The fact is that three years after the crime, the question is still going unanswered. Worse yet, the theory the police have come up with as a response seems to be a disjointed one. The person believed to be behind the murder was freed for lack of evidence against him and the investigation has done little to prove the participation of four men being held in jail in Hermosillo, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.

"The impunity we see in this case works to the detriment of journalists, especially those who deal with such issues as drug trafficking," said Miguel Acosta Valverde, director of the Journalists Protection Program of the Mexican Human Rights Academy, who has been following the case. "It sends a very bad signal," he added. Violence against journalists on the Mexico-United States border has escalated in recent years. "The threat comes from the drug traffickers and what they do is draw a veil of silence, with the result that the community is unable to defend itself," Acosta declared.

Flores was a single-minded young man. Initially a waiter, he went on to run a street hotdog stand, become a news correspondent, private secretary to the state governor and finally owner and editor of the daily newspaper La Prensa in San Luis Río Colorado on the U.S. border.

He was a lively fellow, both journalist and manager. His stories shamelessly exposed politicians, police officers and gangsters alike. "Unfettered, like thought" was the slogan printed over the masthead of the black and white tabloid paper he founded. His work made him popular – "He was a Robin Hood," says his sister Ofelia. "He was subjected to pressure and five times he was sued for libel. " His colleagues also believe that he brought death upon himself.

He made enemies as much for what he said was true as for the unfounded accusations he published in the paper, some of his colleagues believe. "Benjamín, don’t you have even the slightest conscience about even one little lie you have uttered?" reporter Jesús Barraza once asked him in an interview. "I have never published anything that I was aware was a lie," Flores replied. "My conscience might perhaps have been stricken, though, because I have gone too far, because I have been hard, but after so many disgusting things that go on in this city, the least we can do is be ashamed of ourselves."

His hometown is a frontier city, beset by drug traffickers and police officer and officials in league with organized crime. "He had a lot of enemies. Perhaps just one person is responsible, but there were many who wanted him dead," says the Mexican Human Rights Academy’s Acosta Valverde.

Police officers, politicians and military men

In 1997, Flores published a report on the "disappearance" of half a ton of seized cocaine that was being held at the Federal Judicial Police offices in San Luis Río Colorado. The newspaper exposed police links with the drug barons and alleged the governor was also involved with them.

On his death, the local reporters turned their attention to the then Sonora state governor, Manlio Favio Beltrones. "Who did it?" The governor’s face was emblazoned on the poster. The police started looking to Jaime González Gutiérrez, alias El Jaimillo, leader of a gang of drug trafficker brothers and a frequent target of Flores’ articles.

One week after the murder the Sonora state attorney had discarded a theory that the motive was revenge by public officials or drug politicians. He focused on González Gutiérrez, turned away from the names of the initial suspects and arrested others believed to have carried out the homicide. The state attorney’s office closed the case believing it had proof that the murder had been carried out as a an act of revenge by drug traffickers for Flores’ criticism of them. "It never investigated beyond the pieces of evidence found on the road, as if they had been left there on purpose," says Ramón Gastélum Gastélum, Flores’ lawyer and friend.

None of this would matter today if the investigation had come up with solid evidence. But after three years of inquiries, the weaknesses and inconsistencies have become evident. In 1998, a judge dismissed a charge against Jaime González Gutiérrez of masterminding the murder because of lack of evidence. Eye-witnesses who identified Luis Enrique Rincón Muro as the man who had fired the shots retracted, telling the court that they had been pressured into doing so. Two men are at large and the four accused remain in jail awaiting trial in what has turned out to be a slow-moving process. Identification of other possible participants in the murder was not followed up by investigators.

The case file runs to 1,800 pages and according to observers the state attorney’s office has come up with little evidence to support its theory. "The story may be true, but it does not stand up. I don’t rule out that the state attorney might have made it up," said Humberto Melgoza, La Prensa managing editor. "I don’t know what they are going to do if this falls apart, there is no hard evidence against accused but I don’t believe they will be allowed to be found not guilty, because that would be a scandal," added Roberto Silva Calles, the four’s defense attorney.

Professional foe

González Gutiérrez was a natural enemy of Benjamín Flores. La Prensa held him to be a drug trafficker, exposing the tricks he played to get out of jail each time he was arrested and describing the privileges he enjoyed while in custody.

