SAN DIEGO – A California man is suspected in a series of murders of sex workers in Mexico, Baja California’s top prosecutor said Friday.
Federal authorities arrested Bryant Rivera, 30, in Downey, a city in Los Angeles County, on Thursday at the request of Mexican authorities, according to court documents and US officials.
He was taken into federal custody pending a pretrial detention hearing Monday in Los Angeles, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California.
Federal officials said they expected Mexican prosecutors to formally request extradition.
A U.S. attorney’s complaint underpins an arrest warrant for Rivera and lays out the Baja California case against him in the death last year of a Tijuana sex worker. He claims he has been charged feminicidethe killing of women because they are women.
Bryant Rivera.via Facebook
On Friday, Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said Rivera is charged in the deaths of three women in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.
Rivera “is considered a serial killer” and “will now face justice in Baja California,” Carpio said on Facebook, according to a translation by NBC News.
It was unclear if Rivera had legal representation. The Los Angeles federal public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal complaint details the Jan. 24, 2022, killing of Tijuana club dancer and sex worker Ángela Carolina Acosta Flores, who was last seen on security video entering a hotel room according to prosecutors Rivera had rented it.
Her lifeless body was found in a bathroom the next day, and an autopsy concluded she had been suffocated, according to the complaint.
Baja California prosecutors say Rivera was seen leaving the courtroom before midnight that night and never returned. He crossed the US-Mexico border on foot 13 minutes after leaving the courtroom, the complaint alleges.
A witness used Rivera’s first and last names to tell detectives who he last saw with Acosta at the club, which is next door to the hotel, according to the filing. The anonymous witness said she knew Rivera as a regular, the complaint says.
Another witness gave a detailed description of the defendant’s face and clothing, noting that his pandemic mask did not fit well and thus revealed “an acne-scarred face,” the document said .
Last year, the Baja California attorney general’s office said the suspect in all three cases had sex with his victims before killing them. He frequented Tijuana’s red light district, known as the Zona Nord, he said.
It’s unclear what led authorities to Rivera, but the complaint contains details about a truck he was associated with, as well as an image of his border crossing early on January 25, 2022.
Details of the other two cases were not available. Baja California authorities said the deaths spanned September 2021 to February 2022. It was unclear if Acosta was the latest victim — she was identified by her mother in early February 2022, according to the federal court file.
The Baja California attorney general’s office said last year that the three bodies were found in hotel rooms.
In a video posted on the attorney general’s Facebook page, Carpio credits “scientific investigation” and a “strong alliance and collaboration to fight crime across borders” with Thursday’s arrest.
“In Baja California,” he said, “nobody escapes justice.”
Gender-based violence and femicide in Mexico have sparked protests and calls for government action.
The Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System reported more than 1,900 murders of women in Mexico between January and November 2022, of which 858 were femicides, according to the US State Department. Human Rights Report.
Joe Kottke, Alex Lo and Bill Feather contributed.
