A young woman places a poster on an altar in homage to the French-Mexican businessman Baptiste Lormand at the French Embassy. Teresa de Miguel
The owner of the Surtidora Don Batiz restaurant, Baptiste Lormand, and his associate and close friend, Luis Orozco, were brutally murdered on Thursday when they were going to attend a business meeting.
Two days after the appointment with the buyer, their bodies were found in a gutter with signs of torture.
Of the four arrested by the police in the following 96 hours, the main line of investigation points to Miguel Ángel “N”, a criminal with a criminal record who was arrested with high-end bottles, weapons and drugs.
The police indicate that it is a violent robbery of five bottles of more than one million pesos (a little more than 50,000 dollars) that ended with a double homicide.
However, the quick resolution of the case leaves several unanswered questions about the criminal gang that used to use this
modus operandi.
, on the cause of death of both victims and also on the motives behind the sale of alcohol in Tlalpan.
Baptiste Lormand had eaten with a few friends on Thursday afternoon.
He had recently drawn the blind permanently on one of his restaurants amid the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Luis Orozco, a close friend who sold alcohol wholesale, contacted him that day, possibly to inform him of a potential buyer.
Orozco worked at a company called Express Champagne Delivery, a marketer of high-end wines and spirits with “wholesale prices” and home delivery.
In his social networks he promoted images of limited or exclusive products.
It is unknown if Lormand had been involved in this business before or if the bottles they were going to sell were from his restaurant.
Lormand and his partner left their homes, from Polanco and Naucalpan de Juárez, respectively.
Orozco drove in a rental car and Lombard in his own black Mitsubishi pickup.
An hour later they met with the alleged buyers.
The cameras captured the moment when they left kilometer 22 of Cuernavaca Avenue and they were not heard from again until two days later, when their handcuffed and beaten bodies appeared in a ditch near the last point where they were seen.
The reason why two experienced businessmen in the capital ventured at night with a million pesos worth of merchandise in one of the city halls with the most investigation folders for robberies and homicides is a mystery.
Also the reason for the death, due to the beatings, for a robbery in which the main suspect was arrested with weapons in his possession.
Lormand's friends and acquaintances suspect that the buyer was someone the victims already knew and that for that reason they attended the appointment in Tlatpan at night and with a million pesos in their cars.
One of the theories that they shuffle is that the purchase was going to be carried out normally until the transaction failed due to a disagreement between the victims and the buyers, who were not prepared for a homicide with weapons and resorted to their own hands.
Despite the huge portfolio of unsolved cases accumulated by Mexico, a country with more than 100 victims a day and 90% of unsolved crimes, the police took two days to carry out the arrests related to the homicide of the Franco-Mexican businessman and his partner.
They tracked the surveillance cameras where the victims passed, interviewed their families and studied the call log.
That is how they reached Miguel Ángel 'N', a criminal with a criminal record who had been in jail on several occasions, but who ended up being free.
Prosecutor Ernestina Godoy Ramos has acknowledged that she does not know why the subject was at liberty if he still had pending proceedings.
When following up with Miguel Ángel 'N', they found a place that he rented on Calle Lirio, in the El Ermitaño neighborhood, which functioned as a warehouse.
There they found the loot of the alcohol boxes as well as assault weapons, drugs and scales.
Two men and a woman were arrested in that place, but the police chief, Omar García Harfuch, confirmed this Wednesday that they are people who were simply in the place and have no relation to the homicides.
Harfuch argues that those responsible could be part of a criminal gang that operated in the south of the city and on which previous complaints with this
modus operandi
had
already weighed
that had not been disclosed to the media.
These groups trick vendors into summoning them to a supposed business meeting and then stealing their merchandise and killing them.
Although the cases known to the police did not necessarily target high-end alcohol, they have registered complaints using this method to steal watches, jewelry or other merchandise offered by sellers.
Lormand, who also ran a hotel near Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, in an area haunted by organized crime, has been buried in the French pantheon in Mexico City. Orozco has celebrated his mass this Wednesday and lies in the same place as his friend. Lormand's French family has flown for the funeral after meeting with the Mexican ambassador in Paris, who has reiterated the commitment of the authorities of Mexico City to do justice.
