The Mexican Navy announced Monday that it detained an alleged leader of the Zetas drug cartel who is suspected in the 2010 killing of American David Hartley on a lake near the U.S.-Mexico border, KDVR.com reported.
"If this gentleman, this suspect does have involvement, we want to know where David is at. Let's get some evidence of his remains and let us as a family two years later be able to have some closure," Tiffany Hartley, the victim's widow, said from her Colorado home. "I pray that the Mexico authorities and officials keep him there and that they question him and ask him how he's linked to David."
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Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo was detained last week and presented to the media Monday.
Tiffany Hartley said she was with her husband riding Jet Skis on Falcon Lake in south Texas when they were ambushed. David Hartley was shot dead and killed and his wife was unable to haul his body onto her watercraft before being forced to flee.
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Martinez, known as "The Squirrel," also is suspected of being behind of the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement.
The statement also said Martinez was suspected to be responsible for graves found with more than 200 bodies in that state, "and the execution of more than 50 people by his own hands in different parts of the country."
When asked whether she had confidence that authorities had arrested the man responsible for killing her husband, she said, "It's really hard to really feel like this is going to be the final, but at the same time we're very hopeful that it will because we want some closure as a family."
Tiffany Hartley said she doesn't believe Martinez pulled the trigger, but may have given the go-ahead to the people who did. "But that's what we're really looking for is, what is his link to David and does he know where David's body is. Does he know where the remains are? Same questions we had two years ago. Where is David, and who had the involvement in all this," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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