A US man who travelled to Mexico to spend Christmas with his fiancee and arrange their wedding has been found dead together with his partner buried in a clandestine grave.
The couple, Jose Melesio Gutierrez, and his fiancee Daniela Marquez, 31, vanished with no sign of them until the bodies were discovered.
Also buried in the grave were the dead woman’s sister Viviana Marquez, 26, and her cousin Irma Paola Vargas, 27.
Melesio Gutierrez, 36, was originally from the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, although he held US citizenship and had moved to live in Ohio.
He graduated from the University of Miami with a master’s degree in architecture and last year got engaged to Daniela.
They had gone to Mexico to spend Christmas and also to start planning the wedding and had gone for a visit to the tourist town of Jerez, in Zacatecas.
After Christmas, it is known that they set off to return to Jalisco and the last the relatives heard from them was when they were driving along Federal Highway 23, near Víboras and there was a GPS notification.
No more was heard from them afterwards.
Detectives say that they had been in a bar and when they left, screams were heard outside, implying that they had possibly been abducted, even before setting off.
The family of the deceased complained that the officials had not taken the matter seriously and staged a number of demonstrations which resulted in a probe, and the uncovering of the clandestine grave.
It was apparently discovered after somebody reported a bullet-ridden van that was parked nearby.
The border area between Jerez and Colotlan has been the scene of armed confrontations between organized crime groups during 2022, and there are also reports of other disappearances.
After prosecutors revealed that the body was found, his family said they were scared to go to the state to identify it and asked for it to be done with genetic testing.
So far, the Zacatecas Prosecutor’s Office has not released any more details on the progress of the investigation, including the motive and identities of those responsible for the multiple homicides.
