EL Pirulí: el SANGRIENTO misterio de su ESPOSA… y la PUERTA hacia la MUERTE

  She left without her keys, something she did regularly because she knew her parents would be awake [music] waiting for her. And according to later testimonies from neighbors, around 9 pm, Victor received a phone call.  He spoke for several minutes and after hanging up he seemed restless, nervous, but he did n’t say anything specific to Irma about the call.  The hours passed.

  Victor settled into his favorite recliner in front of the television.  Irma was in the bedroom on the second floor.  [music] Their son Victor Manuel, who still lived with them, was in his bedroom [music] studying or listening to music. Versions vary and then around 11 at night, almost midnight, according to some testimonies, the doorbell [music] of the house rang.

Insistently, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.  Victor got up from the armchair. I was wearing comfortable loungewear: pajama pants, a t-shirt, and slippers.  I had no reason to be afraid.   She was at home in a safe neighborhood and her daughter Lucy was outside without her keys. But here arises the first inconsistency that the researchers noticed.

  [music] Victor had a staff of servants.  He had domestic staff who usually opened the door.  Because he personally got up to open the door at midnight.  They called him by name from outside.  Someone said something specific that made him go in person.  Victor walked towards the door.  He opened it confidently, expecting to see his daughter.

  [music] And instead of Lucy he saw three unknown faces, three professional hitmen and in their hands 9mm caliber pistols.  There were no words, no music, no verbal threats, no demands for money or jewelry, just six shots at point-blank range.  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.  Six expanding bullets that tore apart Victor’s body.

Chest, abdomen, vital organs [music] designed to kill instantly. Victor and Turbo fell backwards.  His body collapsed like puppets without strings, and the three hitmen, without haste, without nervousness, [music] turned around and walked calmly towards their vehicle.  Uh, like someone finishing routine work, like someone who knows there will be no persecution, like someone who has protection from being touched by anyone.

  Inside the house, Irma heard the explosions from the second floor.  Six explosions that echoed through the night.  Her son Victor Manuel also heard them from his bedroom.  They both ran downstairs and found horror that would haunt them forever.  Victor and Turbe lay in a rapidly growing pool of blood , their eyes open, their mouths ajar, expressions of utter surprise frozen on their faces.

   He had not imagined that his assassins were waiting for him on the other side of the door.  He hadn’t had time to defend himself.   I had n’t even had time to scream.  According to witnesses, Irma began to scream hysterically.  She threw herself onto her husband’s body.  Her hands were covered in blood as she tried to stop the bleeding, which no longer mattered, because Victor had died almost instantly.

Her son tried to help, but it was obvious there was nothing to be done. [music] A neighbor, alerted by the gunshots, ran over , [music] saw the scene and called the police and emergency services. But by the time they arrived, approximately 15 minutes later, Victor Iturbe was already dead.  And this is where the investigation should have seriously begun.

  This is where the experts should have preserved the crime scene. This is where every detail had to be meticulously documented.  [music] But that didn’t happen.  And here comes the third thing I promised you.  The leaden silence that buried the case.  The first police officers to arrive were from the municipal police of Atizapán de Zaragoza, who took note of the obvious.

  We sang of him being shot dead at his door. They called people from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, they called experts from the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico, but when the experts arrived hours later, and this is a crucial detail that came out in later reports, the scene had already been altered, [music] the body had been moved, objects had been touched and according to some reports, even blood had been partially cleaned from certain areas.

Who altered the scene?  On whose orders?  It was never officially clarified, but the result was that crucial evidence was probably lost in those first few hours.  [music] The autopsy confirmed the obvious.  Victory Turbe died from gunshot wounds. [music] Six projectiles, 9 mm caliber. Expanding bullets designed to cause maximum internal damage.

  Shot at a distance of less than 8 m according to trajectories. Almost instantaneous death, [music] typical of professional performance.  And the ballistic experts who examined the bullets noticed something.  They were the type used by professional hitmen.   These were not ordinary bullets that any street criminal would use for an assault.

  They were expensive, specialized ammunition of the type that cartels bought for their hitmen.  So from the beginning, the foiled robbery theory that the family tried to promote was clearly false.  [music] There was no robbery, nothing was taken from the house.  Irma’s jewels were intact.  [music] The cash that Victor had at home was not touched. His luxury car was still in the garage.

