Canadian couple murdered
12 bodies found in 2 graves in southern Mexico
GUADALAJARA: An elderly Canadian couple were beaten and knifed to death when their home in the western Mexican state of Jalisco was raided by thieves, a local official said yesterday. Ernesto Robles, chief of police in the municipality of Chapala, identified the victims as a 72-year-old woman and an 84-year-old man, both from the Canadian province of Ontario. No names were released. The couple arrived in Ajijic, a town popular with foreigner retirees, some six months ago, Robles said. “The gardener arrived in the morning and found the door to the home open,” Robles said.
“He went inside, and in the living room he found two bodies with various lesions. The home had been looted.” Robles, who said a gang of thieves operating in the area may be responsible, also said that two vehicles belonging to the couple were stolen.
Ajijic is a bucolic lakeside town some 50 kilometers south of the state capital Guadalajara, Mexico’s second most populous city. Some 5,000 foreigners, mostly US retirees, live in the town, according to municipal officials. Immigration authorities and the state prosecutors are also investigating the case, Robles said.
Bodies found in graves
In another development, a spokesman for the governor’s office says at least 12 bodies - nine of them men and three of them women - were found in two clandestine graves in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero. The state Attorney General’s office says the bodies were found by military personnel after they received an anonymous tip Saturday night. Governor’s office spokesman Jose Villanueva Manzanarez said the bodies were found in the town of Mexcaltepec and one of them appeared to be dressed in the uniform of the nearby Taxco city police department. On Feb 3-4 members of armed self-defense groups found a clandestine grave in the town of Cajelitos near the state capital Chilpancingo and reported the skeletons of three men and two women. Local authorities, however, have not confirmed that.
Drug suspect nabbed
Meanwhile, Mexican authorities have detained a suspected drug trafficker sought by the United States, the National Security Commission said. The US State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Tirso Martinez Sanchez. In an operation in the central state of Guanajuato, authorities “arrested the suspect, wanted on charges that he moved 76 tons of cocaine into the United States from 2000-2003,” the commission said in a statement. The United States says Martinez Sanchez received cocaine directly from Colombia and then imported it through Mexico through large urban distribution centers in the lucrative US market. The USMexican border is a porous and violent 3,000-kilometer stretch where trafficking in drugs and people is widespread. Drugrelated and organized crime violence in Mexico has left more than 77,000 people dead since 2006, according to official data.— Agencies