The on-the-lam former CEO of Amazon Mexico paid two hitmen $9,000 to kill his estranged wife in 2019, one of the sicarios testified in a Mexico City court.
Juan Carlos Garcia, who was named CEO of Amazon in Mexico when the company opened its first office in Mexico in 2015, has been on the run but a trial is underway in the murder of his wife, Abril Pérez Sagaón.
One of the hired guns testified that Garcia offered an extra $2,500 if his wife was killed before the couple’s next court hearing in a lawsuit she had filed against him.
Pérez had filed for divorce from her husband after she accused him of trying to kill her when he beat her with a baseball bat in January 2019. She was in Mexico City for a scheduled hearing when she was fatally shot by a motorcyclist, authorities said.
The trial for Pérez’s murder began on Monday while Garcia remains on the loose. Interpol has issued a warrant for his arrest in 190 countries.
García allegedly fled Mexico days after the murder and entered the US on foot through a checkpoint near Tijuana, which borders San Diego, Mexican outlet La Jornada reported.
Once in America, he penned a letter to the mayor of Mexico City proclaiming his innocence, according to local reports.
Pérez had been flown into Mexico City from Nuevo Leon for a court-ordered mental evaluation at a private hospital as part of an investigation into her previous attempted murder accusations against her husband, authorities said. She had a restraining order against García at the time of her murder.
A gunman approached and fatally shot Pérez while she sat in a car stopped at a traffic light with her two children and attorney.
The mother of three had accused García of beating her with a bat while she was sleeping. He was taken into custody for the incident but released when the judge downgraded the charge to domestic violence, according to the report.
Pérez’s relatives believe that García was behind her killing.
“The attack was totally directed at her,” an unnamed relative told El Pais. “And the only enemy she had in her life was him.”
García was hired to run Amazon Mexico operations in 2014 and left three years later to join the commerce group Elektra, according to his LinkedIn page.
