Just as the furor was appearing to calm down, Mexico dropped a media bomb on March 29. In an interview with Toronto-based daily The Globe & Mail just days before a summit meeting in Cancún at which Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George W. Bush would be in attendance, Mexican president Vicente Fox said that he believed the killer or killers to have been Canadian because the murders appeared to have been targeted and occurred within the Ianieros' hotel room.
The first, and loudest, to respond was the Ianiero family's lawyer, Edward Greenspan, who accused Fox of tampering. The fact that the family had hired Greenspan lifted many eyebrows in Canada, where he is famous as a defense attorney, having represented several alleged organized crime figures, including the national president of the Hells Angels. “No president of a state should get involved; no president should give marching orders to the police,” he said at a news conference held on the March 31. “This investigation has turned into some form of political football—it will be impossible to reach a fair conclusion.” Greenspan also said that the Ianiero family had named a Mexican as a likely suspect, but would not disclose his identity beyond saying he was “involved with security” at the resort. He closed by accusing Fox of being more interested in maintaining his country's tourist industry than solving the case.
On that same day, Toronto-based forensic investigators announced that they were analyzing evidence taken from what may have been the murder weapon. A young girl who was vacationing with her family in Cancún, found a backpack near the resort that contained a large knife smeared with blood. She handed it to her father, a police officer in Duluth, Minnesota, who took it back to the U.S. with him because he did not trust Mexican police. When he heard a news broadcast about the Ianiero murders from a Thunder Bay TV station, he gave the knife, which he had treated as evidence, to the Thunder Bay police. They handed it to York police. When the trail of the knife became public, Thunder Bay police said that they received the knife simply because the city is the closest one in Canada to Duluth, not because Everall or Kim had any involvement. York police chief Armand La Barge backed them up. “I do want to make it clear that our seizure of the knife has absolutely nothing to do with these two women from Thunder Bay,” he said. It was later determined that the knife was not involved with this particular crime.
The plot thickened once again on April 3, when Periodico Quequi's crosstown rival Novedades Quintana Roo announced that it had received an anonymous, typewritten letter stamped March 3 at a post office in Stoney Creek, Ontario, a largely Italian suburb of Hamilton, Canada's most Mafia-friendly city. It read in part, “Will you please ask the police to check out the possibility of Canadians flying from Cuba to Cancún on the week that the murders took place.” It went on to describe three suspects, two Canadian (one tall and thin, the other short and heavy) and a third described as a “Latino, possibly Mexican.” It concludes with, “Thank you very much, I thought the police will hear you better than myself.”
Greenspan then met with Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo on May 19, and announced that the Ianiero family had hired a private investigator to “fill in the gaps” in the evidence collected by the Mexicans. He also alluded once again to the anonymous suspect, whom he now described as a mysterious Mexican who had befriended Domenic and Nancy. He also said comments by the Quintana Roo attorney general were “slanderous, outrageous and completely false,” accusing him of “turning a tragic senseless murder into a political three-ring circus.” As for the man himself, Greenspan described him as “arrogant, pompous and downright rude.”
A little more than a month later, on June 26, Quintana Roo state police announced they had a suspect in the case. Blas Delgado Fajardo was a 35-year-old former Mexican army paratrooper and bodyguard for former Quintana Roo Governor Joaquín Hendricks Díaz. He had been working at the Barcelo Maya for about six months as an armed security guard. The Canadian private investigator concluded that Delgado Fajardo had befriended the Ianieros and had gained access to their room under the pretence that he had come to tend Domenic's ailing foot. The Ianieros' daughters recalled that a security guard—the same one who had driven them to their room in a golf cart—had said he received medical training in the military, and had massaged Domenic's foot twice the night before. He wore a uniform, but no name tag.
The private investigator also determined that the door to the Ianieros' room had been opened at 7:29 p.m. on February 19 when they were eating dinner at one of the resort's restaurants, and that their safe had been opened 12 times during their stay. It is commonplace for large quantities of cash to be given as gifts at Italian weddings, but the Ianiero family had decided to leave all gifts back in Canada for security reasons.