La Prensa’s Melgoza says the paper set about exposing González Gutiérrez’ crimes and the impunity surrounding them. His brothers pretended to be journalists. They published a free magazine, Alternativa, which served as a platform to rail against their enemies. González Gutiérrez claimed to be a reporter and his brother Ismael a member of the "Mexican Front for Human Rights."

González Gutiérrez was accused in 1992 of murdering municipal police officer Víctor Hugo Arroyo who had stopped him for speeding. He was acquitted. That same year he was charged with trafficking in cocaine and was again found not guilty. In February 1997, under a false name he was arrested for possession of 100 kilos of marijuana. Flores identified in La Prensa the next day and went on to allege he was being given special privileges while in jail.

While still in custody, González Gutiérrez was accused of masterminding Flores’ murder. According to the authorities, he arranged for his brother Gabriel to arrange the murder. But in January 1998 the charges were dropped for lack of evidence and several months later he was freed after the marijuana trafficking charge on which he had been jailed was also dismissed. "They got that man red-handed with a shipment of marijuana yet they let him go!" Melgoza exclaimed.

La Prensa put a spotlight on González Gutiérrez, the judges and the public prosecutors involved. "Apparently, what Benjamín Flores wrote brought pressure to bear on González Gutiérrez, making it more difficult for him to be freed sooner," said human rights activist Miguel Acosta.

The state attorney’s office failed to build a case against him. There is direct evidence of the orders that his brother Gabriel gave, but his own participation was based only on hearsay. One piece of evidence that the state attorney’s office had was a statement by Ramón Gastélum, Flores’ lawyer, which a judge threw out. According to Gastélum, González Gutiérrez’ attorney had offered money to Flores for him to stop writing about his client. The offer was rejected and the response was a threat against Flores. "His statement is mere supposition … conjecture that is not founded on any credible information," the judge said in ruling against a warrant for González Gutiérrez’ arrest.

"They free too many obviously guilty people. There are clearly strong vested interests behind them," Gastélum believes. "Either he is very lucky or he has a lot of financial clout or political backing, because everything has worked well for him."

There is an outstanding warrant for the arrest of Gabriel González, who has been on the run for the past three years. On February 24, 2000, he was arrested with three of his brothers in Arizona. The four are due to go on trial in the United States for distributing at least one ton of marijuana and 245 kilos of cocaine in the Yuma, Arizona, area. Jaime González was arrested on April 26, 2000, and charged with fatally stabbing José Manuel Echevarría Varela 37 times. "He is a madman, a psychopath. He says he liked the sound it made when he stabbed his victim in the throat," said La Prensa’s Melgoza.

The day after González Gutiérrez’ arrest, local newspapers quoted him as telling police that he had ordered Flores’ murder. "This a story of the scandal sheets," claims Roberto Silva Calles, the attorney of the four accused men. "Jaime is crazy, nuts, but no fool. There is no way he would ‘I did it!’ That statement has no merit whatsoever."

The police have not taken this version forward and González Gutiérrez has not confirmed his statement. Even so, the state attorney has said he plans to reopen the Flores case file. "The apprehension neither harms nor benefits anyone. In the case file there is no evidence linking him (to the crime). Mind you, I am not defending González Gutiérrez, but its is only conjecture," Silva Calles said. He insisted that the case lacks any basis. "I am asking the state attorney and the police who carried out the investigation to testify, tell us how they built the case and on what basis," he added. He claims his four clients signed their statements implicating them in the murder under torture.

Other theories

Humberto Melgoza believes that theories of other possible motives and suspects should not be overlooked. "I do not rule out that the (state governor) Beltrones administration had something to do with it. Because the González brothers had links with that administration, with the (governing) party. Benjamín took them on along with Manlio Favio and other politicians," he said. In his opinion, much of the picture remains cloudy.

Melgoza believes that at least Luis Enrique Rincón Muro is innocent. "I don’t stake my life on it, but from what we investigated there are witnesses who were with him at the time Benjamín was killed. We believe he is innocent."

Rincón, also known as El Chichi, is a young man of 27 who had a small car wash business near the La Prensa offices. According to his statement, on July 15, 1997, he was at a service station having his automobile’s air conditioning system checked when a police officer came up and told him the editor of La Prensa had been killed. The owner of the repair shop, employees there and the police officer confirmed this in court. Rincón was arrested three days after the murder and accused of having committed it. The case file includes statements from alleged accomplices that variously identified one "El Greñas" and Carlos Pacheco García as the person who fired the fatal shots. There is no further detail of them in the file.

