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A hired hitman for a powerful Mexican cartel is claiming he helped carry out the executions of more than 500 people at a remote ranch — including 250 bodies he says he personally incinerated.
He has now spent the last 18 months providing tips to a group of volunteers searching for their loved ones.
The masked assassin said that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel made hundreds of victims disappear at and around Rancho Izaguirre, a remote property located in Teuchitlán, a municipality in the western state of Jalisco.
“More than 500 people were executed there,” the cartel’s executioner said in an interview aired by Italian public television broadcaster RAI on Oct. 10.
“I personally incinerated 250 people,” he confessed.
The killer, whose identity was concealed, said he earns about $220 a week to carry out executions for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
“In the cartel, a hitman always earns the same wage,” he said, “I might kill five people in a single day, but my pay remains the same. A life doesn’t cost much.”
The Italian outlet revealed that the killer had been in contact with the Jalisco Search Warriors, a collective of volunteers, and alerted it to the alleged extermination site.
“They’ll never find them,” he said. “If they keep searching, they might find more bodies in the area surrounding the ranch.”
According to the Mexican government, the ranch had been used since 2021 by the cartel, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
The site was initially discovered by the National Guard in September 2024 during a raid that led to the arrest of 10 cartel members. Two kidnapping victims were rescued and a dead body was also found, but the Jalisco prosecutor’s office downplayed the discovery as just a training site for the cartel.
Jalisco Search Warriors leader Indira Navarro told The Post on Thursday that she first learned of Rancho Izaguirre in February 2025 after receiving anonymous phone calls from kidnapping victims, who were lured with job offers but managed to flee, as well as information from the cartel hitman.
A visit on March 5, 2025 proved to be embarrassing for the Mexican government after Navarro and volunteers uncovered hundreds of clothing items and human bone fragments. The bone parts were transferred to the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office, but have yet to be linked to any missing persons.
Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) took over the case and convicted the 10 cartel members and sentenced them each to 141 years in prison in July 2025.
This week the federal prosecutor’s office rejected the cartel assassin’s Italian television tell-all.
“Regarding a video in which an alleged member of a criminal group claims to have carried out a mass incineration of people at the property known as Rancho Izaguirre, located in the state of Jalisco, the FGR states that this claim is false,” it said Wednesday, adding that forensics work had been done on 92% of the site.
However, Navarro disputed the federal prosecutor’s assessment, saying the hitman’s tips had led volunteers to locations where human remains appeared to have been burned.
“He was one of the witnesses who provided us with information,” said Navarro, who claims that thousands of human remains have been located. “Why do I remember him? Because he contacted us again later in [June 2026], and his voice was very distinctive — unmistakable.”
He also told the group to go to another location in April 2025, in a neighboring municipality called Ahualulco de Mercado, where Navarro said many bodies had been burned and more than 1,000 body fragments were found.
“At that time, we found a vast number of charred human remains there,” she said.
Navarro said that she has not been in contact with the state and federal attorney general offices since the cartel hitman’s interview.