Who is Juan Carlos Garcia? Ex-Amazon CEO accused of paying hitmen $9,000 for ex-wife's 2019 murder
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO: Juan Carlos García, a former CEO of Amazon Mexico, has been accused in court on June 6 of paying around $9,000 to two hitmen to have his ex-wife, Abril Pérez Sagaón, killed in November 2019. She was shot in the head and neck by a man on a motorcycle who opened fire through the passenger-side window where she was seated in a car while driving through Mexico City.
The accused, who became the CEO of Amazon in Mexico when the company opened its first office in Mexico in 2015, has also been accused to offer another $2,500 if the hitmen killed her before her next court hearing in a case that she filed against him. The wife had accused García of attempting to murder her while they were still together, and García fled to the US before the trial for her case began. The wife, who had moved from Mexico City to the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, had a restriction order against García.
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After a judge demanded a psychological examination for the former CEO as part of the investigation into her allegations against García, Pérez flew from Nuevo Leon to a private hospital in Mexico City. In January 2019, according to Pérez’s testimony in court as reported by El Pais, she was sleeping at their shared home when a blow to her head woke her up. She said she saw García standing in front of her with a baseball bat in his hands. She then testified that she was cut with a sharp object in the cheek and that García tried to strangle her before their son pushed García away and Pérez managed to escape through a window. García was briefly incarcerated and freed after a judge decided there was not enough evidence to show he wanted to kill her. The judge reclassified the accusations as family violence.
On November 25, 2019, when the car in which she was traveling with her attorney and her two underage sons stopped at a stoplight on the way back to the airport, a man on a motorcycle approached the car and shot her in the head at close range.
No one else in the car was injured. However, the wife died. After her murder, García sent a letter addressed to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, in which he claimed to be innocent. “As a father I would have never wanted for my kids to go through something like this, which has affected them and changed our lives,” the accused wrote.