Gangland (11 page)

But while the mainstream media thought the Mexican claim that the Ianieros had powerful enemies in Canada absurd, many others disagreed via social media ranging from Facebook and Twitter to independent blogs, forums and comments on online news stories (virtually all of which were later deleted by the major newspapers and TV stations). They noted that the Ianieros were a well-off family of Italian extraction who lived in Woodbridge, home to many members and alleged members of Canada's Mafia. They also pointed out that during the Quebec Biker War of the 1990s, at least three assassinations were carried out in Mexico because it was easier to get police to cooperate and have evidence “lost” there. No link between the Ianieros and organized crime was ever found, but the idea persists among many Canadians.

On the February 25, Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo backtracked on his earlier comments, telling the Canadian Press wire service that there was no evidence of organized crime involvement in the murders. A spokesman for the Quintana Roo state police promised a news conference in which the investigators would reveal the names and photos of the three Canadian suspects. When it didn't happen, he promised another for the following day. It didn't happen either.

• • •

Dr. Bonita Porter, Ontario's deputy chief coroner, who had been asked by Ottawa to handle the case, had her own doubts about how effectively the Mexicans had conducted their investigation. “We have jurisdiction to issue a warrant to seize the bodies because the information that we have is that the deaths occurred from suspicious circumstances,” she said. “Depending on what was done to the bodies in Mexico, what type of autopsy was done, whether the bodies are embalmed—those are the kinds of things that would make some of the testing difficult.”

Her colleague, Toronto West regional supervising coroner Dr. David Evans agreed. ‘ “Obviously, if you're looking for trace evidence, whether it's hair, fibers, DNA under the fingernails—all sorts of things—we'd have no idea what their protocol is for doing homicide autopsies,” he said.

A significant amount of pressure from Canadian media had put stress on Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo. “There won't be any more press conferences until I finish my investigation; I have made the decision and I don't have to justify anything to you,” he angrily told a reporter from Toronto-based
National Post
. “You, the Canadians, are the ones who came to kill other Canadians—that much is clear.”

On February 28, Everall and Kim held a news conference with their lawyer, Lee Baig, in which they denied involvement. “They are, at this point, in a controlled panic state,” he said. “They are very worried.” He blamed their implication in the crime on “poor investigation” and pointed out that his clients did not even know the victims. “I think that the Mexican authorities are concerned about the reputation of Cancún being a safe tourist destination,” Baig said. “I'm worried that they are trying to deflect the reality of the situation and simply say it was Canadians—if that is the case, they've surely got the wrong targets.”

Despite the inconsistencies in the Mexican authorities' announcements and the doubts of the coroners, on March 2 the RCMP told the Ianieros and the Canadian public to be patient and let the Mexicans do their jobs. “We have full confidence in the Mexican police,” said Raf Souccar, assistant commissioner of the RCMP. “I've got no reason to be concerned about the way the investigation is unfolding.” When asked by a reporter if he was worried about potential problems arising from the time between the discovery of the bodies and the arrival of police, he responded, “Crime scenes are never uncontaminated.” One vital piece of evidence, a cardboard coaster that had some local phone numbers written on its back, was severely compromised. Instead of putting it in an evidence bag, the coaster was glued face-up to the outside of the file folder containing evidence documents. The glue obscured the phone numbers, which were never recovered.

Later that day, Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo told the press that an examination of the bodies indicated that the killer or killers had extensive medical knowledge, something that would back his still vague claim that Everall and/or Kim were involved. At the same news conference, his top deputy, Manuel Sarmiento Silva, announced that all of the hotel employees had been cleared of suspicion. Canadian public security minister Stockwell Day told the media that the Mexicans' story changed “almost by the hour,” and that “this thing is taking on bizarre proportions.”

On the following day, Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista, Mexico's secretary of foreign affairs, announced that the Mexican government had asked the RCMP and York Regional Police through Interpol to take part in the investigation. He said that the move was being taken as a result of a request by Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper. Two RCMP homicide detectives flew to Cancún.