  It wasn’t an assault, it was an execution.  And the question was, executed, by whom, why?  And that’s where the investigation should have gone deeper.  But instead, the family erected an impenetrable wall of silence .  [music] When investigators tried to question Irma Pérez de Anda, she refused to give any significant details.

He said he hadn’t seen anything, that he didn’t know anything, that it had been [music] assault.  When asked about possible enemies of her husband, she said she did n’t know of any.  When asked about Victor’s finances , about debts, about shady dealings, he refused to answer.  His son Victor Manuel was equally reluctant.

   He refused to cooperate, refused to give detailed statements, and when the police tried to pressure him, he hired lawyers who blocked the questioning and the domestic staff, the people who worked in the house and who must have seen or heard something.  Suddenly they had extremely bad memories.

  They couldn’t remember anything useful, they hadn’t noticed anything strange.  They couldn’t help at all.  It was a coordinated wall of silence.  And that silence was more revealing than any confession, because innocent people whose loved one is murdered are usually desperate to cooperate with the police; they usually want justice.   He usually gives all possible information to help catch the killers.

  But when immediate family refuses to cooperate, when they actively obstruct investigation, when they hire lawyers to avoid questioning, it suggests one of two things.  They are either protecting someone or they are afraid of someone.  And in the case of Victor and Turbe, all signs pointed to fear. Fear that if they talked too much, if they revealed too much, they would end up like Victor.

  Fear that the same bigwigs who ordered their execution would reach them too.  And there was a chilling incident that confirmed that fear.  Fernando Aranda, Victor’s personal secretary, received an anonymous call two days after the murder. It was the early morning of December 1st. The phone rang.  Fernando answered half asleep, and in a deep, mature voice, he said a single word: “Dead,” and hung up.

Fernando reported this to the police. Investigators took this as confirmation that Víctor’s murder was a clear and decisive act of retaliation, according to the exact words they used in their report. It was a message, a warning, a way of saying, “We carried out our threat, and we can do it again if anyone talks too much.

” And then rumors and theories began to surface, painting a very different picture from the romantic singer the public knew. Information was leaked about altercations between Víctor and his manager, Walter Vallejo. Apparently, they had had a serious conflict over money, and according to his secretary, Fernando Aranda, Vallejo had threatened Víctor with death on one occasion.

 Information also emerged about a long-standing feud between Víctor and another singer, Jorge Vargas. They had had professional problems nine years earlier that were never fully resolved. And when Víctor died, Jorge was called to give a statement because some suspected he might be involved. Jorge Vargas vehemently denied it.

 He said  He said that although he had had problems with Víctor years before, he had confronted them directly at the time and even helped the family after the murder out of humanity and because, as Anda’s partner, he was obligated to. He added that he condemned the murder because of the bestial and cowardly way it was committed.

 But the theory of personal revenge by another artist didn’t make sense, given the brutality of the crime. Professional hitmen, expanding bullets, perfect execution. That wasn’t a crime of passion by a jealous artist; that was the work of professionals paid by someone with massive resources. And so we come to the fourth point I promised you.

 The three main theories that the Attorney General’s Office pursued but could never prove because the family stopped cooperating. The first theory, that of the forbidden affair with a drug trafficker’s wife,  had brutal logic. In the drug world of the 80s, infidelity with a Capo’s wife was an automatic death sentence  and a form of public execution in his own home.

 With a clear message, it was typical of revenge.  A personal affront to the honor of a powerful man. Investigators tried to follow this lead, tried to identify the woman, tried to confirm if a romance existed, but without cooperation from people close to Víctor who might have known about the secret relationship, they couldn’t make any progress. The lead went cold.

 The second theory about multimillion-dollar debts for land in Puerto Vallarta also made sense. According to documents investigators were able to obtain, Víctor had invested heavily in real estate, but the deal went wrong, and apparently the people involved weren’t legitimate businesspeople; they were figures linked to drug money laundering .

 And when you owe millions to people in organized crime, there’s no bankruptcy to protect you, no law to defend you, and there’s only one way to settle the debt if you can’t pay with your life. And Víctor’s execution would have been a way to send a message to other debtors. This is what happens when you don’t pay. Investigators tried to trace  real estate transaction documents.

