A gang leader suspected in the killings of a US consulate worker in Mexico, her husband and another man has confessed to participating in the murders, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Ricardo Valles, 45, a US resident of Mexican origin, was captured by Mexico’s military on Friday on suspicion of involvement in the killings.
A statement by the joint army, federal and state anti-crime task force in Chihuahua state said Valles confessed to acting as a lookout in the shootings.
The statement said an Azteca gang leader “ordered him by telephone some days before to locate the white sport utility vehicle [SUV] in which Arthur Hancock Redelfs was traveling, which he did on March 13 at a children’s party.”
Valles de la Rosa told investigators that “when the sport utility vehicle left that spot, he advised other colleagues in the Aztecas, who ordered him to follow it.”
By the time Redelfs’ white SUV reached the scene where the attack occurred, Valles de la Rosa was told to back off, because the Aztecas — as the gang is known in Mexico — had the vehicle located.
He said that moments later he heard gunfire, and saw the bullet-ridden vehicle with a dead man and woman inside.
The couple’s seven-month-old daughter was later found wailing in the back of the vehicle.
The statement did not specify whether Redelfs’ job at the jail in El Paso, across the border from Juarez, was the reason he was followed and shot. One theory was that the Aztecas — whose members operate and are incarcerated on both sides of the border — could have sought revenge against Redelfs for events inside the jail.
Other theories had suggested the killings might have been a case of mistaken identity.
“The information the suspect has given is still being verified, so the authorities are not releasing other information on other probable participants in the double shootings and their probable motive,” the statement said.
Still, the statement appeared to strengthen the hypothesis that the third victim in the shootings — Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate — may have been killed because he left the same party in a white SUV similar to the one in which Redelfs and his wife died.
The statement said federal prosecutors were taking over the case and were expected to charge Valles de la Rosa with the murder of a rival gang member.
The US government sent FBI investigators to this violent border city after the murders, and a senior US delegation led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later pledged to boost joint efforts to tackle surging violence by Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.
Killings continued in Ciudad Juarez and other northern Mexico cities on Tuesday.
Gunmen burst into a workshop and adjoining house in Ciudad Juarez and killed five men and a baby girl. At least 15 other killings were reported in Juarez, which is one of the most violent cities in the world.
Mexico has been gripped in drug-related bloodshed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military clampdown on the country’s powerful drug gangs after taking office in December 2006.
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