"They put me in an official car and they took me to a canal," Rincón said from his jail cell in Hermosillo. "There were four of them, they wanted me to sign some papers. They began to beat me inside the car, ‘sign it, sign it,’ it was typewritten, a pile of papers they wanted me to sign. I started to get the idea. They had my name and everything, that I was thin and had long hair. It was July 18, I’ll never forget that day."

That night he was taken to the La Prensa plant to see if the journalists who had witnessed the murder recognized him. "They said, ‘yes, he looks like him,’ but in the case file the state attorney’s office said that they identified him without any hesitation as the person who had shot Benjamín," Melgoza said.

The La Prensa journalists testified in Rincón’s defense. They said they had been subjected to pressure and their statements were falsified. They recalled having seen a thin man with a hooked nose, like Rincón, but with shoulder-length hair, while Rincón had cut his hair two weeks earlier to have a photo taken and apply for a job at the local police precinct. The reporters’ testimony is crucial for the case against Rincón to be thrown out, his lawyer believes.

Jorge Pacheco also claims that he was made to sign under torture. He was held in custody in another northern Mexico city. He was driving a van that he said he had purchased from Gabriel González and which the police say he received in payment for organizing the murder. Pacheco is accused of recruiting the participants on Gabriel González’ direct orders.

"They were holding me in a hotel, torturing me for seven days," Pacheco said. There was a typewriter, Pacheco was on the floor, handcuffed, police officers went in and out of the bathroom drugged. "They were writing whatever they wanted," Pacheco said. An illiterate, he said he put his signature on a document that he never read. In his statement, Pacheco allegedly confessed that brothers Ismael and Gabriel González organized the murder at the orders of Jaime González and they paid him to find someone to carry it out.

Miguel and Vidal Zamora Lara are the other two accused. According to the investigation, they confessed to having taken part in the murder and named Pacheco and Rincón as their accomplices. According to their testimony – also challenged by the defense – Gabriel González paid them $2,000 for pointing out who was Benjamín Flores.

In the early days of the investigation more names were brought up that were dropped from the inquiries as time went by — Leobardo Pérez Ayala, José Pedro Valdez Gámez, Javier Ayala Garibay and Carlos Pacheco García.

The speed with which the case was built contrasts now with the lethargy in which it is going to trial. "The case has not been delayed by court problems," says Judge Santa Adelina Flores Montoya in Hermosillo. "Our interest is to impart justice. We have tried to do so in the speediest possible manner," added the judge, whose current caseload tops 100.

Movement has been slow in part because the authorities decided to move the trial to a city an eight-hour drive form the scene of the crime, San Luis Río Colorado. "It was a totally arbitrary and painful decision that has made the defense more difficult," said Silva Calles, the attorney for the four defendants. "We saw as a way of holding the case back," La Prensa’s Melgoza said. Under Mexican jurisprudence, everything is done in writing. In this trial, the confrontation between the accused and the prosecution has been on paper.

The arrest of Gabriel González and his brothers in the United States raised the hope that Flores’ murder might be solved. There is not much room for optimism, however. Gabriel and his brothers must first face trial and if convicted carry out their sentence in the United States before they could be extradited to Mexico to face charges against them there. Gabriel González would be tried for Flores’ murder soon only if he were acquitted in the United States and the extradition request could be handled quickly.

As for Jaime González, the welcome that greeted his arrest appears to have dissipated now. "We are desperate, there is no longer any interest in solving the case," Melgoza said. According to defense attorney Silva Calles, over the past three years the state attorney’s office has come up with no new evidence to support the theory that Jaime González was implicated, only that which was thrown out by the judge who let him go.

"I fear that despite the overwhelming evidence, things will go against us," the defense attorney said. "I don’t have any confidence. It would be a big deal for the Sonora police to admit they are not guilty. What would happen? They will go all out to put them away."

The Page 2 reminder about Flores death that La Prensa has been publishing every two weeks for the past three years is about to be changed. "We are going to change the wording and call on (Mexican President-elect) Vicente Fox to solve the crime. This is the last option left to us," Melgoza said.