 They tried to identify Víctor’s business partners, but again, without cooperation from family members who likely had  Without access to Víctor’s financial records, they couldn’t make any progress. The third theory was the most general: that Víctor knew too much, that in his years singing at drug traffickers’ private parties he had seen faces, heard names, witnessed meetings that made him a potentially dangerous witness, and perhaps someone decided that the risk of Víctor one day cooperating with authorities, either voluntarily or under

pressure, was unacceptable, so they eliminated him preemptively. This theory was the hardest to prove because it would require identifying exactly what Víctor knew and whom he threatened with that knowledge. And without his testimony, without records of his private performances, without the cooperation of whoever hired him, it was impossible.

 And amidst all these theories and leads that were going cold, weeks passed. And then, in December 1987, barely a month after the murder, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico announced its devastating closure of the case. The official reason they gave was a lack of information and cooperation from the family.

 They said that without cooperation from key witnesses, without access  Without the victim’s financial information, and without full statements from those who knew him best, they couldn’t move forward. It was a complete surrender. It was an admission that the victim’s family had effectively blocked the investigation and that the authorities had neither the will nor the ability to force cooperation.

 The closing of the case was scandalous. Groups of journalists protested. Editorial columns questioned how such a brutal murder of such a public figure could go unsolved in just one month. Some suggested there was political pressure to close cases quickly before the investigation reached protected bigwigs.

 But the protests accomplished nothing. The case was officially closed, and the special group of investigators that had been created specifically to solve it was disbanded. Irma Pérez de Anda and her children made a decision that revealed everything. They moved from Mexico City, abandoned the house where Víctor had died, withdrew from the media, completely distanced themselves from anything related to the case, and for decades afterward refused to speak publicly about the murder.

  That behavior—fleeing, hiding, remaining perpetually silent—is not the behavior of a family seeking justice; it is the behavior of a family seeking survival, preferring to live in silence rather than die seeking the truth. And that silence led to the final, darkest theory:  that the family itself knew who had ordered the murder, that perhaps Víctor himself had told them before dying that if anything happened to him, they knew who to blame, and that they made a conscious decision not to avenge him, not to search for him, not to pursue him,

because they knew that Víctor’s enemies were so powerful that confronting him would mean suicide. There was even a rumor, never confirmed or probably false, but revealing of an atmosphere of suspicion, that Irma herself had killed Víctor, that it was a domestic crime, not a drug cartel execution, that the Bloodstained Armchair had been found in the Moritas River in Atizapán, suggesting that Víctor was murdered inside the house and the scene was staged to make it appear as if hitmen had attacked him at the door. This

rumor is almost certainly false. The evidence  Ballistics doesn’t support it. The testimonies of neighbors who saw hitmen fleeing don’t support it, but the fact that the rumor existed shows the level of distrust that the family’s silence had generated. And so the murder of Víctor Turbe, the “pirulí” (a type of lollipop), became what it is today: an unsolved mystery, a cold case, a closed file , another name on the long list of drug cartel victims whose deaths were never brought to justice.

 And what makes this case particularly significant is that it was one of the first, perhaps the very first, where a public figure in the entertainment industry was clearly executed on the orders of organized crime. It was a prelude to what would come later: Chalino Sánchez in 1992, Paco Stanley in 1999, and dozens of singers, actors, and journalists who would be silenced in the following decades.

 Víctor Turbe was an unwitting pioneer of a new era where drug cartels no longer settled for operating in the shadows, where they could target anyone, even national idols, where a message of power was more important than maintaining a low profile. Total impunity for his murder. Case closed in a month with no arrests, no trials, no consequences.

 It sent a clear message to future criminals: You can kill anyone. And if the family is afraid enough to remain silent, they will probably get away with it. This is how the life of Víctor Turbe ended, murdered at 51 years old at the door of his own house by six bullets that tore through his body as he waited for his daughter.

 Buried with a massive funeral where thousands wept but no one spoke. Remembered as a romantic singer, his brutal death revealed that he had lived in a world much darker than his audience imagined [music] and became a symbol of the new Mexican reality, where drug traffickers could execute whomever they wanted and the complicit silence of survivors guaranteed total impunity, demonstrating that sometimes the true horror is not the hitmen [music] who shoot, but the family that remains silent knowing who ordered them.

