Ex-CEO of Amazon Mexico Paid $9,000 to Have His Wife Killed, Hitman Says

A former CEO of Amazon Mexico, Juan Carlos García, was accused in court this week of paying the equivalent of around $9,000 to have his ex-wife killed in 2019. 

García allegedly paid 180,000 Mexican pesos to two sicarios, or hitmen, to murder Abril Pérez Sagaón. He offered another 50,000 pesos (around $2,500) if they killed her before her next court hearing in a case that she filed against him, one of the two hitmen claimed in a court hearing this week.

Pérez had accused García of attempting to murder her while they were still together, and García fled to the U.S before the trial for her case began. Pérez, who had moved from Mexico City to the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, had a restriction order against García. 

After her murder, García sent a letter addressed to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, in which he claimed to be innocent. 

“As a father I would have never wanted for my kids to go through something like this, which has affected them and changed our lives,” García wrote. 

After a judge demanded a psychological examination for Pérez as part of the investigation into her allegations against García, Pérez flew from Nuevo Leon to a private hospital in Mexico City. On November 25, 2019, when the car in which she was traveling with her attorney and her two underage sons halted at a stoplight on her way back to the airport, a man approached the car and shot her in the head at close range. 

No one else in the car was injured. Pérez died that night. She was killed on the International Day Of Violence Against Women. 

In January 2019, according to Pérez’s testimony in court, she was sleeping at their shared home when a blow to her head woke her up. She said she saw García standing in front of her with a baseball bat in his hands. She then testified that she was cut with a sharp object in the cheek, and that García tried to strangle her before their son pushed García away and Pérez managed to escape through a window. 

García was briefly incarcerated and freed after a judge decided there was not enough evidence to show he wanted to kill her. The judge reclassified the accusations as family violence. 

After García left Mexico, eight people suspected of being connected to Perez’s murder were arrested, including the man who allegedly pulled the trigger.

The trial for the murder of Pérez started on Monday June 6 with the testimony of the alleged hitman, who claims he was hired by García. 

García was appointed Amazon chief executive when the company opened its first office  in Mexico in 2015. His whereabouts are still unknown and Interpol hasissued a warrantagainst him in 190 countries.