26 July 2011
Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz
Beheading
The decapitated head and body of veteran reporter Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz was found, according to officials in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
The journalist was abducted two days earlier by armed men as she left her house. Ordaz covered the police beat for the main Veracruz city newspaper, Notiver, but her body was found near the building of the newspaper Imagen.
Reporters in Veracruz said the gruesome killing and the placement of the body appeared to be an ominous message meant for the press. In a press conference, the state prosecutor, Reynaldo Escobar Perez, denied that Ordaz's murder was linked to her work, and said the evidence seemed to indicate that her killers were members of organized crime.
However, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, Magda Zayas, told CPJ that the journalist's work was one of the lines of investigation they are following.