The fugitive
Delgado Fajardo had not been seen since February 21, the day after the Ianieros' bodies were discovered. When Canadian authorities requested his employee photo from Barcelo Maya, they were sent a blurry, mostly black square.
The Ianiero case has never been conclusively solved. In October, Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo announced that he was investigating Lily's ex-husband, whom he described as being a member of a Guatemalan paramilitary “hit squad” and involved with drug trafficking. The man in question, who would only go by the name “Rob” when speaking to the media, denied ever having set foot in Guatemala and produced employment records that showed he was working in Toronto the day of the murder. In a slightly comic twist, he was a court officer with the Toronto Police. Then Greenspan weighed in. “The attorney general, for obvious political and tourism-related reasons refuses to concede that this crime was committed by a local person,” he said. “He would rather blame a fictitious, totally made-up son-in-law from Guatemala than the local Mexican security guard toward whom all of the evidence points.” After calling Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo a “bald-faced liar,” Greenspan made it even more personal. “I don't like him much,” he said. “He's a political hack. He's not interested in finding the truth.” He then pointed out that the Mexicans should be working at finding Delgado Fajardo rather than inventing imaginary suspects in Toronto.
The Ianieros' son, Anthony, who arrived at the resort just after the bodies were discovered, summed up the family's opinion. “They could have caught the security guard quickly,” he said. “But that a hotel employee at a high-end resort is responsible for murdering two tourists would devastate the tourism industry. It was easier to blame the Canadians; it was easier to say my parents were bad people.”
On September 17, 2009, three years and seven months after the murders, Mexican authorities issued a warrant for Delgado Fajardo's. At publication, despite published pleas from his mother, Aurora Fajardo Torres, to come out of hiding, Delgado Fajardo is still at large. She believes he now lives in the U.S. Everall and Kim were officially cleared as suspects on July 16, 2009.
While the Ianiero case has never been actually linked to drug trafficking, it gave Canadians and Americans a closer look at how criminal investigations are conducted in Mexico. First, the crime scene was profoundly contaminated. Then the police arrived late and used ad hoc, even primitive investigative methods. A great deal of evidence was ruined or ignored. Then the attorney general made wild accusations and he was surprised and angered that the media and the aggrieved dared question them. Even the president—a leader much hailed for his anti-crime and anti-corruption campaigns—joined in and accused nameless Canadians of committing the crime despite absolutely no evidence to support that theory. When a likely suspect was finally pinpointed, nobody could find him. And that man was a former elite soldier in the military who had a connection to a state governor. According to his mother, he is now most likely just another illegal immigrant in the U.S. whose undocumented status allows him to keep his identity secret.
It demonstrated many of the factors that put the Mexican Drug War into play—corruption in government, demands for bribes to get work done, a disregard for established investigative protocols or even getting to the bottom of difficult cases and the relative ease with which Mex
icans can get away with murder or even disappear in the unlikely case where a suspect's identity is discovered.
Miguel G, a former Tijuana journalist who now lives in California, couldn't help but laugh at the credulity with which Canadians greeted the case. “It's always been this way in Mexico,” he told me. “In murder cases, the police don't look for the killer, they look for a killer—if the victims' family hadn't opened their mouths, someone would be behind bars right now. It probably wouldn't be the right guy, but there would be a guy.” The part of the whole drama that he thought could best teach North Americans about the mindset of Mexican authorities was how quick they were to blame other Canadians despite no evidence to support the claim. “Your media quickly decided it was all a master plan to make Cancún look safe for tourists,” Miguel G said. “That is probably part of it, but there is an old tradition there of blaming someone else for our problems, it's usually the Americans, sometimes the Europeans or Guatemalans or Colombians ... that time it was Canada.”
