State police arrest man known as 'El Diablo' in quadruple-murder at Juárez house

Chihuahua state police investigators arrested a man known as "El Diablo" accused in an abduction and quadruple-murder at a house in southeastern Juárez last week, officials said.

Angel Alberto M., nicknamed "El Diablo" (the devil), along with others allegedly abducted four men found strangled to death on Thursday, Feb. 1, at a house on Arquitecto Luis Romero Soto Street in the Horizontes del Sur area, the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office said in a press statement.

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The group also abducted a man, a woman and a girl, who managed to escape and ask for help after they had been taken to houses in the southeastern neighborhoods of Salvarcar and Cerrada del Parque, prosecutors said.

Agents with the State Investigations Agency arrested "El Diablo" on Sunday as part of the ongoing investigation into the mass killing.

The man's last name was not disclosed by authorities due to rules in Mexico regarding the naming of crime suspects. The names of the victims were not released.

The order for the murders reportedly came from a gang incarcerated in the Cereso No. 3 state prison in Juárez. The suspects allegedly filmed video sent to an imprisoned gang leader of two women who had been taken to the house and made to dance nude, El Heraldo de Chihuahua reported citing an unnamed state police commander.

The Horizontes del Sur case was the second mass killing in Juárez in a week, following a shooting by gunmen who killed five people at a house during a funeral vigil for a homicide victim.

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There were more than 120 murders in Juárez in January, making it the deadliest month since August 2022.

“It has been a complicated month in terms of homicides, which fundamentally involve organized crime," Juárez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar said in a news conference last week, adding that public safety strategies are being continuously evaluated.

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There were more than 1,160 killings in Juárez in all of 2023, an increase from the more than 1,000 murders a year prior, according to local news tallies.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: 'El Diablo' arrested in mass killing in Juárez, Mexico