The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Ordaz’s mutilated body was dumped in the street behind in the offices of the Imagen de Veracruz newspaper at 4:00 am on Tuesday after being abducted from her home on Sunday.
The placement of her body at a newspaper’s offices has been interpreted by some as a threat against journalists. Ordaz’s role as police reporter, often writing on the war on drugs, further suggests her murder was linked to her work.
Yet, in a press conference state prosecutor Reynaldo Escobar Pérez denied that Ordaz’s death was connected her work. He stated that “everything points to the (murder) being carried out by members of an organized crime group and this line of investigation will be pursued to the end.”
He also suggested that Ordaz may have had connections to a drug cartel and that could have led to her death.
However, the Center for Protecting Journalists (CPJ) quotes Magda Zayas, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, saying Ordaz’s work is still being investigated as a possible motive for her killing.
The state Attorney General said that a note was left with Ordaz’s body signed “Carranza,” linking her death to López’s murder.
Furthermore, The San Francisco Chronicle reports that colleagues of Ordaz claimed she was investigating the murder of her former boss Miguel Angel López Velasco at the time of her death, and that she had received anonymous threats in connection with her investigation.
López, editor and columnist at Notiver, was killed along with his wife and son only a month ago in his home in Veracruz. Authorities say that Juan Carlos Carranza, an alleged member of the Los Zetas cartel, is responsible for their deaths and remains at large.
Veracruz, a large port city on the Gulf of Mexico, has experienced increased violence as a result of fighting between the Zetas and Gulf cartels over control of drug and human trafficking. Both are prolific in the city due to its location.
A report by The National Human Rights Commission stated that since 2000, 71 journalists have been murdered and 13 have gone missing in Mexico. In the past year alone 15 journalists have been killed, four of them in Veracruz, including Ordaz.
