Qualla: February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings

February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The case keeps killing its own investigators. On February 19, 2007, three members of El Salvador's ARENA party - Eduardo D'Aubuisson, William Pichinte, and Jose Ramon Gonzalez - along with their driver Gerardo Ramirez, were found murdered near Guatemala City. Their charred Toyota Land Cruiser had pulled away from a four-car motorcade on a remote road at El Jocotillo, about 20 miles southeast of the capital. There were indications the four had been tortured before death. Within days, four Guatemalan police detectives were arrested. Within three more days, those four suspects were dead in their prison cells. The investigation that followed left a trail of additional corpses: investigators, prosecutors, advisors - anyone who got close to the truth of what happened on that road.

February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings: The Murders at El Jocotillo

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The three congressmen were traveling to Guatemala City to attend the Central American Parliament, a regional legislative body. Their Land Cruiser was part of a four-car motorcade when it separated from the convoy and turned onto a remote road at El Jocotillo. The next day, their ...

February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings: Dead Suspects, Dead Investigators

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Police tracked the killers through a GPS system embedded in a police vehicle that had been at the crime scene. Four Guatemalan police detectives were arrested and charged on February 22. For their safety, they were secretly transferred to El Boqueron, a maximum-security prison 40...

February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings: Theories Without Answers

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Erwin Sperisen, Guatemala's chief of national police, dismissed the conspiracy theories that multiplied after each successive killing. 'People don't want to believe that the reality is simpler, more ironic and more stupid,' he said. 'It wasn't a great conspiracy. It was a series ...

February 2007 Salvadoran Congressmen Killings: The Institutional Collapse

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The twin sets of killings - the congressmen, then the suspects - exposed a Guatemalan security apparatus that could neither protect foreign legislators on its highways nor keep arrested suspects alive in its own prisons. On March 26, 2007, both Sperisen and Interior Minister Carl...