Never underestimate the influence of clumsiness in a crime. Even less if it is mixed with ambition. It was precisely the combination of both factors that saved 72-year-old Margarita Maria Ochoa: the only survivor of the convoluted case of the murders at 113 Medellin Street. The three suspects —identified as “Blanca, Azuher and Sally”, mother, daughter and son-in-law – intended to obtain legal ownership of the property thanks to her, as confirmed by the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office to this newspaper. But they acted erratically, like someone with no experience in the world of crime. Along the way, they murdered three people —Jorge Tirado, 35, his brother Andres, 27, and his uncle, Luis Gonzalez, 73, Ochoa’s nephews and husband, respectively—, they left the bodies for two days at the place of the murders. facts and extorted the woman.
The three men were killed on Friday, the same day they disappeared. They were gagged, beaten and suffocated, according to sources close to the investigation. It is not yet clear if with the help of someone else. “The lady was not killed because they wanted her to sign the inheritance of her property. They were pressuring her with it. The aggressors had the idea of wanting to make a profit, of keeping the house,” a source from the Prosecutor’s Office told this newspaper. When the police were able to access the house on Sunday, the three bodies were found in a warehouse, Ochoa in another room with signs of violence, and the three detainees at the crime scene. “Ambition blinded them, they began to act in an increasingly violent, excessive manner, the topic was overflowing,” continues the source.
Ochoa is the sister of the owner of the house, who died in May. The three detainees shared a roof with the victims in the same residence because one of them had worked as a caregiver for the old man, who was very sick and needed constant care. After the man’s death, the nurse tried to keep the property—located in the Roma neighborhood, one of the most exclusive areas of Mexico City—arguing that they had been a couple. When they could not prove it legally, she, her daughter and her son-in-law resorted to violence.
In August, after the death of their brother, Ochoa and Gonzalez moved into the house to regularize the inheritance and be able to sell the property. The detainees resided on the ground floor of the building as part of the agreement with the former owner. The Tirado brothers, an actor and musician from Sinaloa trying to make their way in the capital, arrived in June and stayed with their uncles. They were collateral damage, but without them, familiar faces on the capital’s cultural scene, the case would not have had the media relevance it has achieved. After their disappearance, social networks were filled with photographs with their faces demanding that the two young people appear. At that time, nothing was yet known about his uncles.
Ochoa and Gonzalez allowed Blanca, Azuher and Sally to continue residing in the house, “in an attitude of solidarity,” says the Prosecutor’s Office, while they resolved the legal procedures. But the nurse, her daughter and her son-in-law never agreed to part with the house. They wanted to be the owners at all costs. And when Ochoa and her husband were concluding with the legal process, they decided to act. The problem, what worked against them and made them commit such a savage crime, is that neither of them was really what is usually understood as a criminal. “These people have had very little ability to understand what they were doing. They did not have great experience or ability to solve it ”, says the same source.
For example, the fact that the three men were murdered on Friday and kept their bodies in the house until Sunday. Also that they stole their bank cards. Or the way he acted before the son of Ochoa and Gonzalez, who, alerted by the lack of news about his parents, showed up at the house asking for answers. They did not let him enter the house and the man went to file a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office, the key evidence that led the investigators to Medellin 113. “The conduct of killing three people and having them in the place without much care or ability to decision tells you about the improvised and the little ability to respond. other actors [delincuentes] more structured would have removed the bodies the same day, they would have disappeared, they would have let the young man into the house when he came asking for his mother”, says the source.
The three alleged culprits were clumsy even in the knowledge of the law of succession of houses. Even if they had gotten Ochoa to sign a legal document that benefited them, it would not have been valid, says the Prosecutor’s Office. Instead, they ended up committing a crime that has shocked Mexico City and has once again shown the crudest face of a country where violence is an intrinsic part of everyday life.
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