Gabriel Arturo GARZA HOTH
AKA "The Black Widower"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Parricide - To collect insurance money
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: April 17, 1991 / October 3, 1992 / May 11, 1997
Date of arrest: November 1998 (in Madrid, Spain)
Date of birth: ????
Victims profile: Soledad Valdez / Marcela Muñoz Palacios / Ana Gloria Gomezpalacio
Method of murder: Poisoning / Shooting
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Status: Sentenced to 45 years in prison on October 27, 2000
Gabriel Arturo Garza Hoth (born Mexico, ?) also known as "The Black Widower", was a Mexican serial killer active between 1991 and 1998 in Mexico City. He collected life insurance payments on his wife and lovers, gaining a total of 500,000 dollars.
His first victim was his first wife, named Soledad Valdez, who had a heart attack and died in 1991, but the doctors believed that maybe she had been poisoned. His second victim was his girlfriend named Marcela Palacios, who died in 1992 in a "violent assault". The final victim was Ana Gloria Gomezpalacio who died in other "assault".
The coincidences were alerted to the police, but Garza escaped to Spain. He was captured in 1998 and transported to Mexico, where he was condemned to life in prison.
Wikipedia.org
'Black Widower' given 45 years for killing fiancee
Amarillo.com
Sunday, October 29, 2000
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A Mexican man known as The Black Widower for allegedly killing off his girlfriends was convicted Friday of homicide in the 1997 death of his fiancee, and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Gabriel Garza Hoth was also sentenced to pay fines totaling $2,200 for shooting his fiancee, Ana Gloria Gomez, and then trying to collect on a $400,000 insurance policy.
Garza Hoth initially told police that Gomez had been killed by armed assailants who tried to rob the couple on a Mexico City street in August 1997.
A judge concluded that he fired the shoots himself, and then tried to cover up the crime by making it look like a bungled robbery attempt, the government news agency Notimex reported.
His story began to fall apart when investigators learned that other women who had relationships with him had also met violent deaths.
According to prosecutors, he collected on a $125,000 insurance policy when his former wife, Soledad Valdes, died of an apparent heart attack in 1991.
Another girlfriend, Marcela Munoz Palacios, was found dead of gunshot wounds in a Mexico City parking lot just a year later. Munoz Palacios also had life insurance policies totaling about $400,000, but it remains unclear whether Garza Hoth collected on those.
Garza Hoth fled Mexico after a warrant was issued for his arrest in the Gomez case, and was arrested in Spain in November, 1998 and extradited to Mexico in January.
