A Mexican drug lord ordered a hitman to kill a beauty influencer because she had broken up with his son, authorities have claimed.
Valeria Marquez was live streaming to her followers from inside her beauty salon, Blossom the Beauty Lounge, in Zapopan, the western Mexican state of Jalisco, when a motorbike-riding gunman opened fire last May.
Prosecutors are now accusing Ramon Angel Alvarez Ayala, a senior figure in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) – considered to be one of Mexico‘s most powerful criminal organisations, of ordering her murder, as well as a local mayor’s.
Ayala – more commonly known as ‘El R1’ – was captured in a special forces operation on Thursday after a car chase in Jalisco, which saw a member of his security team killed.
Omar Garcia Harfuch, the federal security secretary, has gone on to further claim that El R1’s son, Francisco Alvarez, who had been in a relationship with Marquez, phoned his father to organise the hit after their relationship ended.
The cartel leader allegedly ordered the hitman to enter Marquez’s salon, posing as a delivery driver, where he then asked for the 23-year-old TikToker and aesthetician to confirm her identity.
Once she responded to him calling her name, he opened fired and shot her three times. Both the son and the hitman remain at large.
Mr Harfuch said: ‘The son of R1 had a romantic relationship with Valeria [Marquez], he had threatened her on several occasions, and everything indicates – and this will be proven – that the son asked his father, R1, to commit the femicide.’
Valeria Marquez was live streaming to her followers from inside her beauty salon when a motorbike-riding gunman opened fire last May
In the livestream, viewers watched as Marquez acknowledged the hitman entering her salon while posing as a delivery driver, before he shot her once in the chest and twice in the head
Ramon Angel Alvarez Ayala, a senior figure in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) – considered to be one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organisations, was arrested on Thursday and has been accused of ordering the murder of Valeria Marquez
Followers on Marquez’s livestream witnessed the appalling moment she was murdered, with the influencer looking out of the salon window momentarily before bullets struck her once in the chest and twice in the head.
‘They’re coming,’ she told her followers just before a voice off-screen can be heard asking, ‘Hey Vale?’
The influencer appears to place a hand over the gunshot wound near her ribcage before dropping dead.
Just hours earlier, Marquez said that a masked courier had tried to deliver her an expensive gift – ‘maybe they were going to kill me or something,’ the influencer told her 90,000 followers.
Marquez had also previously claimed that she was being threatened, claiming that her ex-boyfriend should be held ‘responsible for anything that happens to me and my family.’
In another clip filmed in the moments before her death, Valeria reflected on the recent changes she had made in her life, saying: ‘I’ve changed. I don’t go out anymore, I don’t drink anymore, I’ve stopped being around thugs, I’m a good girl.’
It was previously reported that the main suspect was feared cartel leader Ricardo Ruiz Velasco, or ‘Doble R’, but it has been since clarified that there is ‘no evidence’ linking him to Marquez’s murder.
However, Spanish newspaper El Pais suggested that the two may have belonged to the same cartel.
Local media at the time suggested that Doble R had been in a relationship with the TikToker for several months and became enraged over her receiving expensive gifts from online followers.
‘Doble R’ has a long criminal history dating back to 2012, including his alleged involvement in the murder of Venezuelan model Daisy Ferrer Arenas, and of another influencer, Juan Luis Lagunas, who insulted CJNG boss Nemesio Oseguera in a viral video.
The other killing that El R1 is accused of is the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, during a Day of the Dead festival.
Manzo had been celebrating with his family, which included two small children, when a teenage hitman shot the mayor in the back.
He later died in hospital while the gunman was shot dead by Manzo’s security team.
El R1’s cartel was declared a foreign terrorist organisation by Trump’s administration last year and extorts businesses as well as traffics cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
The US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, was one of the first to congratulate President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s government on the arrest of El R1 – although it remains unclear the extent of any American involvement.
The cartel’s founder Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, better known as El Mencho, was killed earlier this year by authorities after being captured by the Mexican army in Tapalpa, Jalisco, about a two–hour drive southwest of Guadalajara.
El Mencho’s death set off a wave of violence in Jalisco and at least 20 states, with cars and businesses set on fire, and schools temporarily shuttered as a result.
President Sheinbaum said she discussed the operation that resulted in El Mencho’s death with Trump, who then alluded to the drug boss’ passing during his State of the Union address.
El Mencho was buried in a golden casket with dozens of floral tributes of white roses – with one arrangement donning a ribbon with the initials CJNG.
