On December 3, 1996, Yolanda Figueroa, a prominent Mexican journalist, her husband and three children were found brutally beaten to death in their home in Mexico City.

Yolanda had been very outspoken about the alleged ties between the government and powerful Mexican drug lords therefore authorities assumed that the family had been a victim of a narco hit.

The lone survivor of the massacre, the family driver, was left in critical condition by the assailants. However, when Alejandro Perez de la Rosa -- the driver -- regained consciousness he told a wild tale of sex, revenge and murder rivaling anything a Hollywood writer could concoct. The murders of Yolanda Figueroa, her husband, Fernando Balderas -- former anti-drug agent -- and their three children, had nothing to do with the drug cartels and were, in fact, a simple act of revenge.

According to de la Rosa, Fernando Balderas became a sexual monster following the success of his and his wife's muckraking book on the narco lord Juan Garcia Abrego. For months following the release of the book Fernando sexually abused two maids within their stately home in Mexico City's tony Pedregal district.

Balderas, publisher of the weekly scandal sheet Cuarto Poder (Fourth Estate), had been under investigation for alleged links to drug traffickers. Arrest warrants had also been issued in the past but never served for rape, and for trying to extort account holders of a bank. During an investigation, police also reported discovering possessions such as expensive cars that would seem beyond the family's earnings.

With no hope for justice, the two family chauffeurs and one of the victimized maids decided to kill the torturing couple. On the fateful night of the murders, the suspects only intended to kill the parents, but went blood simple and killed the children too. After, the two men argued over cash and jewelry they found inside the home. Martin and Josefina, who both share the last name of hernandez but are unrelated, attacked their accomplice Alejandro and left him for dead.

On May 15, 1998, one of the lethal chauffeurs, Alejandro Perez de la Rosa, was sentenced to 118 years in prison for the grisly murder binge. Judge Jose Eligio Rodriguez Alba said the 118-year sentence was a symbolic gesture because of the brutality of the crime, even though Mexican law allows only a 50-year sentence. As of this report, his two other accomplices Martin and Josefina remain at large.

Mayhem.net

Details Emerge in Slaying of Mexico Family

Crime: Author, husband and children were killed by servants avenging sexual abuse, prosecutors say

By Mark Fineman - Los Angeles Times

December 25, 1996

MEXICO CITY — In the months that writer Yolanda Figueroa and her husband, Fernando Balderas, basked in prominence after the August release of their book on a powerful Mexican drug cartel, there were darker forces at work far closer to the couple's posh home here, prosecutors say.

Indeed, it was about when the couple launched the campaign to sell their muckraking expose on Gulf cartel boss Juan Garcia Abrego that investigators now say Balderas had also turned the family's maids into "sexual hostages."

Behind the walls of the couple's home in the stately Pedregal district of the capital, Balderas, a former investigator for the Mexico City prosecutor's office, had been sexually abusing the two servants for months, authorities say.

In September, he was quietly charged with rape. But for reasons authorities still cannot explain, he was never arrested.

And as the couple's book was selling out in bookstores nationwide, Balderas' behavior at home was raising the fury of the maids' husbands, who worked as the family's drivers.

Finally, on Dec. 2, the drivers and one of the maids plotted the murders of the couple, investigators say.

Three days later, at 1:30 a.m., they carried out the killings in brutal fashion: One by one, they beat to death Figueroa, Balderas and their three children as they slept in their beds, investigators say. The suspects then allegedly argued over the family's cash and jewelry.

As police searched Tuesday for one of the family drivers and his maidservant wife, authorities here declared the scandalous case all but closed, alleging that the fugitive couple and another driver now in custody murdered Balderas, Figueroa and their children for revenge.

"The motive for the murders was personal shame," said Mariano Herran Salvatti, Mexico City's deputy attorney general, who unveiled the results of an intensive, two-week investigation at a news conference here late Monday. "Fernando Balderas raped [the two maids] while holding both women sexual hostages."

The results of the investigation shot holes in the theories of several analysts here, who had initially likened the slayings of the writer and her investigator husband--both of whom had been cast by some as anti-drug crusaders--to the lawlessness spawned by the drug trade in Colombia. These analysts had theorized that the killings were attributable in some way to Figueroa's book.

Balderas' home.
Photo: Carlos Cisneros