Mass grave found near Mexico City

Mexican authorities said Thursday they discovered a mass grave in the town of Tlalmanalco, east of Mexico City, and are conducting tests to determine if the site holds some of the 12 people who vanished from a bar in an upscale area of the capital nearly three months ago. 

At least seven bodies were recovered from the grave, Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios told reporters at a news conference. He said the victims could not be identified from clothing, and the cause of death had not been determined.

"We will look at DNA tests that have been taken ... to confirm or discard scientifically if the bodies found are the people who disappeared from the bar," Rios said.

Agents from the federal Attorney General’s Office were acting on a tip that there may have been illegal weapons on the property, known locally as Rancho La Negra, and obtained a search warrant. Agents found the grave while searching for the weapons, assistant attorney general Renato Sales Heredia told reporters.

“They found a home that looked like a safe house," Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said. "We were operating under the belief it was a weapons case."

The 12 young people, who were partying at the after-hours nightclub Heaven, vanished at midday on May 26. The club is located just one block from Mexico City’s Paseo de Reforma, an iconic lush avenue that cuts diagonally across the city. Some relatives of the missing arrived while the property was being excavated, crying and shielding their faces from the media.

"We have had three months with this anxiety," Maria Teresa Ramos, grandmother of Jerzy Ortiz, one of the missing, told Milenio television. "We are dying every day, little by little."

Rios said there were more bodies to recover and work would continue in an area near Rancho La Mesa Ecological Park in the state of Mexico. Rios also said that rainy weather had turned the ground on the hilly terrain muddy, complicating excavation. Authorities maintained a one mile perimeter around the excavation site.

While none of the bodies had identification on them, one federal investigator said the designer clothes they found made searchers “90 percent sure” they were those of the victims from the Heaven case. The agent, who spoke to the media under condition of anonymity, said excavators couldn’t find any distinguishing body markings or tattoos because of how decomposed they were, and that the bodies recovered so far were covered with lime and sand in a shallow grave.

According to the same agent, two men living on the property in a trailer were detained, although Murillo Karam told reporters there had been no arrests. Authorities also found three guns on the property.

A worker from a neighboring property said the land was private, and couldn’t be reached by the public. The ranch is walled and surrounded by oak and pine trees. Bulldozers, cows, roosters and other animals could all be heard in the distance.

Prosecutors have said the abductions from the bar were linked to a dispute between two rival drug gangs, one in Mexico City's dangerous Tepito neighborhood, home to most of the abducted. The families of the disappeared, however, say the missing young people were not involved in drug trafficking.

Surveillance cameras showed several cars pulling up to the bar and abducting the victims. A witness who escaped told authorities that a bar manager had ordered the music turned off, told patrons that authorities were about to raid the establishment and ordered those inside to leave.

Mexico City officials have insisted since the Heaven kidnapping that large drug cartels do not operate in the city. So far, five people have been detained in the Heaven case, including club owner Ernesto Espinosa Lobo, known as "The Wolf," who has been charged with kidnapping.

Among the arrested are another bar owner, a driver and security guard. One suspect is still a fugitive.

In another element of the case that is reminiscent of cartel warfare, one of the owners of the Heaven bar, Dax Rodriguez Ledezma, fled authorities only to turn up dead, his body dumped and burned in a rural area with that of his girlfriend and another friend.

The bizarre disappearance resonated across the city of 9 million people because many had come to believe it was an oasis from Mexico's cartels and drug violence.

The 12 have not been heard from since.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press.