On 17 October 2016, Mexican federal judge Vicente Bermúdez Zacarías went on a morning jog near his home in Metepec, State of Mexico, an upscale community outside of Mexico City. As he was crossing a street, an unidentified gunman came up behind him and shot him at point-blank range in the head. Bermúdez Zacarías fell to the ground bleeding and was transported to a nearby hospital, but died before he was able to receive medical attention. The perpetrator fled the scene with an accomplice after reportedly hiding in an abandoned lot nearby. The incident was captured through a surveillance camera and was leaked to the media the following day. The identity of the suspected gunman was discovered the following year, but both men remain at large.
His murder garnered national attention and reactions from the highest levels of the Mexican government, including from President Enrique Peña Nieto and the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. Attacks against federal judges like Bermúdez Zacarías were a rare occurrence in the ongoing Mexican drug war since organized crime groups rarely targeted high-ranking judicial officials. The President ordered the investigation to be under federal jurisdiction. Investigators discovered that two weeks before he was killed, Bermúdez Zacarías suspected that two men were following him. He called the police one day on his way home, but did not request to have security measures in place for his daily activities.
Bermúdez Zacarías was based in the State of Mexico and served various court positions throughout his career. He led several notable civil and organized crime cases, including those involving suspected high-ranking leaders from Mexico's drug trafficking organizations. Initial suspicion for his murder fell on Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, once considered Mexico's most-wanted drug lord. Bermúdez Zacarías had presided over a part of his extradition process. However, the main line of investigation suggests that Bermúdez Zacarías was killed after investigating irregularities committed by his court predecessor and his accomplices. Six months before the murder, Bermúdez Zacarías accused them of visiting inmates at the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 without legal authorization.
Background Early life Vicente Antonio Bermúdez Zacarías was born on in León, Guanajuato, Mexico. His father, Vicente Bermúdez Vargas, was a lawyer, and his mother, María Elena Zacarías, was a grade school teacher. He had two siblings; a younger and an older sister. He grew up in the community of Santa Rosa Plan de Ayala, a rural community in León. Since he was six years old, Bermúdez Zacarías told his parents that he wanted to become a lawyer. While in primary school, Bermúdez Zacarías was studious and had a high grade point average. He then left to Silao, Guanajuato, for high school and attended Preparatoria Oficial. Upon graduation, he attended the University of Guanajuato from 1996 to 2001 and received his bachelor's degree in law. He then did his master's degree in criminal law at the Universidad Iberoamericana León. He interned at the High Court of Justice in Guanajuato prior to joining full-time. Outside of school, he enjoyed playing basketball and association football.
He began his legal career at the Sixth Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Guanajuato as an administrative assistant. He then held the post of judicial official and actuary at the First District Court of the Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Mexico. Bermúdez Zacarías was the secretary of the First Tribunal Court of the Twelve Circuit, representing Sinaloa; of the Tribunal Court of Administrative Matters and Work in the Sixteenth District, representing Guanajuato; and in the First Tribunal Unit of the Sixteenth. In December 2013, he became the district court judge of the Sixth Penal Court, responsible for authorizing home raids, preventative arrests, and detainee communication in Mexico City. In March 2016, he served as an appeals court judge responsible for authorizing writs of amparo and presiding over civil proceedings at a federal level in the State of Mexico.
Major cases Bermúdez Zacarías presided over several major criminal law cases, including those involving high-ranking organized crime members. In September 2013, he presided over the case involving suspected Los Zetas leader Miguel Treviño Morales (alias "Z-40"). Bermúdez Zacarías ordered his arrest warrant and formally charged him after he was arrested in July 2013. In July 2016, he presided over another case involving Treviño Morales, this time because he alleged to not have received remuneration for his prison job and for not being allowed to go to the prison's yard. Bermúdez Zacarías decided in favor of Treviño Morales. In March 2015, he ordered the 40-day preventative arrest of Abigael González Valencia (alias "El Cuini"), a suspected drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. González Valencia was arrested by Mexican security forces the month before, and was wanted for international drug trafficking and arms trafficking. Following the preventative arrest imposed by Zacarías, he was transferred to a maximum-security prison. In June 2015, he approved a writ of amparo for Ildefonso Zamora, a Mexican environmentalist who was arrested months earlier for an alleged robbery attempt. According to Bermúdez Zacarías' decision, the environmentalist's rights were violated because his presumption of innocence was ignored since there was no evidence against him. This decision guaranteed his release from prison unless the state government vetoed it. Zamora Baldomero was released from prison in August 2015.
