Family ambushed and killed near Mexican border

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The man arrested near the U.S.-Mexico border was not linked to the suspected cartel massacre of three women and six children, Mexican officials said Wednesday – as authorities appear to be struggling to narrow down which cartel was responsible for the heinous attack. Preliminary information indicated the unnamed suspect, who was arrested Tuesday in the border town of Agua Prieta, was not linked to the attack, despite being found with four assault rifles and two hostages bound and gagged in his bulletproof vehicle, public security official Alfonso Durazo said Wednesday.

Since the massacre on Monday in northern Mexico’s Sonora state, authorities have faced mounting pressure to bring those who carried out the killings to justice. Two separate drug cartels have reportedly been the focus of their investigation: “La Linea” and “Los Jaguares.” La Linea and the “Jalisco Nueva Generacion,” a cartel also known to operate in those areas, [might have been involved] but couldn’t confirm whether any of the groups were involved.

"Those who attacked the occupants (of the vehicles), they let the children go, so that we can deduce that it was not a targeted attack" against the families, Army chief of staff Gen. Homero Mendoza said. However, Daniel Lebaron, a cousin of Rhonita Maria Miller, a mother who was shot and burned to death along with four of her children, disputed that claim, telling told Fox News on Wednesday that it appeared to be a “direct attack.” "Now we've had quite a bit of evidence that once the attack began, they continued it, knowing that there were women and children in the vehicles. So, as far as why it happened — we're not sure yet." "But it definitely was not crossfire between cartels," he added. "This was a direct attack, apparently, from the one cartel."

Mexico's President Andrews Manuel Lopez Obrador has faced mounting criticism for his government's policy of using "hugs, not bullets" with regards to the cartel. On Wednesday, he reiterated that violence was not the answer or appropriate response to the growing deaths at the hands of the cartels.

Source: Mexican massacre suspect arrested at border not tied to attack; confusion over which cartel was responsible

O.K. if we take the thought that it was a targeted attack, the next question would be why. Is there anything special about Rhonita Maria Miller? A quick internet search provided the following:

The nine women and children slaughtered in Mexico on Monday were part of a Mormon community with ties to the alleged sex-cult Nxivm.

The outpost Mormon community in Mexico is where underlings of Nxivm leader Keith Raniere recruited young women to work as nannies in an upstate New York compound run by the accused cult — suggesting at least in part that the jobs would get the girls away from their home region’s drug violence, according a man hired by Raniere to produce a documentary about the group.

Source: Women killed in Mexican cartel murders had alleged ties to sex cult Nxivm

[Adrián LeBaron, the father of Rhonita Maria Miller (along with several other children and grandchildren) who were killed] told the Daily Mail the gang carried out a "premeditated" attack, adding, "They killed innocent people to teach fear."

LeBaron said this is not the first time his relatives -- an offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- have been victims of the drug cartels. Over 10 years ago, Benjamin LeBaron, the founder of crime-fighting group SOS Chihuahua, and his brother-in-law, Luis Widmar Stubbs, were killed in the neighboring Chihuahua after they led protests over the kidnapping of their 16-year-old brother, Eric. The family refused to pay the $1 million ransom and the young LeBaron was ultimately released. Benjamin was reportedly kidnapped in the middle of the night by a group who tied his hands and threw him onto a truck. When Luis tried to help him, he was beaten and then thrown in the truck as well. The two were found dead in a cemetery with a bullet wound in the back of the head.

Several months after the murder, Mexican troops captured the suspected killer, Jose Rodolfo Escajeda. Escajeda was considered one of the bloodiest hitmen in the crime-ridden state of Chihuahua and a leader of the powerful Juarez cartel, Reuters reported.

Source: Father of woman killed in Mexico says cartel murdered group 'to teach fear': 'There is an incredible evil here'

So it looks like there are several stones that must be overturned in order to discover the true nature of this deadly attack.

Do the cartels dabble a bit in human trafficking or just drugs and weapons?

Since this crime occurred in Mexico, I thought it might be productive to see what is being said on the other side of the border. I put the words "Mormon ambush" into google translator which gave "emboscada mormona". I entered that term into Google search and uncovered the following:

The community began to settle in the area around 1924, with Alma Dayer LeBarón and several members of his family.
LeBarón separated from the organization in the United States and emigrated to Mexico.

