EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, are investigating two quadruple murders taking place hours apart. One of them might involve another instance of “cartel justice” in a town where the entire police force was fired last year for allegedly looking the other way when a suspected rapist was murdered and hung from an arch at the entrance of the town.
Chihuahua state police found the first four bodies early Thursday in the middle of the Casas Grandes-Nuevo Casas Grandes Highway. Photos obtained by a KTSM/Border Report camera crew show the bodies of two men and two women with their pants pulled down below the knees. The photos show the word “Rata” (rat or thief) carved with a knife into the forehead of one of the male victims. Police said the other male bore a similar mark as well.
Mexican news reports stated the killings come amid a spurt of armed robberies taking place in stores and shopping centers in Nuevo Casas Grandes, some 170 miles southwest of Juarez, Mexico. Chihuahua police did not immediately have additional information on the case.
In Juarez, family members called police after finding the bodies of two male relatives they had not seen in days. The two young adults and two other men were inside a home in the Horizontes del Sur neighborhood, their hands and feet tied, police told reporters at the scene. All of the victims showed signs of torture.
No arrests had been reported in that case, either.
(ProVideo contributed to this report.)