It Only Cost Someone $30,000 to Have a Mexican Mayor Murdered
According to a new report, the recent assassination of a female mayor in Mexico was purchased for less than $30,000.
Gisela Mota, the first female mayor of the Mexican city of Temixco, spent just one day in office before she was gunned down in her own home by a team of assassins.
The team reportedly tied Mota up and beat her before shooting her in the head. Two suspects died in an ensuing shootout with police and another three—including a 32-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man—were taken into custody. The details, via The Intercept:
In a statement, the state prosecutor’s office reported that loads of ammunition, a 9 mm pistol, an Uzi submachine gun, bulletproof vests, and balaclavas were recovered from the suspects’ vehicle. One of the detained suspects, a government source told the Mexican newspaper Reforma, said the team of assassins was paid roughly $29,000 to murder the mayor — though it was unclear whether that payment was paid to each of the perpetrators or to the group — and that her name was one of at least a half-dozen others on the team’s kill list.
Authorities say a group called Los Rojos may have contracted the killing, in apparent retaliation for Mota’s support for a national unified state police command intended to replace local police departments.
Which is all to say the $30,000 may have been better spent: This week Graco Ramírez, the governor of Morelos, reportedly ordered police departments in at least 15 municipalities to cede control to the State Security Commission.
