Heriberto Picos, aka El Koala, will spend 14 years in jail for the murder of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez. The Koala drove the vehicle that took the killers in front of Valdez. After several offers from the prosecution, he has finally accepted the treatment that the investigators offered him. Almost three years after its execution, the prosecution now points to one of the material perpetrators, Juan Francisco Picos, aka El Quillo, arrested in June 2018.
The murder of Javier Valdez shocked Mexican society. Within the wave of violence that the country has been experiencing for more than a decade, the journalistic guild had often been the target of criminal groups and government officials. But the case of Valdez was different. Chronicler of the narco in Sinaloa, awarded and loved by his colleagues, respected in Mexico and abroad, his execution in cold blood, in the middle of a street in Culiacán, the state capital, made journalists raise the tone. First, because of suspicions that Sinaloa criminal groups had to do with what happened. But also, because of the boldness of the criminals, who attacked Valdez in broad daylight.
From the beginning, Valdez's colleagues in the Riodce weekly, which he had founded years earlier, said that Sinaloa was experiencing a violent wave because of the struggle between two groups, who were fighting after the arrest of the top leader, Joaquin Guzman, in January 2016. In that context the murder took place, while the group of the children of El Chapo fought against the children of another criminal of Sinaloa, Dámaso López, aka El Licenciado, also captured, extradited and sentenced in the United States to life imprisonment for drug trafficking .
At first it was not clear who killed him or why, but the Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Attention to Crimes against Freedom of Expression, Feadle, has already documented, at least partially, the intellectual authorship of El Licenciado's son, Dámaso López Serrano, alias El Mini Lic. According to the prosecutor's investigation, some Valdez publication would have displeased El Mini Lic. This would have hired El Quillo, who would have organized the reporter's follow-up and execution.
Another person, a certain El Diablo, would also have participated in the attack against Valdez, but was killed in Sonora in 2017.
Víctor Martínez, Griselda Triana's lawyer, widow of Valdez, explained Friday that El Quillo will return to the courtroom on March 25. It will be then when the prosecution presents the evidence against him and the trial date is set. "El Quillo is directly linked to the murder and his position with the people in El Dorado is more important," says the lawyer, referring to the town from where El Licenciado ran his business. "And he could also provide more information on the responsibility of The Mini Lic."