Mexico kidnapping news: Gulf cartel apologizes for Matamoros attack as victims’ criminal records investigated

The kidnapping of the four Americans from South Carolina has drawn attention to a horror abduction in the same cartel-controlled border city of Matamoros more than 30 years ago.

Texas college student Mark Kilroy was 21 years old when he disappeared from a Spring Break vacation in 1989.

A search continued for almost a month before Kilroy’s remains were found in a mass grave with other victims.

He was found to have been abducted, tortured and killed by a satanic drug-trafficking sect.

Gustaf Kilander has the whole story.

“FBI San Antonio announces the creation of a digital media tip line to help identify the person(s) responsible for the murder and kidnapping of US citizens visiting Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico on March 3, 2023,” the agency tweeted on Friday. afternoon.

Eric James Williams and his friend Latavia ‘Tay’ McGee were rescued from a drug cartel ‘stash house’ on Tuesday – but their friends Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown were found dead.

After the rescue, Mr Williams’ wife Michelle revealed that she had not even known he was going to Mexico.

The independentRachel Sharp has the story:

Mexican drug cartels have increased their presence on Twitter since Elon Musk bought the social media platform, according to a report.

“Already meager efforts by Twitter to remove offensive content and block the accounts of high-profile Mexican cartel members appear to have further diminished since Elon Musk took over the company and dismantled the platform’s security team,” the report said.

Irving Barrios Mojica, the prosecutor for Tamaulipas, said the vehicles, which included a Lamborghini stolen in the United States, were found as part of a joint operation by Mexican authorities.

Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to portray the synthetic opioid epidemic as largely an American problem, saying the United States should use family values ​​to fight drug addiction.

His statement came during a visit to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House homeland security adviser, to discuss the fentanyl crisis. It also comes amid calls by US Republicans to use the US military to attack drug laboratories in Mexico.

The Mexican The government has previously acknowledged that fentanyl is produced in laboratories in Mexico using precursor chemicals imported from China. Fentanyl has been blamed for about 70,000 opioid deaths per year in the United States.

“Here we don’t produce fentanyl, and we don’t have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador said. “Why aren’t they (US) taking care of their problem of social decay?”

A Mexican official has confirmed the arrest of five suspects in the kidnapping of four Americans.

The announcement by Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica came a day after reports that the Gulf cartel had apologized for the deadly ordeal and blamed four rogue members.

Barrios Mojica said the arrest warrants were for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and intentional simple murder. The suspects have not been officially named.

Prosecutors previously announced that authorities had seized five vehicles in connection with the case, including a Lamborghini stolen on US soil.

A fifth American who had traveled to Mexico with a group that was later kidnapped has claimed they only planned to be in the country for 15 minutes.

Cheryl Orange had set out on the trip from South Carolina with her friends Latvia “Tay” McGee, Eric Williams, Zindell Brown, Shaeed Woodard – but when they arrived at the border on March 3, Orange was denied entry because she didn’t have a photo ID.

She told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that her friends drove her back to her hotel in Brownsville, Texas, and told her they would “be back in 15 minutes.”

She said she was “worried and scared that it didn’t seem right”.

That detail could raise questions about an explanation by the victims’ families that the group went to Mexico so McGee could get a tummy tuck.

When asked by Cooper why the group went on the trip, Orange reiterated that it was for Ms McGee to undergo a “cosmetic procedure”.

Shortly after entering Matamoros, the four Americans were ambushed by armed gunmen who held them captive for four days.

When authorities finally tracked down the group on March 7, Woodard and Brown were dead and McGee and Mr. Williams were rescued.

Two hearses carrying the bodies of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown crossed the International Bridge into Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday where their remains were turned over to US authorities.

LaTavia McGee, who is Woodard’s cousin and survived the ordeal, had surprised him with the fatal drive as a birthday trip, according to his father, James Woodard.

He said he was speechless when he heard the cartel had apologized for the violent abduction that killed his son and was captured in images that quickly spread online.

“Just being helpless — not being able to do anything, not being able to go over there and just save them — it’s really painful,” Woodard said.

When four Americans were kidnapped in the border city of Matamoros, authorities rescued the survivors after three days, but thousands of Mexicans remain missing in the state long associated with cartel violence — some in cases dating back more than a decade.

Mexican authorities quickly blamed the local golf cartel for delaying the Americans’ minibus after they crossed the border for plastic surgery on Friday. Authorities found the Americans — two dead, one wounded and one apparently unharmed — early Tuesday after an extensive search involving groups of Mexican soldiers and the National Guard.

In contrast, more than 112,000 Mexicans remain missing nationwide, in many cases years or decades after they disappeared.

Although a convoy of armored Mexican military trucks picked up the Americans, the only people searching for most of the missing Mexicans are their desperate relatives.