New reports indicate that a Mexican rapper and YouTube personality named Christian Omar Palma Gutierrez, professionally known as QBA, has admitted to dissolving three missing students' bodies in acid. He has since been detained in relation to the deaths of Salomon Aceves Gastelum, 25; Daniel Diaz, 20; and Marco Avalos, 20, in western Jalisco state last month.
Gutierrez reveals that he disposed of the bodies after the men were initially captured, tortured and murdered by a Mexican drug cartel. He also confesses to having been recruited by the Jalisco New Generation three months ago, earning nearly 3,000 pesos a week for his services. Chief investigator Lizette Torres notes how Gutierrez "participated in three other previous murders."
The rapper's YouTube channel boasts 125,000 followers, with his videos routinely depicting poor neighbourhoods, drugs and weapons, alongside luxury vehicles and motorcycles.
Torres notes how authorities will be probing his videos for further clues into the gruesome murders.
The three victims had unknowingly filmed a school project in a former hangout for the Nueva Plaza cartel, which eventually led to their abduction and the macabre events that followed. The Jalisco New Generation had been monitoring the location, which belonged to the aunt of one of the aspiring filmmakers. The culprits mistook the students for members of rival gang Nueva Plaza, inevitably fuelling their homicidal impulses. The gang members beat one of their detainee's so badly that he died, prompting them to kill the other remaining two. Afterwards, Gutierrez took their corpses to another house and doused their bodies in sulphuric acid to hide the evidence.
Gutierrez and another man will be charged with aggravated kidnapping.