Ex-Police Official Slain in Mexico

The former director of Mexico City’s judicial police and his two brothers were found slain gangland-style Tuesday morning in a working-class neighborhood here.

Police acting on a tip found the bodies of Jesus Ignacio Carrola Gutierrez and his brothers, Miguel Angel and Marcos, in the back of a stolen van in the Tacubaya neighborhood. Each was bound, gagged and shot in the head, authorities said.

“It appears they were executed inside the same vehicle,” Mexico City Atty. Gen. Bernardo Batiz said at a news conference. There were no immediate suspects, but Batiz said the killings had the hallmarks of organized crime.

Police declined to speculate whether there was any link between the slayings and the execution-style killing Saturday of Guillermo Murrieta Lopez, who was director of criminal investigations at the attorney general’s office in the Mexico City federal district.

Witnesses saw two men fire eight shots at Murrieta’s car Saturday.

There have been no arrests. Murrieta had been on leave since December because of injuries he suffered in a traffic accident.

Carrola resigned as director of Mexico City’s judicial police in 1997 after just one week at the job, under fire for alleged links to drug traffickers and human rights abuses.

Critics had accused Carrola of involvement in the 1989 beating death of a prisoner by police under his command when he headed anti-narcotics teams on the Baja California peninsula.

Some media reports said he had run a police extortion ring as a federal agent in northern Mexico. He had denied the allegations.

Carrola was named to head the city’s investigative police force under the administration of opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the first mayor of the capital to be popularly elected in seven decades. Before then, Mexico City mayors had been named by the Mexican president.