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Mexican performer found dead, third killed in one week

A trumpet player was found dead with his hands and feet bound and a nylon bag over his head in southern Mexico, in what authorities said was apparently the country's third murder of a musician in less than a week.

Jose Luis Aquino, 33, had been hit repeatedly on the head, said a spokesman for the Oaxaca state attorney general's office who could not be named according to departmental rules. He said authorities were still investigating possible motives but suspected a crime of passion.

Aquino played for Los Conde, which was founded in Tututepec, Oaxaca, and later moved to the resort town of Puerto Escondido, according to its Web site.

The band has recorded a half-dozen albums, and members appeared in the early-1990s movie Mafioso pero Gracioso, or "Funny Mobster."

Los Conde singer and guitar player Francisco Conde said Aquino played for 14 years in the band, was married and had two children.

"He was a good person and never fought with anyone," Conde said. "He didn't smoke or do drugs."

A wave of organized crime violence has terrorized many parts of Mexico and the latest victims appear to be popular musicians.

Most disquieting were the weekend slayings of two singers who had crooned only about love and loss, not drugs and guns like some narcocorrido celebrities killed in the past.

The murders of Sergio Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra, and Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the Guilty Ones has mainstream singers worrying they may become targets by becoming identified with one or another of Mexico's warring drug gangs.

Meanwhile, Gomez' body was being returned Thursday to Indiana, where he lived since 2003.

His music was fashionable in cities from Chicago, where K-Paz made its first recordings, to Morelia, the capital of Mexico's western state of Michoacan.

Five of the band's albums have reached the Top 10 on Billboard magazine's Latin music chart.

Hundreds of people mourned Gomez on Tuesday in his hometown of Ciudad Hidalgo in Michoacan. About 200 more also gathered in Mexico City, where Gomez's body was transported on Tuesday night.

Although not known for songs glamorizing the drug business, Gomez had reportedly received death threats urging him not to appear in the capital of Michoacan, a hotbed of the drug trade.

Some believe that singers, whether they have any links to drug cartels or not, are routinely "adopted" by drug gangs, which post Internet videos showing their members torturing and executing rivals to soundtracks of popular tunes.
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