Mexican Businesswoman Beheaded After Family Fail to Pay Kidnap Ransom

The city of Coatzacoalcos in Mexico is marked on a map. Screenshot/Googlemaps

A kidnaped Mexican businesswoman was beheaded and her corpse dumped in a black plastic bag with a taunting note after her family failed to pay the 4 million pesos ($200,000) ransom.

Mother of three Susana Carrera was kidnapped as she left to pick up her daughter in the southern coastal city of Coatzacoalcos.

According to local media, her body was found in a parking lot a week later on Feb. 13 with a note translated by Mexico News Daily as “This happened to me because my husband played the tough guy and didn’t want to pay my ransom.” According to some translations, the original Spanish is far ruder.

Carrera ran a business together with her husband, who confirmed her murder on his Facebook account, according to ABC, thanking people for their prayers and wishes.

The family had been unable to afford the 4 million pesos ransom—a little over $200,000.

News of Carrera’s kidnapping had prompted a demonstration by locals at an event of the mayor of Morena, Víctor Manuel Carranza Rosaldo, demanding more security and results.

The moment she was kidnaped was captured on a video taken through a window across the street. As Carrara walks up to her car, a car pulls up and a figure swiftly chases her down as she starts to move away, before taking her to the waiting car.

Last month, in the same city cartel gunmen kidnapped, castrated, and murdered a group of men who are thought to be members of a rival cartel, according to local reports.

Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), claimed credit for the killings, leaving a poster board beside the bodies saying they were rapists and kidnappers and that they had been killed as part of a “cleanup.”

Jump in Homicide Rate

The city of Coatzacoalcos lies on the southern end of Mexico’s coast in the state of Veracruz.

There were 2,560 homicides in the state of Veracruz alone in 2018, according to an official report.

Mexico’s homicide rate has jumped by a third in the last year, pushing it up into the top dozen most murderous countries in the world, with four people killed every hour.

It is the second year in a row that the homicide rate has broken previous records. Information from the Interior Ministry listed 33,341 murder cases last year, compared to 25,036 in 2017.

Mexican police near a skull discovered in a large grave in the desert of victims of recent drug violence in the county of Juarez, Mexico, on March 19, 2010. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

With Mexico’s population pushing 130 million, that brings the annual murder rate to around 25 murders per 100,000 people, in comparison to around five murders per 100,000 people in the United States.

The rise in murders is linked to drug cartel violence that has continued to rise despite the militarized crackdown that started 12 years ago.

El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world in 2016, at 84, with Honduras and Venezuela in second and third with 57 and 56 respectively.

Brazil, Guatemala, and Belize also make the top 10, along with Jamaica and South Africa.

Twelve journalists were killed in Mexico in 2018.

The murder rate in the United States is expected to drop in 2018, according to The New York Times report, after rising by almost a quarter between 2014 and 2016 and leveling off in 2017.

Mexico’s recently sworn-in president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged to overhaul Mexico’s approach to tackling drugs.