Hey, if this story made you reflect on how many similar cases go unsolved because the victims prefer silence to justice, [music] like and subscribe because  There are more investigations into the mysteries of Mexico’s dark past that it chose to forget rather than confront. But there are dimensions of this case that need to be explored more deeply, because the inconsistencies in the police file weren’t just oversights; they were signs of a systematic cover-up .

 And understanding those inconsistencies is crucial to understanding why it was solved. The first massive inconsistency was the alteration of the crime scene. The first forensic experts who arrived immediately noticed that something was wrong. The pool of blood where Víctor had fallen showed signs of having been partially cleaned up.

 There were rag or towel marks in some areas, and according to a report that was leaked years later, there were objects that had clearly been moved from their original positions. Why does this matter? Because at a crime scene, every detail counts. The exact position of the body, the blood spatter patterns , the location of bullet casings—all of that helps reconstruct exactly what happened.

 And when a scene is altered, crucial evidence is lost. permanently. The forensic experts tried to document what remained. They took photos, some of which circulated in the tabloids of the time, showing Victor’s body in a pool of blood. They collected shell casings, measured bullet trajectories, but they knew they were working with a compromised scene, and no one took responsibility for tampering.

 The family said they hadn’t touched anything significant. Domestic staff said the same, and the municipal police who arrived first denied altering evidence, but someone did, and in critical hours before the forensic experts arrived. The second inconsistency was about the exact chronology of events.

 According to the family’s initial statement, the murder occurred around 11 p.m., but neighbors who heard gunshots said it was closer to midnight, and one of the domestic staff mentioned it was after midnight. Why would the family manipulate the timeline of the crime? One theory is that they wanted to establish an alibi or a specific timeline to protect someone.

 Another is that they were simply confused and traumatized and didn’t remember correctly, but the inconsistency was never definitively clarified. Ken la  The third inconsistency was about a phone call Víctor supposedly  received hours before his death. Several witnesses mentioned this call. They said Víctor had spoken to some

one around 9 p.m. and then seemed nervous. But when investigators requested phone records from the house, the family said they did n’t exist, and the phone company claimed they could n’t release the records without a specific court order, which was never obtained. That call could have been crucial.

 Who called? What did they say? Was it a threat? Was it a meeting that attracted hitmen? No phone records. We’ll never know. The fourth inconsistency was about the presence of Lucy, the daughter. The family said Lucy had gone to the movies with her boyfriend and had n’t returned when Víctor was killed. That’s why he went to answer the door. He thought it was her without her keys.

But some neighbors reported seeing Lucy arrive home before the shooting. And one of the housekeepers mentioned that Lucy was home when the shots were fired. If Lucy was home, why did Víctor open the door thinking she was there?  Was it her? It doesn’t make sense. Unless he knew it wasn’t Lucy, but had another reason to open the door.

Unless someone called him by name from outside, unless he was expecting someone specific. And Lucy never gave a public interview about that night. She never clarified whether or not she was home. For decades, she has maintained absolute silence about her father’s death. That silence is understandable if she’s traumatized.

 But it ‘s also suspicious if she knows more than the family has publicly admitted. The fifth inconsistency was about the exact number of gunshots. The official autopsy stated six, but some initial police reports mentioned seven shell casings found at the scene, and there was a bullet entry wound in a wall near where Victor fell that didn’t correspond to any of the six that pierced his body.

 Was the seventh shot a warning? Was it a stray bullet, or was it removed from the official report for some reason? It was never clarified. And the seventh bullet could have changed the ballistic analysis if it had been included in the full investigation. The sixth inconsistency was about the number of hitmen.

 The family and some witnesses said there were three,  But a neighbor who saw men fleeing in a vehicle said he counted four. And a domestic worker who caught a glimpse from his window mentioned several men without giving a specific number. Cerus, there were three or four hitmen. This matters because it suggests a level of organization.

 Three suggests a small, professional team. Four suggests a larger operation, possibly with a getaway car waiting while three others fired. The seventh inconsistency was about the type of vehicle the hitmen fled in. Some witnesses described a dark sedan, others described a pickup truck, and police reports never consolidated these descriptions into a coherent vehicle profile that could be used for a search.

