'Tepito 13' Youths Decapitated Alive After Being Kidnapped From Heavens Bar In Mexico City, Say Authorities

Days after Mexican authorities made three more arrests on the case of the "Tepito 13" - the 13 youths from the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito whose decapitated bodies were found covered in lime in a grave on a ranch east of the capital months after 12 of them were kidnapped from nightclub Heavens Bar in May - one of the suspects has begun to talk. Pedro Francisco Paz López, allegedly a member of La Union, the most powerful drug gang in Mexico City, told authorities that the 12 kidnapped youths were killed soon after after they were ordered out of Heavens Bar at gunpoint.

The statement from Paz López directly contradicts a statement made in late August by a man known as "El Negro", a member of La Union, who told authorities that the 12 had been brought to a house in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz after they were kidnapped. He said that he had been charged by the gang with looking after kidnapping victims in the house, and that he recognized at least four of them as being the youths who were taken from Heavens Bar. El Negro added then that three of them had been killed.

According to Borderland Beat, Paz López detailed in his account to police how he had beheaded one of the victims with a hacksaw. He says he had been ordered by the person he named as his supervisor in the gang, Joel Rodriguez Javier Fuentes, to remain at the edge of the ranch east of Mexico City, in the state of Mexico, and act as lookout for police. He claimed he remained in a parked car there for some two hours before a message came through his radio from Fuentes telling him to "come help". When Paz López entered the ranch, according to his statement, he found the 12 youths lying in a row on the ground. Only one was alive, with his hands tied. Paz López says he was handed a hacksaw by Fuentes and another supervisor and ordered to behead the final survivor.

The suspect was arrested last week at a bar only blocks from Heavens Bar in Mexico City's nightlife district of Zona Rosa, along with two other suspects. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera has said that the investigation is still not closed. "We still have other suspects that are likely responsible, they are working on their locations, obviously, to be apprehended and submitted to authorities," he told MVS News.

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