Two of his sons, Joes and Ervil LeBarón, founded in 1955 the Church of the Firstborn of the Plenitude of the Times and the community, which flourished mainly in the region with the production of nuts, lived in isolation in the area maintaining the English as the main language.

The "massacre," as Julian LeBarón described to the media, occurred when three women traveling in three vehicles with 14 children were ambushed by an armed group. At least nine people died, including six children, and eight children managed to escape.

The women were moving from a settlement in the town of Bavispe, in the state of Sonora, to another in La Mora, in Chihuahua.

It was a trip that they routinely made, according to LeBarón, because in both locations family members reside who are part of the LeBarón Colony, a fundamentalist branch of Mormons that was established in the area in the 1920's.

In recent years, some members of the LeBarón family have been confronted with inhabitants of local communities over the use of water in the region.

In 2018, some family members had a strong confrontation with ejidatarios (co-op or communal land ownership) who protested what they said was the excessive use of water from the LeBarón community that was planting more and more walnut trees that require a large amount of water for their production.

The claims of the ejidatarios, which began since 2013, argued that this "overexploitation of water" had left the surrounding communities without water.

As the magazine magazine reported then, "those in charge and employees of the ranch (of the LeBarón) received threats with gunshots which wounded a man in the knee."

It was in 2009 when the name LeBarón made headlines in the Mexican media along with the serious problems of insecurity caused by organized crime in the area.

First there was the kidnapping of Erick LeBarón, 17, for whose release $ 1 million was demanded.

The LeBarón community publicly announced its decision not to pay the ransom and manifested itself in both national and international media against the growing insecurity of the region during the so-called "war on drugs" declared by then President Felipe Calderón.

Finally they managed to get the young man released. But months later, Benjamin, Erick's brother, and Luis Widmar Stubbs, another member of the community, were kidnapped and subsequently killed .

Those responsible placed a blanket in front of their homes indicating that the murder was in response to family activism against insecurity.

Since then, the inhabitants of the LeBarón colony called for the creation of a civil police to protect against criminal groups.

The measure was initially supported by some public officials but was later rejected.

As Julián LeBarón told Radio Formula, before the events of this Monday the family had threats.
"It was reported that there were threats and we informed the (federal) authorities . There was the complaint and these are the consequences," said LeBarón.

Source: Familia LeBarón: qué se sabe de la comunidad mormona que sufrió un mortal ataque en México en el que murieron al menos 9 personas

So this adds a couple things. First the killings may have been related to a water dispute. Second, there were threats made prior to the ambush and the killings were in retaliation because the family had informed the authorities.

Makes a lot of sense on why they were taken out with so much heat.

In another article in Spanish the following was uncovered:

The answer may be in the cordial relationship of the Mormon community with the Salazar criminal group that controls illegal activity in the region. The group is aligned with the powerful Sinaloa cartel - once headed by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán - and is a deadly enemy of the Line, a faction of the Juarez cartel in Chihuahua.

"They run everything here," Miller said.

And largely out of fear, the Mormon community, which runs large farms in this fertile river valley, has not challenged them.

Miller said the cartel frequently established roadblocks to track those entering and leaving the area and last year he told Mormons - who settled here decades ago after breaking up with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Days - they had to buy gasoline from the cartel and they couldn't buy it anywhere else.

Mormons obeyed. In return, cartel members warned them to stay home when they thought there could be violence.

Although no one in the community knows for sure the meaning of Monday's attack, some here have speculated that the Juarez cartel wanted to send the message that it controlled the road to the state of Chihuahua that the caravan of mothers and children was going through.

Source: Ni en grupo podían sentirse seguras las víctimas de las emboscadas en México

So this is a little confusing. If the mormons were complying with the Juarez cartel, why send a message by slaughtering women and children?

