Jenni Rivera’s remains land in hometown
LONG BEACH, CALIF.
Jenni Rivera, the Mexican superstar killed in a weekend plane crash, has made her final journey home.
The remains of the U.S.born singer arrived by plane in California from Mexico on Thursday night, accompanied by three of Rivera’s brothers.
Rivera and six others were killed Sunday when their plane crashed while flying from Monterrey in northern Mexico to the central city of Toluca. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Results of DNA tests were pending, but her family conceded that Rivera was dead.
“We have received 100 per cent confirmation that my sister Jenni is gone to be with the Lord,” a brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said during a news conference. “She is in the presence of God now. They did show pictures to my brothers of the body; it is not the full body.”
Escorted by police, her casket was driven to a mortuary where dozens of fans waited. Other fans gathered outside her mother’s home where well-wishers left a memorial of balloons, candles and flowers.
Rivera, 43, was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a maledominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television. Known as the “Diva del la Banda,” she sold 15 million records and was loved on both sides of the border for her down-toearth style and songs about heartbreak and overcoming pain.
Meanwhile, the company that owns the luxury jet that crashed and killed Rivera is being investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the continuing probe.
DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company’s records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. police officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.
The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company’s only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm’s planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.
Esquino’s legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case.
Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.
The late singer’s brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn’t know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.
Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company’s operations manager “with the expertise.”
Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records.
He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from United States tax officials and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.
He served about five months in prison before being released
Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.
“It was huge,” Hawkins said Thursday. “This was an international smuggling group.”
She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began co-operating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.
“Castoro co-operated for years,” she said. “We put hundreds of people in jail.”