Activists call out official’s murder-suicide explanation for nonbinary magistrate’s death

Mexican LGBTQ+ activists are questioning a state prosecutor’s claim that the country’s first out nonbinary magistrate was murdered by their partner in a murder-suicide rather than slain in a hate crime like many suspect.

Aguascalientes state prosecutor Jesús Figueroa Ortega said that Dorian Herrera, the partner of nonbinary magistrate Jesús Ociel Baena, stabbed Baena 20 times with a razor blade before lethally slitting his own throat, the Associated Press reported. Ortega said the attack began in Baena’s bedroom and ended downstairs, leaving bloody footprints around the house.

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Ortega also said there was no evidence of a third party or forced entry into the house and that Herrera had traces of methamphetamines in his system. Herrera and Baena’s bodies were discovered at Baena’s home on November 13, 2023.

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“It may seem like a not very credible hypothesis to many,” Ortega said, “but we’re being very careful to leave a record and preserve all evidence.”

However, Máximo Carrasco, a friend of the two dead individuals, called Ortega’s theory “completely unthinkable” and merely an excuse to make the case go away.

“I knew what they were like as a couple,” Carrasco said, noting that he saw the two partners a week before their deaths.

Knowing both individuals for five years, Carrasco said they were only ever loving and respectful in his presence and had spoken excitedly about their future lives and activism together. “This was a hate crime,” he added.

Alejandro Brito — director of Letra S, an LGBTQ+ rights group — called Ortega’s theory “loaded with prejudices” that make marginalized communities distrust government authorities.

“In these types of homicides, they always try to disqualify or belittle,” Brito said. “These statements that the prosecutor is giving, what they’re doing isn’t clarifying the acts, they’re adding fuel to the fire of these prejudices.”

Brito called for authorities to continue investigating and pointed out that Baena was “a person who received many hate messages and even threats of violence and death” because of their notoriety as an out queer official and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.

“You can’t ignore that in these investigations,” Brito said. Brito believes that Baena’s murder may have been a way to silence and intimidate the LGBTQ+ community.

Víctor Espíndola, executive director of Movement for Equality in Mexico, told Courthouse News, “There is no evidence to support the attorney general’s version [of events], because there are no cameras in the house and there were no witnesses. But he dares to declare that there was an argument in the bedroom.”

Espíndola’s organizations and several others have requested that the federal attorney general’s office take over the case because Ortega’s claims aren’t trustworthy. An official with Mexico’s Interior Ministry, Félix Arturo Medina, said federal officials hoped to coordinate with state authorities to investigate further.

The deceased magistrate’s father, Juan Baena, told the BBC, “[It] would be a shame to let this justice system make a judgment that is not correct and that the majority do not believe it.”

Only 1% of all crimes committed in Mexico were reported, investigated, and resolved in 2022, according to a survey by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, the AP reported.