Omar Santos Loera spent about nine years as a fugitive from a 122-year prison sentence before his name became known across Mexico. In June 2020 the family of his partner, Elideth Ríos Cabrera, accused him of killing her in Nezahualcóyotl, a city in the State of Mexico on the eastern edge of the capital. Within days, newspapers reported that he had been convicted in Mexico City in 2011 of a double homicide committed in a brawl in Iztapalapa, that he had been jailed under another man's name, and that he had walked out of the Reclusorio Oriente prison that October.
Her father, who said Santos Loera had telephoned him to confess, spent more than a year pressing prosecutors and searching for him. Agents of the State of Mexico prosecutor's office arrested him on October 23, 2021, in Tlalnepantla de Baz. He was reported dead in custody before his first hearing, and the death was reported as a suicide. He was never tried for the killing of Elideth Ríos Cabrera.
Reports differ on almost every identifying detail of the man at the center of the case. Most outlets in June 2020 gave his name as Omar Santos Loera, the name Elideth Ríos Cabrera's family used when they filed their complaint. SDP Noticias, La Jornada, SinEmbargo, Infobae and the Neza news site Infopolitano all used it. Other reports, including an SDP Noticias follow-up in August 2020 and El Mañana of Nuevo Laredo in November 2021, gave the surname as Sánchez Loera.
The name on his prison record was different again. According to El Heraldo de México, he used the false name Érick Hernández Camacho while he was held in 2011. Zócalo, relaying Milenio's interview with Elideth's father in October 2021, said he entered the Reclusorio Oriente that year under the name Erick Hernández Camacho, a name taken from a friend of Elideth. The August 2020 SDP Noticias report went further and said his real identity appeared to be Erick. The father, by contrast, said that when he saw the arrested man in October 2021, the man confirmed that he was Omar and not Erik.
Two nicknames followed him in the press. Infopolitano reported in June 2020 that he was known as "El Cojo", because of a gunshot wound that left him limping and using a cane. La Chispa Petrolera, in October 2021, gave both "El Cojo" and "El Ninja de Iztapalapa", the second linked to the weapon reportedly used in the Iztapalapa killings.
His age was given as 29 in June 2020 by SDP Noticias, SinEmbargo and Infopolitano. His date and place of birth were never made public, and little is known of his family or schooling. Relatives of Elideth described him to reporters as violent and out of work. La Jornada reported that he walked with a cane and a limp after surgery on a leg wound from a gunshot, and the family's appeals for information described facial scars and a tattoo on his back. Reports differed on which leg was injured: most said the right, while the father was quoted in July 2021 as saying he limped on the left foot.
The first case against him came from Iztapalapa, the most populous borough of Mexico City. Infopolitano reported in June 2020 that he had been jailed for killing two people and injuring four others during a brawl there. El Heraldo de México, in a report written with the authorization of Elideth's family, said that before he met her he had killed two people in a brawl and injured others, and had been a fugitive.
The victims of the brawl have never been named, and the date of the fight is unknown. Accounts also differ on the charges. El Heraldo said he was sentenced to more than 122 years for homicide and aggravated robbery. SDP Noticias said in August 2020 that he had been sentenced in 2011 to 122 years for a double homicide. Zócalo, relaying Milenio, described a prior conviction for a double homicide in Iztapalapa. Debate reported that he had been jailed for homicide and assault. The court that sentenced him has not been named.
In June 2020 the father told La Jornada that Elideth had told him, the day before her death, that Santos Loera had escaped from the Reclusorio Oriente in 2011 while serving what the father called a life sentence for a double homicide. El Heraldo reported that she had learned of his history only shortly before she died.
El Heraldo de México reported that he was held for 189 days at the Reclusorio Oriente, the men's prison in eastern Mexico City, and that on October 6, 2011, he escaped by walking out of the prison. The authorities acknowledged the escape five days later, according to the same report. Infopolitano and Debate said he had faked his own death to cover his escape, and both reported that the federal attorney general's office of the time, the PGR, had offered 300,000 pesos for information leading to his recapture. El Mañana said he escaped about six months after he was sentenced.