 And finally, the biggest inconsistency was the speed with which the case was closed. One month—one month from murder to official closure. For a crime of this profile—a public figure, a brutal execution, organized crime implications—one month is a ridiculously short time. Normal murder cases remain actively investigated for months or years, especially when the victim is famous and there is public pressure to solve the crime.

 But in the case of Víctor and Turbe, authorities gave up in  30 days. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Yes. Oh, they didn’t want to solve the case because it would involve powerful people they preferred not to touch. Or, the B family had lobbied so effectively to have the case closed that continuing was politically impossible.

 It was probably a combination of both. The family clearly didn’t want a deep investigation, and the authorities were probably happy to have an excuse to close a case that threatened to expose uncomfortable connections between entertainment and drug trafficking. And there’s important historical context here about Mexico in 1987 that helps to understand why the case was handled the way it was, and why 1987 wasn’t the Mexico of today, where drug-related violence is visible daily.

 It was a Mexico where drug trafficking was pretended not to exist, or at least not to affect respectable people. It was the government of Miguel de la Madrid, who had taken office in 1982 in the midst of a devastating economic crisis . Mexico was bankrupt, had runaway inflation, a devalued  peso, a debt crisis, and the government was more focused on economic survival than on fighting a war on drugs, which were just beginning to emerge as a serious threat.

Drug cartels were in transition. The Guadalajara Cartel, led by Michel Ángel Félix Gallardo, still dominated, but it was beginning to fragment. The 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena  had put massive U.S. pressure on Mexico to take action against drug trafficking, but the Mexican response was tepid, corrupt, and ineffective.

 In this environment, drug traffickers were beginning to realize they could do almost anything with impunity. They could kill Americans, and while some would eventually be captured, most would continue operating. They could corrupt police officers, judges, and politicians, and they could eliminate anyone who became a problem.

 Entertainment figures were particularly vulnerable  because many—not all, but many— had developed relationships with drug traffickers during the 1970s and early 1980s, when drug trafficking seemed less dangerous. They sang at private parties, accepted expensive gifts, used drugs supplied by drug traffickers, and in the process became entangled in networks they could not later escape.  Escape.

Víctor Turbe was probably one of those people. [music] He was a talented singer who accepted money from the wrong people, who saw things he shouldn’t have seen, who perhaps crossed a line he shouldn’t have [music] crossed, and who paid the ultimate price when someone decided he was a problem that needed a permanent solution, and his death sent chills through the entertainment industry.

Because if they could kill “El Pirulí,” a beloved figure with a decades-long career, then they could kill anyone. [music] No level of fame protected you, no number of fans saved you. If you had offended the wrong person or knew too much, you were in danger. And that explains why there was such a profound silence after his death.

 Other artists who knew him, who probably knew something about his connections or his problems, remained completely silent. When the press [music] interviewed them, they gave vague answers. They expressed sadness, but no information. Because everyone understood the message: talking too much could make you the next victim.

 And the Mexican public, although shocked, didn’t press too hard either.  for investigation. Partly because they trusted the authorities would do their job. Partly because in 1987 there wasn’t yet the culture of citizen activism demanding justice that exists today. And partly because fear was beginning to take hold in society, fear that if you push too hard against drug traffickers, they’ll push back with violence.

 So the Víctor Turbe case faded from the headlines in weeks, was replaced by other news stories, and eventually became just another unsolved mystery in police files that no one visits. But the legacy of his death was profound; it was a precedent, a message, a warning, and in the following decades, we would see that same pattern repeated time and again .

 Public figure executed, superficial investigation, case quickly closed, total impunity. Chalino Sánchez in 1992, a narco singer kidnapped after a show, tortured, executed with a coup de grâce. Unsolved case. Paco Stanley in 1999. Television host murdered in Perisur in front of multiple witnesses. Mario Besares was arrested but released for lack of evidence.

  [music] Case technically solved, but the whole truth never came out. And dozens of minor singers, journalists, politicians  Costa Ricans who were silenced when they became inconvenient.  All following the same pattern: professional execution, sabotaged investigation, case closed prematurely.  [music] And in each one there are families who remain silent because they are afraid.

