Drug traffickers based in Nogales, Sonora, had ordered the murder of a man found beheaded in Chandler on Oct. 10, say police reports released this week.
Chandler police investigators traveled to Tucson in October to meet with U.S. Border Patrol intelligence agents about the killing and beheading of Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy, the reports say. Citing raw intelligence reports, the Border Patrol offered this account of the events leading up to the slaying:
Cota-Monroy, 38, was from the notorious Buenos Aires neighborhood, just south of the U.S.-Mexico line in Nogales.
Traffickers there suspected Cota-Monroy of stealing 400 pounds of marijuana as well as methamphetamine, and they ordered his kidnapping. But Cota-Monroy talked his way out of captivity by putting up a home he said he owned as collateral.
It turned out the home didn't really belong to Cota-Monroy, and he fled to the Phoenix area, leading the cartel to hire assassins to go to Arizona, befriend Cota-Monroy and kill him.
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Cota-Monroy was a member of the Beltran-Leyva drug-trafficking organization, the Border Patrol agents said. The intelligence referred to a different organization, the "PEI-Estatales/El Chapo" group, as responsible for the killing.
Cota-Monroy was found in a pool of blood Oct. 10 in a Chandler apartment, his severed head nearby.
Crisantos Moroyoqui has been charged in the killing.
Three other men are believed to have fled to Mexico. They are identified as Jose David Castro Reyes, 25, Isai Morales Aguilar, 22, and a man between the ages of 20 and 27 known as "El Joto," a derogatory Spanish term for a gay man.
The slaying is believed to be the only beheading by a Mexican cartel in the United States. Police believe there was a reason it was such a violent attack.
"This is a message being sent: Not only are they going to kill you but they're going to dismember your body. And, 'If you cross us, this is what happens,' " Chandler police Detective David Ramer said.
Arizona Daily Star reporter Tim Steller and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
