Summary Their bodies were found with head wounds two weeks later
MEXICO CITY (AFP) - Mexican authorities have detained four suspects, including a former police commander, in connection with the kidnapping and murder of two relatives of filmmaker Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, officials said Tuesday.
The director s father, Juan Manuel Gomez Fernandez, and brother, Juan Manuel Gomez Monteverde, were abducted on September 4 as they left their home in Pueblo Viejo, a coastal town in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Their bodies were found with head wounds two weeks later, even though a ransom had been paid.
Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, who directed the World War II war drama "Little Boy" in 2015, is married to for former Miss USA Ali Landry.
Last weekend, federal forces detained Armando Marton Balderas, a 50-year-old former Pueblo Viejo police commander, in a house of a relative in Mexico City, said Renato Sales, the national security commissioner.
Marton Balderas is suspected of heading a group of informants who identified potential kidnap victims, Sales told a news conference.
In a simultaneous operation in the northern city of Monterrey, police detained the alleged leader of the kidnapping gang, Mar Gonzalez, 25.
Two other accomplices, both aged 21, were detained in the northeastern port of Tampico, accused of being behind kidnapping negotiations.
In a separate case, police detained 19 suspects accused of kidnapping migrants and businessmen in the northern border city of Matamoros. Three hostages were freed in the operation.
Authorities said 855 kidnappings were reported nationwide in the first 10 months of this year, a 29 percent drop from 2014, when more than 1,200 cases were investigated.
President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December 2012, has pledged to reduce the murders, kidnappings and extortion plaguing Mexicans.
But security experts have questioned the government s statistics, noting that many people do not report kidnappings due to concerns about the captives lives.