Twelve days after they had died, more than 700 mourners attended the Ianieros' funeral at St Clare of Assisi in Woodbridge on March 6. The event was closely watched by York police, who videotaped mourners and their license plates. “I have already spoken with the family. They are quite anxious to relay any information they may have that would assist in the investigation,” York police inspector Les Young said. “They are very concerned about rumors and innuendoes.” The couple's niece, Roseanne Ianiero, delivered a eulogy attendees described as “stirring” and lashed out at the Mexican authorities, who had intimated that Domenic and Nancy had been involved in organized crime.

• • •

On the same day,
Periodico Quequi
, a Quintana Roo newspaper, revealed that police were now hunting four Barcelo Maya employees—two security guards and two housekeepers—as prime suspects. None of the four had shown up for work since February 20, the day the Ianieros were discovered.

In an interview with a Canadian news outlet on March 9, Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo said that Everall and Kim had never been suspects in the case and that he had only wanted to question them. He also said that the Mexican media reports that the four hotel employees were suspects was false, just speculation based on rumor, and that reports that the crime scene had been compromised were “lies.” Baig said his clients were happy to hear from Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo that they were no longer suspects, but wouldn't feel any relief until they heard it from Canadian authorities. He also claimed that although the Canadian media had speculated that the Mexicans had botched the investigation, the Canadian authorities did not share that opinion. “The Canadian authorities are happy with us, and have verified all the work we've done,” Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo said. “They have said the tests and evidence we've collected will be very useful for the work they need to do in Canada.”

Just as the furor was appearing to calm down, Mexico dropped a media bomb on March 29. In an interview with Toronto-based daily
The Globe & Mail
just days before a summit meeting in Cancún at which Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George W. Bush would be in attendance, Mexican president Vicente Fox said that he believed the killer or killers to have been Canadian because the murders appeared to have been targeted and occurred within the Ianieros' hotel room.

The first, and loudest, to respond was the Ianiero family's lawyer, Edward Greenspan, who accused Fox of tampering. The fact that the family had hired Greenspan lifted many eyebrows in Canada, where he is famous as a defense attorney, having represented several alleged organized crime figures, including the national president of the Hells Angels. “No president of a state should get involved; no president should give marching orders to the police,” he said at a news conference held on the March 31. “This investigation has turned into some form of political football—it will be impossible to reach a fair conclusion.” Greenspan also said that the Ianiero family had named a Mexican as a likely suspect, but would not disclose his identity beyond saying he was “involved with security” at the resort. He closed by accusing Fox of being more interested in maintaining his country's tourist industry than solving the case.

On that same day, Toronto-based forensic investigators announced that they were analyzing evidence taken from what may have been the murder weapon. A young girl who was vacationing with her family in Cancún, found a backpack near the resort that contained a large knife smeared with blood. She handed it to her father, a police officer in Duluth, Minnesota, who took it back to the U.S. with him because he did not trust Mexican police. When he heard a news broadcast about the Ianiero murders from a Thunder Bay TV station, he gave the knife, which he had treated as evidence, to the Thunder Bay police. They handed it to York police. When the trail of the knife became public, Thunder Bay police said that they received the knife simply because the city is the closest one in Canada to Duluth, not because Everall or Kim had any involvement. York police chief Armand La Barge backed them up. “I do want to make it clear that our seizure of the knife has absolutely nothing to do with these two women from Thunder Bay,” he said. It was later determined that the knife was not involved with this particular crime.

The plot thickened once again on April 3, when
Periodico Quequi
's crosstown rival
Novedades Quintana Roo
announced that it had received an anonymous, typewritten letter stamped March 3 at a post office in Stoney Creek, Ontario, a largely Italian suburb of Hamilton, Canada's most Mafia-friendly city. It read in part, “Will you please ask the police to check out the possibility of Canadians flying from Cuba to Cancún on the week that the murders took place.” It went on to describe three suspects, two Canadian (one tall and thin, the other short and heavy) and a third described as a “Latino, possibly Mexican.” It concludes with, “Thank you very much, I thought the police will hear you better than myself.”