An “accident” in Acapulco
The Ianiero case was still broiling when another Canadian was killed under suspicious circumstances in Mexico. Adam De Prisco, a 19-year-old from Woodbridge, went to Acapulco with his best friend, Marco Calabro. The boys, who liked to go nightclubbing together in Toronto's entertainment district, were excited because it was their first trip without their parents. De Prisco told his friends on Facebook that he was “so hyped” to be going away. He was thin, but muscular, and liked to dye his short, spiky hair blond. His family described him as a happy, hard-working kid, while his friends said he had a reputation as a big talker who liked to play himself off as a ladies' man, a real player.
On January 7, 2007, the boys' second night in Mexico, De Prisco made a big mistake. At a giant nightclub then called Extravaganza (now called Mandara) on Las Brisas hill overlooking Acapulco Bay, the pair separated. “He wanted to go dancing, he's a dancer,” Calabro said. “He likes to pick up girls.” Calabro, who didn't like to dance, stayed at the bar, unable to see the dance floor.
De Prisco began to dance with a young woman. Her husband objected, and he and De Prisco got into a loud heated argument. The club's bouncers escorted De Prisco from the building and onto the street.
That much is agreed upon. After that, the Mexican authorities claimed he was a victim of a fatal hit-and-run accident. De Prisco's family said he was beaten to death by the husband's friends. Calabro, who didn't see the actual scuffle or anything that happened outside, only left the bar when another Canadian they had met in Acapulco told him De Prisco had been turfed. “I ran, right away,” Calabro said. “I begged and pleaded to know where he was. One bouncer was laughing and pointed me in the direction [of the door].” Once outside, he saw what he thought was a dead body. He didn't realize it was De Prisco and panicked. “My eyes ... I didn't think it was him,” he said. “I wouldn't believe it.” He thought about hailing a taxi back to the hotel, but realized he had to find his friend.
He went back to the body and recognized De Prisco, who was badly injured and bleeding from the head. Calabro managed to get a passerby to call 066 (Mexico's 911) for an ambulance and stayed with De Prisco until he died. “It was so bad, I don't even want people to know,” he recalled. “The first hour he was awake and he said his last word to me. He looked at me and I [saw] he needed help.” He later told media that he was appalled at the treatment he and his friend received in the hospital. “It was a joke,” he told them. “Doctors were laughing at us, police were laughing at us; everything to them was a joke because we weren't Mexican.” In a pathetic twist, the boys' hotel room was burgled and cleaned out in De Prisco's final hours. Calabro has since said that she believes the robbery was part of a complicated plan that started with the tussle in the nightclub.
After being notified by Mexican police about the accident, De Prisco's uncle, Sandro Bellio, and aunt, Stephanie Pannozzi, rushed to Acapulco and arrived just before he died on the evening of the January 9. When they saw De Prisco, the wounds he had—mainly around his head—did not look to them like they had come from a collision with a car. Pannozzi asked a neurologist who had been working the case what had killed De Prisco. She said that he told her it was likely a metal rod or a rock, not a hit-and-run. Bellio backed her up. “The injuries and the doctors said that it wasn't a car accident,” he said. “He had no marks on his body—all the trauma was on his face and head.” Bellio also said he spoke with eyewitnesses who said that they saw De Prisco being beaten and of a water truck that washed the blood [and any other evidence] from the scene, but none was willing to talk to police.
After he signed all the papers and made arrangements to transport De Prisco's body, Bellio asked police if there was anything else he needed to do. “Before we left even, this police officer was asking for a tip, for money, for his time,” he said. ‘I looked at him like, you gotta be joking me.”
After hearing little from the Mexican police in the days after the murder, the De Prisco family hired Greenspan. As with the Ianieros, rumors immediately circulated online in Canada that linked De Prisco to organized crime and that he was related to the Ianieros. Actually, he was, but very distantly. Bellio told a reporter that one of De Prisco's second cousins married a nephew of the murdered couple. A Canadian autopsy was noncommittal, determining that De Prisco could have died either by being beaten or by being struck by a car. Ironically, Extravaganza's slogan, borrowed from Las Vegas, was “Remember what happens in Acapulco stays in Acapulco.”