Infopolitano also reported that after escaping he took on a new identity to evade the PGR.
Elideth Ríos Cabrera was described by her family as a peaceful and optimistic person, SinEmbargo reported. She had studied law, specializing in criminal law, according to El Heraldo de México, and left her degree about a year and a half before finishing when she became pregnant with her son. El Mañana also described her as a specialist in criminal law.
She worked as a waitress. SinEmbargo said she worked at a restaurant in the area, and El Heraldo said she waited tables at a high-end restaurant, took freelance jobs and sold products from catalogs. Her income supported her son, her parents and part of Santos Loera's expenses, according to El Heraldo; La Jornada reported that her family called her the household's main source of support. She saved every year for family trips to Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and Cancún, and had promised her son a trip to Disney in the United States. In August 2020 SDP Noticias reported that the family said she had been saving for trips, and that she would have turned 31 on July 26.
She and Santos Loera had been together for just over a decade, according to El Heraldo, and met while she was studying law. They had a son, who was 10 years old in 2020. Infopolitano reported that, according to relatives, Santos Loera used his injury to pressure her whenever she tried to leave him. SDP Noticias reported on the day of her death that she had told her family about several episodes of violence by him.
About eight months before her death she wanted to leave him, El Heraldo reported, but she waited for the right moment. Her father told La Jornada that five months earlier she had said she would leave him for good, but was waiting until he recovered from surgery. About three weeks before her death, according to La Jornada, she told her parents that she would separate from him and that he had agreed. El Heraldo put her request that he move out a week before her death, and quoted her father as saying that she was excited and had told him he would leave the following week.
Elideth Ríos Cabrera was found dead in Nezahualcóyotl on Monday, June 22, 2020. La Chispa Petrolera reported that she was killed on the night of June 21, Father's Day in Mexico. All accounts agreed that she died of asphyxia. SDP Noticias, in August 2020, said the death certificate gave strangulation as the cause.
Her family said from the first day that Santos Loera was responsible. According to the family, as reported by SinEmbargo, Infobae and Debate, he confessed in a telephone call and then fled. El Heraldo de México reported that early that morning he called both her father and her sister. It quoted his words to her father: "Don, ... está muerta, la maté... Ahí le encargo a mi hijo," roughly, that she was dead, that he had killed her, and that he was leaving his son in the family's care. El Mañana and SDP Noticias gave similar accounts of the call. La Jornada's version, from the father, was that Santos Loera first described her only as cold and motionless, and the father, suspicious, pressed him to say where she was.
Accounts differ on what happened to the boy. La Jornada said a taxi brought Santos Loera to the grandparents' home, that he waited until his son was inside and then left, and that he never came to the meeting point the father had set. El Heraldo said he called his brother to pick him up, left the boy at his grandmother's house and fled. La Chispa Petrolera reported that he took the boy to his grandmother before the killing. El Heraldo also reported that the boy saw part of what happened and heard the calls, and that he did not talk about it.
Her father asked police in a patrol car for help, La Jornada reported, and by the time he reached the apartment her mother was already there. The family later accused police of handling the scene improperly and of leaking photographs to the media, an accusation La Jornada and El Heraldo both reported. Relatives gathered in front of the Nezahualcóyotl municipal palace to demand justice, and her funeral was held at a cemetery in Mexico City, according to Infopolitano.
"Sí, se fue, pero quitándole la vida a mi hija," her father told La Jornada: yes, he left, but by taking my daughter's life.
The family filed a complaint with the State of Mexico prosecutor's office, the Fiscalía General de Justicia del Estado de México, on the afternoon of June 22, SDP Noticias reported. SinEmbargo said the family also went to the Mexico City prosecutor's office to ask for help in finding him. Relatives circulated his photograph and description on social media under the hashtag #JusticiaparaElideth and asked the public to call in with information.