Bermúdez Zacarías played a role in the legal process of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, once considered Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, when El Chapo was at large and in prison in Mexico. After El Chapo escaped from prison a second time in July 2015, Bermúdez Zacarías issued several rulings against him and his inner circle. He authorized law enforcement to intercept his conversations with his wife Emma Coronel Aispuro. This approval was done a week before El Chapo was re-arrested in January 2016. In March 2016, Bermúdez Zacarías suspended the extradition request of El Chapo to the United States. El Chapo's defense requested to have their client extradited because El Chapo reportedly believed that the prison conditions in Mexico were too harsh. El Chapo was later moved from the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 (also known as "Altiplano") maximum-security prison in the State of Mexico to the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 9 (also known as "Norte") in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in May 2016. In January 2017, after nearly a year of court appeals and legal proceedings, he was extradited to the U.S.
In September 2016, Bermúdez Zacarías presided over the tax fraud investigation of Naim Libien Kaui, the owner of Mexico City's newspaper Unomásuno. Unomásuno and the owner's son, Naim Libien Tella, were linked to González Valencia's drug trafficking group the previous year. According to court documents, Libien Kaui committed an income tax fraud of MXN$11,413,886 in 2012, as well as other income tax frauds in 2010, 2011, and 2013. The day Libien Kaui was arrested, he issued a writ of amparo to the State of Mexico appeals court over which Bermúdez Zacarías presided. Bermúdez Zacarías, however, struck down the writ of amparo under the rationale that the case was out of his jurisdiction. He then pushed the case to another court in Mexico City. In October 2016, he dismissed a writ of amparo issued by Gildardo López Astudillo (alias "El Gil"), a major suspect in the mass disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero that occurred in 2014. The writ of amparo was issued because El Gil wanted to be transferred from Altiplano prison. However, he rejected the request because complaints for approvals were nonexistent. Bermúdez Zacarías also presided over the cases against Javier Torres Félix, convicted high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Mario Cárdenas Guillén, a suspected Gulf Cartel leader.
Murder On 17 October 2016, Bermúdez Zacarías went on a morning jog near his home in Metepec, an upscale exurb outside of Mexico City. As he was crossing a side street in front of a private residential neighborhood entrance, a man dressed in black ran up to him from behind and shot him at point-blank range in the head with a 9 mm pistol. Bermúdez Zacarías was able to turn his head briefly before the gunman delivered the shot to the back of his head. The judge fell to the ground bleeding and curled into a fetal position before rolling onto his back and spreading his legs and arms. The assassin then ran back and startled a cyclist and a pedestrian before catching up with his accomplice, who was waiting for him from a distance, before fleeing the scene. While Bermúdez Zacarías was on the ground, a car stopped next to him for a few seconds before continuing its course. A second vehicle turned towards the street Bermúdez Zacarías was on, but continued driving inside the residential neighborhood after stopping momentarily. The security guards from the residential neighborhood then called an ambulance. He was transported to Regional Hospital 251 of the Mexican Social Security Institute in Metepec, but doctors confirmed that he died before reaching the hospital. The murder scene was cordoned by the Metepec municipal police, the State of Mexico police, and members of the State of Mexico Attorney General Office. All three law enforcement agencies conducted an investigation at the street where Bermúdez Zacarías was gunned down.
Bermúdez Zacarías' corpse was sent from the State of Mexico to León, Guanajuato on 18 October and arrived after 7:30 p.m. local time. His body was first taken in a hearse to his parents' house (escorted by vehicles from the Mexican Federal Police), where his family, friends, and acquaintances hosted a wake service. From early in the morning, Bermúdez Zacarías' family and friends began to prepare for the ceremony by putting up several chairs and flower arrangements. A mass ceremony was conducted that night, and prayers were held until dawn. Approximately 500 people attended the ceremonies. Several of Bermúdez Zacarías's hometown friends, including local authorities, posted eulogies on social media and expressed their condolences to the family. Bermúdez Zacarías' father stated that his family was deeply saddened by the murder. He also said that the murder was work-related and a revenge attack from an organized crime group. Following the priest's sermon, he asked Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) head Luis María Aguilar Morales to fully investigate the systematic corruption in Mexico's justice system. The next morning, Bermúdez Zacarías' body was buried at Jardines del Tiempo cemetery in León.