Since then, at least a dozen Canadian tourists have died in Mexico under suspicious circumstances. In all of the cases, the families of the deceased have refused to accept the explanations offered by Mexican authorities, including three who they claimed fell or jumped off hotel balconies.
Despite such incidents and severely worded warnings from their own government, Canadian tourism to Mexico has actually increased since the Ianieros' murder. Through aggressive marketing and very low prices, travel agents and tour operators have doubled the number of Canadian trips to Mexico between 2005 and 2009, peaking with more than 1.2 million visits per year. Over the same period, American trips to Mexico have declined significantly.
Chapter 7
Calderón Versus the Cartels
The federal election of 2006 may have been the most tense in Mexican history. Such a long history of rigged outcomes had put many watchful eyes—both domestic and international—on the campaigns, polling stations and vote counts. Fox's term had achieved some economic success, but many criticized him and his party PAN for not taking a harder line on the drug cartels as organized crime-related murders climbed into the thousands during his tenure.
PAN nominated Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa as Fox's successor, a career politician from Michoacán whose father had helped create the party. After losing the election, the PRI had since split into two groups. The socialist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution or PRD) had spun off in 1989 and by 2006 appeared to be even more powerful than the traditional PRI. Its candidate was Mexico City's mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The PRI in alliance with the Green Party ran Roberto Madrazo Pintado, who was later caught cheating at the Berlin Marathon.
The vote was close enough to force a series of recounts. They eventually determined that Calderón had 15,000,284 votes (35.89 percent) and won 16 states; López Obrador received 14,756,350 votes (35.31 percent) and won 15 states plus the Federal Capital District; while Madrazo took 9,301,441 votes (22.26 percent) and won no states. It looked very much like an even standoff between the Conservative north against the Socialist south.
A tribunal appointed by the Mexican Supreme Court, with the approval of the European Union, named Calderón president over the peaceful protests of López Obrador and the PRD. Calderón's first moves were popular. He worked hard to stabilize corn prices, which had risen sharply with the sudden rise in popularity of ethanol as a fuel, and started an incentive program for first-time job seekers. To help quell
government corruption, he put a cap on how much top government officials could earn and announced significant pay raises for the military and the Federales. He announced a War on Drug Trafficking, making it clear that his enemies were not users, but importers and exporters.
He made good on his word almost immediately. On December 12, 2006, less than two weeks after taking office, Calderón ordered a force of 4,000 soldiers and Federales into his home state, to launch Operation Michoacán.
La Familia Michoacáno
Michoacán had long been seen as something of a safe haven for organized crime. It was known worldwide for growing top-quality marijuana—though the business had become far less profitable in recent years because of competition from growers in the United States and Canada—and as a transit point for cocaine. The people—who had a lot in common with those in Chiapas—had long been aware of the existence of La Familia Michoacáno (The Michoacán Family), which began as a quasi-religious group of vigilantes and activists who served primarily to settle disputes between locals who did not trust the federal or state governments. They financed themselves first by “taxing” local businesses, then turned to trafficking marijuana and later cocaine in close association with the Gulf Cartel. They also distributed bibles and cash to the needy and supported schools and anti-government activists.
Based in Apatzingán, their leader was Nazario “El Mas Loco” (the Craziest) Moreno González. He had published a book of his thoughts, and claimed it was his and the organization's divine right to murder their enemies and anyone else who hindered their path. The DEA described La Familia as having a “Robin Hood mentality,” honestly believing they were protecting the people from a corrupt government and the other drug cartels. It also described them as “unusually violent.” Like most other cartels, they also took part in other operations, like pirating DVDs, smuggling people across borders and kidnapping, usually while wearing police uniforms.
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