As of June 28, the authorities had not issued an arrest warrant, according to La Jornada. Two months after the killing, SDP Noticias reported, the family said there was still no warrant, and that state officials had told them there was not enough evidence. The complaint was first lodged with the specialized feminicide prosecutor in Neza; the file was then moved to another office in the state, where the family said it was repeatedly refused an arrest order. On August 21, 2020, through mothers of other victims, the family reached the feminicide prosecutor's office in Toluca, which promised progress, but a week later they said they had heard nothing more.
The family also complained of how the case was handled. SDP Noticias reported that the prosecutor's office had not returned the apartment, so the family was still paying its rent, and that the father said they had received no victim support. He said a police officer posing as a psychologist had questioned his grandson in a way that hurt him again. El Heraldo de México reported that the family had no access to the file or the autopsy results, and that the father protested outside the National Palace in Mexico City with a banner bearing Santos Loera's photograph.
When the warrant came, it named Érick Hernández Camacho, the name on his prison record, rather than Omar Santos Loera, El Heraldo de México reported. The paper said it took nearly two months to issue; the father later told Milenio, as carried by Zócalo, that it took about three months because the authorities said there were not enough grounds. According to El Heraldo, the authorities said the man under that name was wanted across Mexico and in the United States, but for his earlier crimes rather than for Elideth's death. The family feared that he could later argue he was not the man named in the warrant, and the father asked that he be sought under both names.
The State of Mexico prosecutor's office offered a reward of 300,000 pesos for information on the whereabouts of "Erick Hernández Camacho", the name under which he was sought, Zócalo reported.
Her father did not wait. He ran a printing shop, according to El Mañana, and printed posters with photographs of Elideth and of Santos Loera, which he held up in the Zócalo, Mexico City's main square, hoping for leads. La Chispa Petrolera reported that he left his job at a workshop, bought a motorcycle and spent more than a year following leads. He posed as an apple seller in one neighborhood, the paper said, and went in disguise to the Iztapalapa fair. He never saw Santos Loera. After about a year, El Mañana reported, he located him and passed the information to investigators.
Agents of the State of Mexico prosecutor's office arrested him on Saturday, October 23, 2021, Zócalo reported, relaying Milenio. The warrant was carried out at 6:30 in the evening in Tlalnepantla de Baz, a municipality north of Mexico City.
That afternoon Elideth's father, then 63, was brought face to face with the man he had been looking for, in handcuffs at the prosecutor's offices, La Chispa Petrolera reported. Police were at first confused, the paper said, because the prisoner claimed to be someone else. The father told Milenio that the man recognized him, and that before the hearing he confirmed that he was Omar. "Lo alcancé a ver y todo, él me reconoció y yo lo reconocí," he said: I got to see him, he recognized me and I recognized him. The father told La Chispa Petrolera and El Mañana that he kicked the prisoner before police pulled him away and took him out of the room.
His first hearing, at which he was to be charged with feminicide, was set for October 24, 2021, El Mañana and Zócalo reported. He did not appear. According to the father, a court assistant handed the judge a sheet of paper, and the judge then told the hearing that the defendant was dead. "Hasta donde sé, se ahorcó," the father told El Mañana: as far as I know, he hanged himself. To Milenio he said that, as far as he knew, the suspect had taken his own life.
He was found dead in the Centro Penitenciario y de Reinserción Social of Nezahualcóyotl, known as Bordo de Xochiaca, the father told Milenio. La Chispa Petrolera reported that he died one day after his capture, that the death was reported as a suicide by hanging, and that the State of Mexico prosecutor's office opened an investigation file for suicide. No official statement on the death was ever made public.
No one came forward to identify the body, La Chispa Petrolera reported, so Elideth's father did it himself. Officials at first refused him access, the paper said, until a judge ordered that he be let into the morgue. He identified the body by a tattoo, according to both La Chispa Petrolera and Zócalo.
