Brothers convicted in ‘massacre’ of sisters’ family in Tijuana

On a Friday evening in December 2021, half-brothers Christopher Baltezar Hernandez and Victor Armondo Aguilar burst into a house in Tijuana, dressed in black and armed with a rifle and a revolver. Inside the house were their sister’s family of five, including three children under the age of nine. The brothers shot them all dead.

The murders were part of a cross-border family drama involving sibling rivalry, threats and shadowy motivations that unfolded after the death of their father, an alleged drug trafficker. “The rift between (this) family was a telenovela,” one lawyer said.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez Baltezar sentenced Hernandez to six consecutive life sentences and sent Aguilar to prison for 45 years, describing their actions as “cold, deliberate, planned, calculated (and) callous.” Prosecutors called it a “massacre.”

The brothers pleaded guilty last year to a murder conspiracy and five counts of stalking resulting in death for the murders of Jazmen Hernandez – Baltezar Hernandez’s sister and Aguilar’s half-sister – her husband Gerardo “Jerry” Moreno; the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Sofia; and Hernandez’s children from a previous relationship, Andrew Lewis Morales, 9, and Anamarie Jasmine Morales, 8.

Hernandez and her three children were U.S. citizens. Moreno was a Mexican citizen who previously lived in Fresno.

“This is the most difficult case I have had to deal with so far and perhaps the most difficult case I have had to deal with in my career,” Lopez, a former criminal defense attorney who entered the court in 2021, told Baltezar Hernandez and his lawyers . She said the facts were difficult enough in themselves, but also that she does not take a life sentence lightly.

But the judge said such a sentence for Baltezar Hernandez, 28, was “justified and appropriate.”

Although both brothers accused the other of being the one who pulled the trigger, there was no legal need to determine who the shooter was as they pleaded guilty to a murder plot, Lopez said Tuesday. Prosecutors wrote in a footnote in a sentencing document that the evidence suggested Baltezar Hernandez was more likely the shooter.

“The facts show that he is the monster,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mario Peia said of Baltezar Hernandez on Tuesday.

In sentencing 23-year-old Aguilar to 45 years, which was five years longer than prosecutors recommended, the judge said he showed more remorse and was more likely to accept responsibility.

The killings were the result of a family feud between some of the approximately 20 children of an alleged Mexican drug trafficker, according to defense documents and testimony and victim impact statements from family members at several recent hearings. That man, who died in 2019, fathered those children with multiple women and mistresses using his first name and an alias, hence the different last names for Baltezar Hernandez and Aguilar, according to one of his wives. It is unclear whether he was ever prosecuted in the US or Mexico.

Just as the arrest or death of a cartel leader can splinter families and close allies, the alleged human trafficker’s death in 2019 set off a power struggle among his heirs that culminated in death threats, accusations of child sexual abuse, assaults and ultimately the 2021 death .murders.

“The war has begun,” a family declared just before the killings, according to evidence discussed in court Tuesday.

Aguilar’s attorneys wrote in a sentencing document that the alleged trafficker’s death “thrown Mr. Aguilar and his family into turmoil, which led to the murders in this case.”

The exact motivations remain obscure. Aguilar’s attorneys wrote that Baltezar Hernandez threatened to kill Jazmen Hernandez because he was “enraged at his sister over property and accusations she made about him.” Aguilar’s mother testified earlier this month that Jazmen Hernandez had accused Baltezar Hernandez of abusing at least one of her children, an accusation Baltezar Hernandez denied.

Whatever their motivation, the brothers admitted in their plea agreements to ambushing their sister and her family while armed with a .223 caliber rifle and a revolver. They shot Jazzmen and her 8-year-old daughter in the kitchen. Moreno tried to barricade himself in a bedroom with the other two children. The attackers shot them through the door, burst into the room and shot each child again in the head.

“This was an atrocity that was planned months and months before,” Peia told the judge.

In a lengthy statement Tuesday, Baltezar Hernandez described a difficult childhood at the hands of an abusive mother and an absent father. He accused Aguilar and another man of forcing him to participate in the killings through threats. He said he knew he and Aguilar had “caused a lot of pain and damage,” but claimed he remained in the car during the shootings, which the judge said contradicted his guilty plea.

Aguilar apologized in Spanish to the families of his victims, saying he knew he could do nothing to ease their pain and suffering.

Aguilar’s attorneys also described an extremely difficult upbringing for their client in sentencing documents. “His turbulent childhood included witnessing violence and murder, witnessing large-scale drug trafficking, witnessing bribery and witnessing every element of the drug trade,” attorneys Knut Johnson and Danielle Iredale wrote. “He saw so much violence, including murder, at such a young age that he became numb to it.”