Bizarre!
Posted on 07/25/2006 11:10:13 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
RIO GRANDE CITY — As a county jail officer in a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border, Gilberto Hernandez Jr., worked and lived in a risky environment because of the inmates he came in contact with.
Hernandez, 26, added to his exposure by routinely crossing the border on weekends to cruise the streets of Miguel Alemán and nearby Ciudad Mier, his birthplace, in the big, black Chevrolet pickup that he kept shiny.
A dual citizen, he was like many South Texans who enter Mexico as casually as if it were the same community rather than another nation. Hernandez also had the confidence of his own stature — he was tall, strong and weighed about 270 pounds.
At Starr County Jail, they called him 'Big Beto.' When his mother fretted someone might harm him, the six-year veteran jailer tried to calm her.
"He would tell me, 'Don't worry about me, I have a big angel in the back of the truck protecting me,'" Lupita Gonzalez recalled of her son, who was found July 3 shot to death in Mexico. "This angel abandoned him this day."
Hernandez's bound body was left in his vehicle with the name "Tom" carved in his belly, along with designs of male and female genitalia.
Family and police aren't sure what the markings mean, but Mexican authorities have been looking into possible ties to the towns he once frequented.
It's not an area known for investigative breakthroughs or adherence to the letter of the law. The search for a Mexican judge feared kidnapped and killed there a few months ago has turned up nothing. Undocumented immigrants are paddled across the Rio Grande in rafts in broad daylight, sometimes within sight of international bridges.
Dents on the truck indicated Hernandez was boxed in by other vehicles, said Starr County Sheriff's Capt. Homer Flores, who suspects the body was taken into Nuevo León just past the Tamaulipas state line to make the killing harder to investigate.
"As to the motive why he was killed, we really don't know, if it was for working with us or girlfriend problems or who knows what," said Flores, adding that jailers and deputies are on high alert. "Somebody gave him a nasty death."
A range of rumors is circulating — that Hernandez went beyond his job description by trying to recruit informants, that he chatted too liberally about wanting to capture organized crime brass, or that he was mixed up with running drugs himself.
Yet, if it was the narcotraficantes who took his life, whoever approved the hit stepped out of line, said an officer for a Rio Grande Valley anti-drug unit who requested anonymity.
"There's an unwritten rule between drug dealers or whatever they call them over there. You do not kill a law enforcement officer from the United States, whether it's a deputy or jailer," said the officer, who knew Hernandez. "That's against their own laws."
So far, the case has drawn little attention.
"It seems like they need to investigate this stronger because he was of the law," said Hernandez's father, Gilberto Sr., who runs a small auto shop next to the family's trailer home in small Escobares, just outside Rio Grande City. His son, a 1999 graduate of Roma High School, lived with his parents and took classes in criminal justice at South Texas College.
He disappeared July 1, after crossing the border around 8:30 p.m. at the international bridge in Roma. He was supposed to have dinner with his girlfriend's family in Ciudad Mier, then the two were going to cruise as they usually did, family members said.
But he didn't show up, didn't call and didn't answer.
"We were worried because the phone was turned off," said Nallely Rios, 20, his girlfriend. "He never turned his phone off."
On July 2, she and Hernandez's family filed missing person reports with the Tamaulipas state district attorney's office in Miguel Alemán, describing to investigators his large build and what he was wearing: crocodile-skin cowboy boots, dark pants and a red, long-sleeve shirt.
His sister, Fabiola, said in her report: "My brother didn't have problems with anybody. He was a peaceful person."
Oddly, his mother reported that Hernandez worked for the U.S. Marshals Service, apparently because he recently applied for a federal investigative job and she wanted to give his disappearance more clout.
Rosendo Cantú, a supervisor in the district attorney's office in Miguel Alemán, said it's hard to believe he wasn't involved with something.
"His parents didn't know who he was," Cantú said. "It's very difficult to kill an innocent person. These people kill someone for a reason."
On July 3, Hernandez's father recognized the description of a body being reported by Mexican news media near the tiny town of General Treviño in Nuevo León, and he went to Monterrey to identify it.
Hernandez had been shot once through the head at close range with an AR-15 assault rifle and left in the passenger side of the truck, according to Nuevo León state police. A knife was used to cut the drawings and messages into his torso.
His hands had been bound with duct tape. Tape also was wrapped around his head, covering the entry and exit wounds, possibly to keep blood from dripping while his body was moved, his father said.
The elder Hernandez said his son's truck was found with hay bales in the back that weren't there when he crossed the border, perhaps because the killers planned to torch the vehicle.
No arrests have been made, said Jorge Cantú, a spokesman for the Nuevo Leon prosecutors' office.
Investigators are looking for possible connections to other recent gangland style killings in that state, he said, including that of a Rio Grande Valley man who was carrying false McAllen Police credentials.
Capt. Flores, of the Sheriff's Department, said the markings appeared to be meant as a sign to somebody.
He said he wasn't aware of Hernandez being threatened or trying to work outside the boundaries of his job.
"He was our muscle when we needed to go in and use force," Flores said. "He wasn't an instigator, he didn't cause problems — but he would help us finish them."
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jbogan@express-news.net
Bizarre!
Ping!
I wonder if TOM = traitor of Mexico?
FTA: "A dual citizen,..."
Not according to U.S. law. Yes, I know it isn't enforced.
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