Global Courant
SAN DIEGO — A California man is suspected of a string of murders of sex workers in Mexico, Baja California’s top prosecutor said Friday.
Federal authorities arrested 30-year-old Bryant Rivera Thursday in Downey, a Los Angeles County town, at the request of Mexican authorities, according to court documents and US officials.
He was placed in federal custody pending a remand hearing Monday in Los Angeles, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Federal officials said they expected Mexican prosecutors to formally request extradition.
A US attorney’s complaint supports an arrest warrant against Rivera and establishes Baja California’s case against him in the death last year of a Tijuana sex worker. It says he’s been charged femicidekilling women because they are women.
Bryant Rivera.via Facebook
On Friday, Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said Rivera is charged with the deaths of three women in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego.
Rivera “is considered a serial killer” and “will now face trial in Baja California,” Carpio said on Facebook, according to an NBC News translation.
It was not clear if Rivera had legal representation. The Los Angeles federal public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal complaint details the January 24, 2022 murder of Ángela Carolina Acosta Flores, a Tijuana club dancer and sex worker, who was last seen on security video entering a hotel room that prosecutors say was rented by Rivera.
Her lifeless body was found in a bathroom the next day and an autopsy concluded she had suffocated, according to the complaint.
Baja California prosecutors say Rivera left the room before midnight that night and never returned. He crossed the US-Mexico border on foot 13 minutes after leaving the room, they allege in the complaint.
A witness used Rivera’s first and last name to tell detectives who she last saw with Acosta at the club, which is next door to the hotel, according to the filing. The unnamed witness said she knew Rivera as a regular, the indictment says.
Another witness gave a detailed description of the defendant’s face and clothing, noting that his pandemic mask did not fit properly, thus betraying “an acne-marked face,” according to the document.
Last year, the Baja California attorney general’s office said that in all three cases, the suspect had sex with his victims before killing them. He visited Tijuana’s red-light district known as Zona Norte, it said.
It’s not clear exactly what led authorities to Rivera, but the complaint includes details of a truck he was associated with, as well as an image of his border crossing on January 25, 2022.
Details of the other two cases were not available. Baja California authorities said the deaths stretched from September 2021 to February 2022. It wasn’t clear if Acosta was the latest victim: She was identified by her mother in early February 2022, according to federal court filing.
The Baja California attorney general’s office said last year that all three bodies were found in hotel rooms.
In a video posted to the attorney general’s Facebook page, Carpio credits “scientific research” and a “strong alliance and cooperation to fight crime across borders” in Thursday’s arrest.
“In Baja California,” he said, “no one escapes justice.”
Gender violence and femicide in Mexico have sparked protests and calls for government action.
The Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System reported more than 1,900 homicides of women in Mexico from January to November 2022, of which 858 were femicides, according to the U.S. State Department. Human Rights Report.
Joe Kottke, Alex Lo and Bill Feather contributed.
