Mexico: Policemen 'massacred family' in blackmail bid

A police officer and six other men are accused of murdering six members of a family, including two children, in a blackmail bid.

State investigator Alejandro Lopez sent gunmen to the family’s house in Ciudad Guzman, in the western state of Jalisco, last week, to demand €63,000, prosecutors said in a statement.

Lopez, a Jalisco investigator, then turned up at the house pretending to make a casual visit, the prosecutors said. When he encountered the gunmen, he encouraged the family to hand over the money so the assailants would go away.

Lopez, who had helped investigate the kidnapping of the family’s teenage son in April, is believed to have staged the robbery after becoming aware of the family’s access to large sums of money, according to the prosecutors.

Investigators said they found €63,000 in Lopez’s home.

The family members were killed when they realised Lopez was behind the assault, authorities said.

Their bodies were found in their house, which was previously owned by Mexican agriculture secretary Alberto Cardenas, the prosecutor’s office said. They had been dead for at least a day and a half.

Four of the victims, including the children, were shot in the head. A teenage boy had his throat slashed and his mother was suffocated with a plastic bag.

Mr Cardenas said the family bought the house from him two months ago because they thought they would be safer there after the boy’s kidnapping.