El Mañana reported that the case file on Elideth's death was closed, and La Chispa Petrolera said the father attended the hearing that closed it. Because Santos Loera died before he was charged in court, no judge ruled on the accusation against him.
The father told La Chispa Petrolera that the news of the suicide left him feeling like an old man, and that he now had to rebuild his life and find work to support his grandson, who lived with him. "Ahora a rehacer mi vida y buscar mi sustento," he said. He also said that the man he blamed had escaped punishment.
Elideth's case was reported at the time alongside figures on killings of women in the State of Mexico. Infobae and SDP Noticias, citing federal security figures, reported in June 2020 that the state had recorded 47 feminicides between January and May of that year, more than any other state. El Heraldo de México counted her among 97 feminicides registered in the State of Mexico in 2020, out of 626 nationwide, by the federal security system's figures.
The 2020 killing. Santos Loera was accused of killing Elideth Ríos Cabrera by her family and was sought on a feminicide warrant. He died before his first hearing and was never tried, so the accusation was never tested in court. The confession her father described was made by telephone and reported only through the family.
The Iztapalapa case. Accounts agree that he was sentenced to 122 years, but they differ on the charges: a double homicide (SDP Noticias, Zócalo relaying Milenio, the father in La Jornada), homicide and aggravated robbery (El Heraldo de México), and homicide and assault (Debate). The court, the exact date of the brawl and the names of the dead have never been made public.
His name. Whether Omar Santos Loera, Omar Sánchez Loera or Erick Hernández Camacho was his legal name has never been settled. Most outlets used Santos Loera; some used Sánchez Loera; SDP Noticias said in August 2020 that his real identity appeared to be Erick. According to Zócalo, the Erick Hernández Camacho name belonged to a friend of Elideth.
The escape. El Heraldo de México and El Mañana put the escape in 2011, months after he was jailed; Infopolitano wrote in June 2020 that it had happened about five years earlier. Infopolitano and Debate reported that he faked his death to cover it.
Elideth's age. La Jornada and El Mañana gave her age as 29, saying she would soon turn 30; SinEmbargo, Infobae, Debate, El Heraldo and La Chispa Petrolera gave 30. SDP Noticias reported that she would have turned 31 on July 26.
The warrant. El Heraldo de México said the warrant took nearly two months; her father told Milenio it took about three.
The label. Some headlines in 2020 described him as a serial killer. The record shows one sentence for killings in a single brawl and one accusation that never reached trial.
Date unknown: two people are killed and four injured in a brawl in Iztapalapa, Mexico City; he is later convicted.
2011: Jailed at the Reclusorio Oriente under the name Erick Hernández Camacho and sentenced to 122 years, as reported.
October 6, 2011: Escapes from the Reclusorio Oriente by walking out; the authorities acknowledge the escape five days later, according to El Heraldo de México. The PGR offers 300,000 pesos for information.
Months before June 2020: Elideth Ríos Cabrera tells her family she wants to leave him, according to her father.
June 22, 2020: Elideth Ríos Cabrera is found dead in Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico; her family says he confessed by telephone and fled, and files a complaint with the State of Mexico prosecutor's office.
June 28, 2020: No arrest warrant has yet been issued, La Jornada reports.
August 21, 2020: The family meets the feminicide prosecutor's office in Toluca.
After June 2020, date unknown: A warrant is issued in the name of Érick Hernández Camacho; the State of Mexico prosecutor's office offers a 300,000-peso reward.
October 23, 2021: Arrested by agents of the State of Mexico prosecutor's office in Tlalnepantla de Baz; Elideth's father sees him at the prosecutor's offices.
October 24, 2021: His first hearing on the feminicide warrant is set for this day; he does not appear, and the court is told he has died at the Nezahualcóyotl (Bordo de Xochiaca) prison. The death is reported as a suicide by hanging.
After his death: Elideth's father identifies the body after a judge orders his access to the morgue; the case file is closed.