But the cartel’s motive?
The cartel always answers up to the global crime syndicate.
This looks like a move to control the media.
But the cartel’s motive?
—
Moving kidnapping operations into the US. In Mexico, kidnapping for ransom is common tactic by the cartels. But more likely it was a robbery gone bad by erstwhile cartel members - perhaps Nancy had something that the rest of the family or someone in it wanted or claimed as their own, like an heirloom, and refused to give it up. So they hired cartel guys to get it for them, Nancy resisted, they loaded her dead body into a car trunk and entered Mexico undetected, rolled her into some ditch hundreds of miles south of the border.