Multiple Murders, Cannibalism Normal In Cancun...No Big Deal

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Gruesome Murder Wave Shakes Mexico's Cancun

Mexico City - Not far from the luxury hotels, bars and Caribbean beaches, a wave of grisly murders has hit the Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, with 13 dead bodies discovered in less than two months.

Prosecutors said on Tuesday the latest victim surfaced on the weekend when a construction worker stumbled on the body of a local man bound hand and foot and apparently suffocated in wasteland near a main highway.

A local justice official said it was unclear if there was a connection with a dozen other murder victims found in recent weeks -- five that had been tied up and shot in the head, four whose charred bodies were found in the burned remains of a car, and three that had been tied up and suffocated.

Those killings have been linked by police to drug trafficking.

The latest victim was identified as Fernando Grajales, 31, an employee at Cancun's international airport who had been missing since Dec. 7 and was found on Sunday.

"He had been asphyxiated with a shirt, possibly his own, and he had been tied at the hands and feet with plastic cord," said Angel Lopez, spokesman for the local district attorney.

"This doesn't mean there is a link with the others. Initial investigations suggest it could have been a crime of passion."

In another shock for the balmy, resort-dotted Cancun coast, police in nearby Playa del Carmen earlier this month arrested a 25-year-old man found cooking and eating the body of a young man he had killed with blows to the head.

Over 2 million tourists, many of them American, flock each year to Cancun's white beaches and wild night life, but few venture near the poorer neighborhoods where crime and sparring between rival drug gangs is exacerbated by police corruption.

Mexico is a key link between drug producers in Latin America and consumers in North America, and packages of cocaine are regularly dropped into the sea around Cancun by small planes for traffickers in speed boats to pick up.

Vacationers were also alarmed in July when the U.S. government issued a warning that they should be alert for violence in Cancun, after stone-throwing demonstrators ousted the city's mayor.