Policeman possibly linked to Falcon Lake case beheaded

The head of a Mexican police commander presumed to be investigating the reported pirate attack against David Michael Hartley on Falcon Lake was delivered to Mexican military, sources said Tuesday. State Rep. Aaron Pena, said he was told that Rolando Flores’ head was delivered Tuesday in a suitcase. Ruben Rios, spokesman for the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office, told the Associated Press that Flores is the head of state investigators in the border city of Ciudad Miguel Alemán, a small city directly across the border from Roma, Texas. Lesley Lopez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said the head was delivered in the vicinity of Miguel Alemán.

The area is known to be under control of the Zeta drug cartel, which fiercely protects the remotely populated ranchland lining the Texas-Mexico border, as well as the Mexican side of the vast Falcon Lake reservoir. Rios also told the Associated Press that the killing was unrelated to Hartley’s investigation. Hartley has been missing since Sept. 30, when he and his wife took their personal watercraft into Mexican waters to photograph a partially submerged town. Investigators have been hampered on this side byby an inability to cross the border. Mexican investigators have meanwhile expressed fears of searching in Zeta turf.