YouTube Hits Include 2 Hitmen Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle go to original November 06, 2010
This YouTube.com video is what led Mexican authorities to a mass grave in Tres Palos, a town just south of Acapulco on Mexico's Pacific coast. The victims are believed to be tourists, and Mexican news outlets are reporting that 19 bodies have been uncovered so far. (hoynosemeocurrenada)
Mexico City — Yet another macabre mystery of Mexico's drug war — the presumed slaughter of 20 tourists in Acapulco — apparently has been solved by thugs who captured the alleged killers, posted their confessions on the Internet, then murdered them and directed police to the crime scene. Police were searching for bodies Thursday in a coconut grove near the Pacific Coast resort, where they had pulled 18 others from a shallow mass grave Wednesday. Though officials were waiting for DNA evidence or identification by relatives today, those in the grave are believed to be 20 tourists from neighboring Michoacan state who were abducted in Acapulco five weeks ago. The men had vanished shortly after arriving in Acapulco — which in recent times has become known as much for brutality as beaches — for what family members said was an annual party weekend. Police were directed to the grave site Wednesday by an anonymous call alerting them to the bodies of two murdered men lying side by side in the brush not far from the Acapulco airport. A placard left with the bodies advised authorities that "those they killed are buried here." A video on YouTube posted earlier Wednesday showed an efficiently conducted interrogation of the same two men, one of whom confessed to helping snatch and snuff 20 tourists at the behest of Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez, a Texas-born narcotics trafficker. Until his arrest near Mexico City in late August, La Barbie was considered one of the Mexican underworld's more vicious leaders. Families deny gang ties The person conducting the interrogation is neither identified nor visible. The tourists, who had arrived in Acapulco in four vehicles bearing Michoacan plates, apparently were believed to be members of La Familia, Michoacan's homegrown mafia that has distinguished itself with savagery. They were seized near the beach city's premier hotels by armed men traveling in sport utility vehicles with no license plates, witnesses said. Their families have insisted the abducted men were not gangsters. "Check out their identities," the sobbing wife of one of the men implored the kidnappers in a televised interview days after the abduction. "These are working people." No ransom demand was ever made, and the men haven't been heard from again. Their alleged killers said in the video confession that the tourists were targeted in revenge for La Familia's winning control of a small city from La Barbie's narcotics gang. "This was all done because of La Familia," one of the men said in the video, which appeared to be filmed in the stairway of a house. "Because they took control of Altamirano." Gangsters in recent months have used such Internet-broadcast confessions to discredit police and other officials or to accuse rivals of atrocities. In several cases, federal authorities have made arrests based on the videotaped confessions. In another video posted on YouTube two weeks ago, a man identified as an Acapulco city police officer also confessed to taking part in the abduction. Questioned police-style, with rifles pointed at his head, the man said he also worked for La Barbie. He accused senior members of the local and state police forces of directing the crime. A bustling port and a resort still favored by many Mexicans, Acapulco has been a major battlefield in the four years of heightened gangland warfare that has racked Mexico. Gangsters from the so-called Pacific Cartel, including La Barbie, have fought criminal rivals and Mexican security forces for control of the city. Six people, include a mother, her son and a taxi driver, died last April in a shootout between troops and gangsters in the heart of the city's tourist zone. Eighteen others died 18 months ago when soldiers attacked a house in the old part of the city, not far from where Acapulco's famed cliff divers perform for tourists. Impact on tourism City officials, worried about the impact on tourism after the Michoacan group's kidnapping, had suggested early on that the victims must be tied to organized crimes. Ordinary tourists are quite safe in the city, they insisted. But relatives said the men all were relatives and friends of the owner of a car repair shop in Morelia, the Michoacan state capital, who invited them each year for a weekend stay at the beach. Michoacan officials say they have found no connection between the missing men and La Familia. "They were people who had an honest lifestyle," state Gov. Leonel Godoy, whose own half brother, a federal congressman, has been accused of ties to La Familia, told reporters Wednesday. "From the beginning we issued messages to those who kidnapped them that they were mistaken," the governor said. dudley.althaus(at)chron.com
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