Greenspan then met with Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo on May 19, and announced that the Ianiero family had hired a private investigator to “fill in the gaps” in the evidence collected by the Mexicans. He also alluded once again to the anonymous suspect, whom he now described as a mysterious Mexican who had befriended Domenic and Nancy. He also said comments by the Quintana Roo attorney general were “slanderous, outrageous and completely false,” accusing him of “turning a tragic senseless murder into a political three-ring circus.” As for the man himself, Greenspan described him as “arrogant, pompous and downright rude.”

A little more than a month later, on June 26, Quintana Roo state police announced they had a suspect in the case. Blas Delgado Fajardo was a 35-year-old former Mexican army paratrooper and bodyguard for former Quintana Roo Governor Joaquín Hendricks Díaz. He had been working at the Barcelo Maya for about six months as an armed security guard. The Canadian private investigator concluded that Delgado Fajardo had befriended the Ianieros and had gained access to their room under the pretence that he had come to tend Domenic's ailing foot. The Ianieros' daughters recalled that a security guard—the same one who had driven them to their room in a golf cart—had said he received medical training in the military, and had massaged Domenic's foot twice the night before. He wore a uniform, but no name tag.

The private investigator also determined that the door to the Ianieros' room had been opened at 7:29 p.m. on February 19 when they were eating dinner at one of the resort's restaurants, and that their safe had been opened 12 times during their stay. It is commonplace for large quantities of cash to be given as gifts at Italian weddings, but the Ianiero family had decided to leave all gifts back in Canada for security reasons.

The fugitive

Delgado Fajardo had not been seen since February 21, the day after the Ianieros' bodies were discovered. When Canadian authorities requested his employee photo from Barcelo Maya, they were sent a blurry, mostly black square.

The Ianiero case has never been conclusively solved. In October, Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo announced that he was investigating Lily's ex-husband, whom he described as being a member of a Guatemalan paramilitary “hit squad” and involved with drug trafficking. The man in question, who would only go by the name “Rob” when speaking to the media, denied ever having set foot in Guatemala and produced employment records that showed he was working in Toronto the day of the murder. In a slightly comic twist, he was a court officer with the Toronto Police. Then Greenspan weighed in. “The attorney general, for obvious political and tourism-related reasons refuses to concede that this crime was committed by a local person,” he said. “He would rather blame a fictitious, totally made-up son-in-law from Guatemala than the local Mexican security guard toward whom all of the evidence points.” After calling Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo a “bald-faced liar,” Greenspan made it even more personal. “I don't like him much,” he said. “He's a political hack. He's not interested in finding the truth.” He then pointed out that the Mexicans should be working at finding Delgado Fajardo rather than inventing imaginary suspects in Toronto.

The Ianieros' son, Anthony, who arrived at the resort just after the bodies were discovered, summed up the family's opinion. “They could have caught the security guard quickly,” he said. “But that a hotel employee at a high-end resort is responsible for murdering two tourists would devastate the tourism industry. It was easier to blame the Canadians; it was easier to say my parents were bad people.”

On September 17, 2009, three years and seven months after the murders, Mexican authorities issued a warrant for Delgado Fajardo's. At publication, despite published pleas from his mother, Aurora Fajardo Torres, to come out of hiding, Delgado Fajardo is still at large. She believes he now lives in the U.S. Everall and Kim were officially cleared as suspects on July 16, 2009.

While the Ianiero case has never been actually linked to drug trafficking, it gave Canadians and Americans a closer look at how criminal investigations are conducted in Mexico. First, the crime scene was profoundly contaminated. Then the police arrived late and used ad hoc, even primitive investigative methods. A great deal of evidence was ruined or ignored. Then the attorney general made wild accusations and he was surprised and angered that the media and the aggrieved dared question them. Even the president—a leader much hailed for his anti-crime and anti-corruption campaigns—joined in and accused nameless Canadians of committing the crime despite absolutely no evidence to support that theory. When a likely suspect was finally pinpointed, nobody could find him. And that man was a former elite soldier in the military who had a connection to a state governor. According to his mother, he is now most likely just another illegal immigrant in the U.S. whose undocumented status allows him to keep his identity secret.