Mexican officials are trying to determine whether four San Diego-area residents killed in Tijuana were involved in the country's violent drug trade or innocent victims of a brutal crime – and a letter could be a key piece of evidence.
Luis Gamez Junior, 22, Brianna Hernandez Aguilera, 19, Carmen Ramos-Chavez, 20, and Oscar Garcia Cota, 23, said they were headed for a night of partying across the border only to be found strangled, stabbed and beaten a few days later.
Mexican officials are investigating whether any of the four had ties to the drug trade, after a toxicology report tested positive for cocaine on the body of Brianna Hernandez Aguilera.
A letter sent to Hernandez Aguilera by a woman serving time in a California prison on a drug charge is a key piece of evidence in this case according to a published report.
Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno Manjarrez described the letter's tone as threatening in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“We are reviewing the text of the letter, line by line, with great seriousness,” he said. “We are presuming that these people had connections in Mexico and the United States with criminals.”
Mexican prosecutors say the victims had been bound and tortured before being left in a van in a dusty slum on the outskirts of Tijuana.
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Police say parents of the female victims filed a missing person report Friday when the girls did not answer their cell phones. The moms of the former Chula Vista High School students, got the horrible news about their murders last Sunday -- Mothers Day.
“They were worried, they had a suspicion something wasn't right because it wasn't like them not to communicate with family and unfortunately their worst suspicions came true,” Chula Vista spokesperson Bernard Gonzales said.
Ramos' former teacher at Chula Vista High School says students have been talking about the brutal murders.
“Just a very quiet lady, came to class, did her work, didn’t say a whole lot. (She) seemed like a nice sweet person and I’m just sorry to hear what happened to her,” David Hatz said.
Guadalupe Lionel knew Oscar Garcia Cota, a former Southwest High School student. News of his death came as a shock and has her thinking twice about going south of the border.
“It was a big, big surprise,” Lionel said. “I don't want to go over there, look over there it's terrible.”
Someone who knows Luis Gamez Junior says he heard the gruesome news on Monday.
“I got a call about 5 a.m. by his girlfriend, the mother of his three children, explaining to me in very sad words that the father of her children had passed away,” said the man who asked to remain anonymous. “I then enquired what and she stated that he was stabbed in Tijuana.”
The man described Gamez Junior as a concrete worker, a family man and the kind of guy you would want to meet.
“Great kid, a self-starter and always positive. That’s why when I heard the news I was in a state of shock,” he said.
Prosecutors say they have ruled out the possibility that the killings were a case of drug gangs targeting tourists.
