Police: Arizona Beheading Incident Tied to Mexican Drug Cartel

CHANDLER, Ariz. -- Authorities have determined a man who was stabbed and beheaded in a suburban Phoenix apartment was killed for stealing drugs from a Mexican cartel, in a gruesome example of drug cartel violence spilling over the border.

Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy, 38, stole 400 pounds of marijuana and some meth from a drug cartel while telling the cartel that the drugs had been seized by the Border Patrol, according to a Chandler police report released Wednesday.

The cartel found out Cota-Monroy had actually stolen the drugs and hired men to kidnap and kill him in Nogales, Mexico. But Cota-Monroy was able to talk his way out of being killed, saying he'd pay back the money and use his house for collateral, the report says.

But the house wasn't Cota-Monroy's and he fled to the Phoenix area, leading the cartel to hire assassins to go to Arizona, befriend Cota-Monroy and kill him.

Cota-Monroy's body was found Oct. 10 in a Chandler apartment -- his severed head a couple of feet away. He also had apparently been bludgeoned and stabbed in the head, and had defensive wounds on his hands.

"It was a very gruesome scene," Chandler police Detective David Ramer said Wednesday. "Anytime you see a headless body stabbed multiple times, obviously that's gruesome. And this is a message being sent -- not only are they going to kill you but they're going to dismember your body, and 'If you cross us, this is what happens."'

Police said the cartel Cota-Monroy stole from is known as the PEI-Estatales/El Chapo drug trafficking organization, and that Cota-Monroy had been known to traffic drugs for his sister's lover, known as "El Jefe," Spanish for the boss.

One man, Crisantos Moroyoqui, has been charged in the killing, and three others are believed to have fled to Mexico.

The other suspects were identified as Jose David Castro Reyes, 25; Isai Aguilar Morales, 22, and a man between the ages of 20 and 27 known only by the nickname "El Joto," a derogatory Spanish term for a gay man.

The police report said a rival drug cartel, the Beltran-Leyva Organization, was possibly planning on killing the three men. Cota-Monroy was reportedly a mid-level member of that drug cartel, for which his brother also worked.

The U.S. has seen extensive cross-border violence tied to drug trafficking. In one example from 2009, members of a group of Mexican drug traffickers were indicted in the murders of nine people in the San Diego area -- including two victims whose bodies were dissolved in acid.

But Tony Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has done extensive research on border violence, has said the Arizona case could be the only known beheading in the U.S. carried out by a drug cartel.

Decapitations are a regular part of the drug war in Mexico as cartels fight over territory. Headless bodies have been dangled from bridges by their feet; severed heads have been sent to victims' family members and government officials; and bags of up to 12 heads have been dropped off in high-profile locations.

More than 34,000 people have been killed in Mexico in drug-related violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers to battle the cartels in their strongholds.

Moroyoqui, a day laborer who had been living in the apartment complex where the killing occurred, is charged with second-degree murder. Ramer said he likely was in the room when Cota-Monroy was killed but didn't participate in the killing.