One person was in police custody Wednesday in connection with the slaying, prosecutor Rodolfo Ríos Garza announced, adding that the suspect was identified through a fingerprint found in the apartment and that he had a criminal record. Ríos gave no more details.
Mexican investigators have suggested the five may have been killed for any number of reasons, including robbery, and that the alleged Colombian woman was the target. But friends say it's hard to believe Espinosa and Vera, a Veracruz activist who also felt under threat from the state government, would be tortured and killed because they simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mexico City's prosecutor released a video Tuesday showing the suspects casually walking out of the apartment building and leaving the scene, one in a red Ford Mustang, at 3:02 p.m. Friday. Investigators say the brutal assaults, murders and ransacking took place sometime between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.
But Espinosa's final text messages, obtained by The Associated Press, show that at 2:13 p.m. he was still alive. A neighbor in the next building told the AP he saw one of the victims, the woman believed to be Colombian, on the street at 2:30 p.m. talking normally with one of the men who later entered the building and left.
If so, the killers would have had between 30 and 50 minutes to tie up five people, commit the horrific abuse, shoot them in the head and ransack their belongings, leaving the building less than an hour later, one with a suitcase.
The prosecutor's office said it had nothing to add when asked by the AP about the tight time frame.