez had begun visiting pauper cemeteries in Veracruz to compare the number of bodies buried to official death records. A 19-year-old Florida man is now facing three first-degree-murder charges related to shootings last week that killed a television news reporter, a 9-year-old girl and a 38-year-old woman, sheriff . The Veracruz government said the 35 people were Zetas and the perpetrators were from the warring Gulf Cartel. I want to thank you for being the perfect son, for bringing joy to all of us every day you were here, he said. Police officers responded and cleared the scene, he said. The unit also collected personal information about them, including the names of family members and co-workers, places they frequented, their political affiliations and sexual orientations. But the fight was very different this time. The parents speeches brought tears to the crowd, to Luis and his sister Azalea in particular. (Flix Mrquez/AP) RIGHT: Relatives try to identify their missing loved ones at the morgue in Cosamaloapan, Veracruz, after more than two dozen bodies were found in a mass grave in 2014. Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels on the border line between the US and Mexico. 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. In total, reports indicate six cartel members were captured in the raid that killed her on Friday. Two to three times a week, they conducted searches. Maria Guadalupe Lopez Esquivel, also known by her alias "La Catrina," was shot in the neck Friday as Mexico's army, National Guard and Michoacn state police raided the safe house where she stayed. Its really amazing, their bravery.. Anyone can read what you share. And the searches for Luciano had turned up nothing. Mrs.Rodrguezs son, Luis, at the ranch where the remains of his sister, Karen, were found. The city placed a bronze plaque honoring her in the central plaza. As the local economy struggled, Duarte was hiding the states financial crisis, she wrote. In September, when the state police detained a cartel leader in San Fernando, he refused to cooperate. Veracruz officials awarded lucrative government contracts to Colorado-Cessas cartel-linked construction company, and government officials received 10 to 16 percent from each contract, Hinojosa testified. For Luis and Azalea, it was hard not to hear the parallels with their own mother, buried not 100 feet away. They would deliver little Luciano to the family home that very night. The gunman shot two other people in Pine Hills, Fla., the Orange County Sheriffs Office said in a news conference on Wednesday: the mother of the 9-year-old and a photographer who worked with the TV news reporter at Spectrum News 13 in Orlando. Frightened colleagues sometimes tried to warn her off investigations. When Herreras term ended in 2010, he expressed a desire to run for president. The authorities pledged to capture her killers. Luis shook hands with Lucianos father but barely said a word, then walked off, wiping his eyes. Unlike Mrs. Rodrguezs relentless pursuit of her daughters killers, Lucianos parents did not seek to punish the powerful cartel. I died the day they killed my daughter. La Voz is one such example of this, as the newspaper is not real . Crime scene where El Diario Newspaper Crime Reporter Armando Rodriquez was murdered outside his home while warming up his car. Armed men forced their way into her pickup truck and took off, with her in it. We just want our son back.. Both were taken to a nearby hospital, where the girl died. All were murdered during Mexico's ongoing cocaine wars. Editors and colleagues said they were unaware that Martnez had any relationship with Anonymous. A mariachi band played as mourners paid their respects at the burial. Luis said he had to sneak onto the street to give her a jump. They did that, but I didnt see who, since I was blindfolded. She had said as much in her time, words now carved onto a plaque affixed to her mausoleum. Led. It has been a relentless attack against journalists, said Roberta S. Jacobson, U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2016 to 2018. They were forced out of the field of play. He recognized her and ran. When questioned about those holdings, the governor said they belonged to his wealthy wife. The government said nothing about how it had found the grave site. Youre very handsome, read a message to him from the account. The violence against a female reporter stood out as something unusual and unexpected, said Thomas A. Shannon Jr., former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. The international collaboration was organized by Forbidden Stories, a nonprofit group based in Paris whose mission is to continue the reporting of murdered journalists. Many of her peers believe he or Herrera was behind her homicide. She sat down with a slender young man at El Junior, a restaurant in town. When she finally found him, she got too excited, and too close. 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. But the kidnapping of an innocent 14-year-old boy broke the quiet understanding that the cartels had with the people of San Fernando. LEFT: Signs mark clandestine graves where almost 300 bodies were found in Colinas de Santa Fe, in Veracruz, in 2018. What the local press did not want to publish was published through Regina Martnez, said Jorge Carrasco, Procesos editor in chief. Bermdez has pleaded not guilty, and the case is pending. Reserved and private, she usually sat in the corner at office parties, one Proceso colleague remembered, itching to get back to work. Some 50 young women disappeared over a three-day period after attending parties with Zetas and local officials, according to media accounts. LEFT: The family of slain Proceso photojournalist Rubn Espinosa during his funeral in Mexico City in 2015. The day after, the kidnappers said they wanted more. Pablo Escobar died in a rooftop shootout in Medellin on Dec. 2, 1993. She studied journalism in college and began her career in the early 1980s at a state-run television channel. He was frightened during questioning. Sometimes, they organized death matches between captives for sport. His father, also Luciano, owned a thriving construction materials store. After that, the trust seemed to be broken, and Luis went his own way. Mrs. Rodrguezs son, Luis, looking through his mothers belongings, holding a photo of Sama, right, among other evidence she kept in her black satchel with details of her daughter Karens kidnappers and killers. One of these five, who asked to remain anonymous for personal safety reasons, nicknamed this group the band of undesirables. Martnez and the other four journalists often coordinated to publish sensitive news simultaneously to cover up which one had done the work and to ensure that no one journalist was stranded at sea.. She has lived, worked and. The family followed every instruction to the letter. Enrique Pea Nieto, who once described Herrera as his best friend, ran and won the presidency instead. Her public campaign threatened more than just a few kidnappers. SAN FERNANDO, Mexico Miriam Rodrguez clutched a pistol in her purse as she ran past the morning crowds on the bridge to Texas. a b Marijose Gamboa has one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. We must rid ourselves of the fear to stand up and speak out.. You are taking our hearts with you.. After tracing the fake Facebook account, the police discovered what Mrs. Garza had long suspected that several of her cousins were involved in organized crime and had teamed up with local cartel members to extort the family. The report described two alleged meetings that Herrera had with Zeta cartel leaders when he was governor in 2008, one at the Maviel Hotel in the port city of Coatzacoalcos and the other during a party Herrera threw at one of his homes in Veracruzs capital city, Xalapa, in honor of a cartel founder and the cartels leader in the state. Not long after Luciano was taken, the kidnappers called his father and handed the phone to the teenager. He slowly shrank, physically and spiritually, until his children struggled to recognize him. Martnezs home was mostly undisturbed, and items of value remained little gold earrings on the dresser, her purse, her phones, a printer, kitchen appliances. He said they found a Glock 40 handgun that was still hot to the touch in the suspects pants. Anyone can read what you share. The place where the body of 14-year-old Luciano Leal Garza was found. But even he had learned the lesson his mothers murder had been meant to impart: only push so far for justice. You have all taught my family that together we can fight back, she said. For many in the northern city of San Fernando, her story represents so much of what is wrong in Mexico and so remarkable about its people, their perseverance in the face of government indifference. That anything that the government hired them to do cleanup, things like that anything that government! 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