Maybe if the women were nxivm, one of the women killed worked at a Mormon run massage parlor and refused to give a cartel member a "happy ending"

In another article in Spanish:

In his newspaper of today, The Wall Street Journal noted that "the pressure of Mexico increases", while on its site warns that "Drug cartels control large stretches of Mexican territory and Mexico City is very often she [government of Mexico] is overwhelmed by the power of fire [firepower] and money "coming from crime. The media describes the anti-arc strategy of the president of Mexico as "surrender".
-------------------
On the ambush, he [Julian LeBaron] said nobody wanted to support them to help their families. No police corporation [police department] accompanied them to the place [of the massacre]. it was the same LeBaron community that came to the rescue but it was too late.

"We were the ones who arrived at the baleadas [bullet ridden] vans, we denounced it since yesterday [last Monday] in the morning and we were the ones who took authorities to the incident, because neither the prosecutor's office in Chihauhua nor that of Sonora moved. We don't know if it was because of fear, because they are cowards or [because] they overlap criminals {controlled by the cartels]", he said.

"We were the ones who arrived with support from the Federal Police and Army elements. When we arrived, I found Christina's baby alive (...) We saw that the whole truck was shot, but thank God it [she] was unharmed", he said.

Source: "Masacre", "emboscada" los titulares del caso LeBaron en primeras planas de eu

I would probably consider the story about the NXIVM connection to be the outlier. The source is a tabloid. I would probably give it the credibility of the "National Enquirer". That does not mean that it shouldn't be investigated but it seems more like "fake news".

I was joking with the massage parlor theory.

NXIVM is a cult in Albany,NY that is associated with sexual slavery.

I know NXIVM is a sex cult, question is, were the women and possibly the kids involved in NXIVM who were ambushed. Jimmy said something about that question was floating around in the National Enquirer.

I have read that online too it wasn't the Enquirer it was some other news link,the article floated the possibility of NXIVM involvement but didn't out right say it was true.

I honestly think this is a drug cartel mistaken identity case in my opinion.

The news is saying that the type of vehicle caused a mistaken identity.

The source was the New York Post which is a tabloid which may have the same credibility problems as the National Enquirer. IMHO, these Mormons are probably hard working conservative individuals that would have nothing to do with the likes of NXIVM.

That might be true if this was caused by two fractions of drug cartels going to war. But there is a lot of informations beginning to pile up showing something deeper was at play. As a result, that theory is now under doubt.

The family [extended family] had one of its children kidnapped for ransom.
The family had been attacked by a drug cartel in the past and two of its members were killed.
The family tried to organize a group to oppose the violence of the drug cartels.
The family received threats recently that there was going to be retaliation because they reported something to the authorities.
The two local regional authorities would not even visit the scene of the massacre.
The family was trying to avoid conflict with one of the cartels by following their directions to purchase fuel from the cartel.
The family was accused by the locals of using excess water depriving other communities of water.
The family was exercising caution by using multiple vehicles when they traveled.

It might help to consider the following if you want to put all this in perspective:

1.) I think Americans are encouraged to identify with the victims because they are blond-haired people who speak American English.
2.) In fact, they and their forbears have lived in Mexico for almost 100 years. I am not sure how they've managed to retain their dual US citizenship, but by most criteria they are Mexican. I would assume that, to a Mexican, they sound like any other Mexican when speaking Spanish. By characterizing the victims as "American", the news media are misleading the US public to some extent IMO.
3.) The sect they belong to is the same sect associated with Warren Jeffs. If you live in the US, you probably have some acquaintances who are Mormon. These are nothing like any Mormons you've ever known personally.
4.) In fact, if a group of these people were living near you, you would probably have little or no contact with them.
5.) I don't know about sex trafficking, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had sent girls to the US to be wives in other FLDS "communities". Not accusing them of anything though.
6.) No idea what sort of dealings they've had with the local cartels, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that a lot has happened. Of course that kind of thing is kept secret. With the local police being paid off, you're never going to learn who actually carried out the attack. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the victims' families knew exactly who it was, but devastated as they are, they're never going to tell any authorities or the news media.

In a semi-arid agricultural area like that, it's not unthinkable that somebody might kill over a dispute involving water. Women and children I wouldn't know. Of course, you are dealing with the worst kind of thug, but these things don't happen without some sort of provocation.