A former Amazon CEO has been accused of paying $9,000 to have his estranged wife killed in a hit-style murder.
In November 2019, Abril Pérez Sagaón was shot in the head and neck by a man on a motorbike who fired through the passenger-side window of a car in which she was sat while driving through Mexico City.
Juan Carlos Garcia, who was the CEO of Amazon in Mexico when the company launched its first office there in 2015, is accused of paying two sicarios, or hitmen, 180,000 Mexican pesos to carry out the murders.
He allegedly offered her a 50,000 peso (about $2,500) payment if she died before the couple’s next court appearance in a case she had filed against them.
The trial for Pérez’s murder began on Monday, with the alleged hitman testifying first, claiming Garcia hired him.
While the pair was still together, Pérez had already accused Garca of attempting to murder her.
Garca crossed the border into the United States before the trial began and is still at large, with an Interpol arrest warrant out for him in 190 countries.
Pérez had a restriction order against Garca at the time of her murder, so he went from the capital to the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León.
Following her murder, Garca protested his innocence in a letter to Mexico City’s mayor.
‘As a father, I would have never wanted my children to go through something like this,’ Garca wrote to Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Pérez was assassinated after flying from Nuevo Leon to a private hospital in Mexico City to undertake a psychological assessment ordered by the couple’s judge.
When her car came to a halt at a traffic light on her way back to the airport, a man approached the vehicle and shot her in the head. Later that night, she passed away.
In the car with her at the time were two of her three children and her attorney. They were not injured in any way.
Pérez had been the target of a vicious attack earlier this year that nearly killed her.
She was sleeping in the house she shared with Garcia when he slammed a baseball bat into her skull and hit her in the head.
Ana Cecilia Sagaón, Sagaón’s daughter, later posted graphic images of her mother’s assault, revealing that she had been beaten nearly to death.
Pérez said that Garca tried to strangle her after cutting her cheek with a sharp object, but their kid pushed him away, allowing Pérez to flee through an open window.
Garca was imprisoned for a short time before being released on the grounds that there was little evidence that he intended to kill her.
The horrific assault was lowered to domestic violence, igniting indignation at the atrocities that women in Mexico are subjected to on a regular basis.
Garcia’s lawyers were aware she was in the city, according to a family member who declined to provide their identity in a telephone conversation with El Pas, so it’s conceivable Garcia knew as well.
Doctors were unable to save Sagaón after she was shot, and she died six hours later, according to a family member who spoke to the Spanish news site.
According to the relative, “the attack was completely focused at her.” ‘And he was the only enemy she had in her life.’
Garcia was charged with femicide, which is when a male kills a woman solely because of her gender.
Following Garca’s departure from Mexico, eight persons were detained on suspicion of being involved in Perez’s murder, including the guy who allegedly fired the fatal shot.
The relatives tell El Pas that ‘he had enough money to hire a hitman.’ ‘There’s no doubt in our minds that it was him.’ Because he had previously indicated intent, and because we know how he is, the way things unfolded’.
Garcia is believed to have crossed the border into the United States on foot at a checkpoint in Tijuana, near San Diego, days after she was murdered.