Mexico Refusing to Extradite Suspect in Killing of Mother

Officials in Mexico will not extradite the suspect in the killing of a mother of quadruplets unless Florida prosecutors promise they won’t seek the death penalty.

Jose Luis Del Toro, 21, was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, after a search that focused on the Texas-Mexico border.

Del Toro is charged with first-degree murder in Sarasota in the Nov. 7 slaying of Sheila Bellush.

That afternoon, Bellush’s 13-year-old daughter, Stevie, came home from school to find her mother dead on the kitchen floor and the 23-month-old quadruplets crawling around the body.

“I really feel bad for that lady, but I don’t know who she is,” Del Toro said in a jailhouse telephone interview broadcast on a Tampa TV station.

“I am not a murderer,” he said. “I am a good kid.”

Sarasota police feel differently.

“We have a mountain of evidence and an excellent case,” Sarasota County Sheriff Geoff Monge said. “We want him back, no strings attached.”

Mexico’s refusal to extradite Del Toro, he said, “gives criminals the message that if you commit murder, and it appears that you have been found out, Mexico is the place to go and hide.”

Since 1976, extradition battles like Del Toro’s have happened six or seven times a year, said U.S. Justice Department spokesman John Russell.

So far, the Mexicans have not returned anyone who has had to face a trial that could end with a death sentence.

Last week, Sarasota investigators got arrest warrants for Alex Rocha, 28, and Samuel Gonzales, 27, both of San Antonio. Both are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and both are being held in lieu of $1-million bail. Authorities in Florida won’t comment on what they believe Rocha’s and Gonzales’ connection to the crime might be.