Top Mexican prosecutor investigating alleged cartel killing site where bones, shoes were found: “The truth will come out”

Mexico’s attorney general on Wednesday reported irregularities in an investigation by state authorities into an alleged cartel killing site and training camp at a ranch in the western state of Jalisco where people searching for relatives found bones and hundreds of articles of clothing and other personal effects.

The “ranch of horror,” as some local media have dubbed it, in the town of Teuchitlan, outside Guadalajara, was found by authorities in September 2024. Six months later, a so-called search collective found charred bone fragments and personal items, raising questions about the original investigation by the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office.

Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, whose office took over the investigation last week, said that investigators in Jalisco failed to register evidence and fingerprints and process vehicles found at the ranch, three of which were later stolen.

He said local authorities didn’t investigate the ownership of the ranch and failed to scientifically analyze locations at the ranch to understand if they were used as crematoriums. Investigators did not arrest local officials who have been linked to activities at the ranch, he said.

The extensive evidence meant that the “truth will come out” about the grisly discovery at a ranch in the western state of Jalisco, Gertz Manero told a news conference.

The United Nations Human Rights Office last week called for “thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations” into the apparent crimes.

Gertz Manero said federal prosecutors were also not alerted about the site, as is standard procedure, and cast blame on the state prosecutor’s office despite the National Guard carrying out an operation at the site carried out last year. There is still not enough information to confirm if the ranch was used to cremate bodies or train cartel members, he added.

The Jalisco Search Warriors group last week shared images that shocked many in a country that’s long accustomed to stark news of cartel warfare, forced disappearances and government corruption. The images and videos showed dozens of shoes, piles of clothing and what appeared to be human bone fragments.

Such collectives have long risked their lives to seek answers about what has happened to Mexico’s 120,000 disappeared people in the face of rampant impunity.

Vigils and protests took place over the weekend for the victims of the alleged site.

On Monday, a video was circulated showing masked and heavily armed men who read a statement identifying themselves as the Jalisco New Generation cartel and questioning the motivations of the searchers.

The Jalisco cartel was one of eight Latin American criminal organizations the U.S. government designated foreign terrorist organizations last month.

Multiple mass graves have been found in recent months in Mexico. In January, at least 56 bodies were discovered in unmarked mass graves in northern Mexico, not far from the border with the United States.

A mass grave discovered last December in a suburb of Guadalajara with dozens of bags of dismembered body parts contained the remains of 24 people, authorities said. That same month, Mexican authorities said they recovered a total of 31 bodies from pits in Chiapas, a state plagued by cartel violence.

Collectives searching for missing persons say that drug trafficking cartels and other organized crime gangs sometimes use ovens to incinerate their victims and leave no trace.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.