  There are witnesses who do not testify because they value their lives.  There are authorities who do not investigate thoroughly because they know that path leads to confrontation with powers they cannot defeat.  It is a system of impunity that works precisely because all those involved, voluntarily or involuntarily, participate in the cover-up.

  Families due to fear, police due to corruption or incompetence, media due to self-censorship, society due to apathy or terror.  And that system was perfected in the case of Victory Turbo.  It was a prototype and decades later it continues to be a model of how Narco can publicly murder and get away with it.

  Now, looking at the case 38 years later, what can we conclude?  We will probably never know with 100% certainty who ordered Victory Turbe’s murder or exactly why the three main theories— forbidden romance, money debts, or knowing too much—are all plausible.   It was probably a combination of factors.  What we do know is that it was a professional execution ordered by someone with the resources to hire high-caliber hitmen.

  We know that the family preferred silence over justice.  suggesting a deep fear of revenge.  We know that authorities closed the case with suspicious speed, suggesting a lack of will or ability to pursue the whole truth.  And we know that the case of Victor Turbo was a turning point in the relationship between entertainment and organized crime in Mexico.

  Before his death, connections existed, but they were discreet, denied, kept in the shadows.  After his death it became clear that Narco could touch anyone [music] and that they would touch anyone who crossed lines they defined.  For Irma and her children, the decision was to remain silent.   He probably saved their lives.  If they had fully cooperated with the investigation, if they had revealed everything Victor had told them about his problems, they probably would have ended up dead too.

  [music] So they chose to live in silence. They chose to survive instead of seeking revenge.  It’s a choice no one should have to make.  But in Mexico in 1987, and sadly in Mexico today as well, it is a choice that thousands of families have had to make: justice or survival.  [music] And the majority chooses survival.

And finally, there are questions about Victor’s own responsibility for his fate.  [music] Was he an innocent victim or was he a person who consciously accepted the risks of associating with criminals because money was good?  TRUE?  It’s probably somewhere in the middle.  Uh, Victor was a singer trying to maintain a career in a difficult industry.

  He accepted presentations that perhaps he should have rejected.  He developed friendships he perhaps should have avoided and gradually sank deeper into a world from which it was increasingly difficult to escape.  It does not justify his murder. Nobody deserves to die the way he did, terrified at his own doorstep, but it suggests that his death was not entirely random.

  [music] It was a terrible and unfair consequence of decisions he made over the years.  And that is perhaps the most important lesson of the case, that when you associate with criminals, you eventually pay a price. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually debts are collected, and collected in blood.

  This is how Víctor and Turbe’s story truly ended [music], executed for decisions he made, abandoned by authorities who preferred not to investigate, silenced by a family who preferred to live rather than seek justice, and turned into a case, a symbol of impunity that taught Mexico a terrifying lesson [music], that drug traffickers can kill whoever they want, whenever they want , wherever they want, and will probably get away with it, and victims remain silent long enough, demonstrating that the true power of organized crime lies not only in the violence

they can inflict, but in the fear they can instill [music] in the hearts of survivors who prefer to remain silent rather than risk being the next to fall.  And there is another dimension to this case that deserves deep attention, the cultural impact it had on how [music] Mexico understands the relationship between fame and danger, because before Víctor and Turbe there was a naive belief that being famous protected you, that drug traffickers would not touch public figures because it would attract too much attention.

that there was an invisible line that criminals respected.  Victor’s death shattered that belief.  He proved that there was no line, that there was no protection in fame, that on the contrary, being famous perhaps made you a more attractive target precisely because your death would send a stronger message.

  And that change in understanding was fundamental. After November 1987, Mexican artists began to be much more cautious about who they associated with.  They more frequently declined invitations to private parties from businessmen whose source of wealth was unclear.  They avoided developing friendships with suspicious people and when they traveled to certain regions where Narco dominated they took extra precautions, but many were already too entangled to escape cleanly and in later years they would pay the price.

  The list of Mexican artists murdered or disappeared during the late 1980s is chilling at 92,000, and each death followed a pattern similar to that of Victor. Professional execution, superficial investigation, quick closure of the case, silence from the family.  [music] It was as if there was a procedural manual that authorities and criminals both followed.

  There is also the question of what happened to Victor’s family afterwards, because they moved from Mexico City, disappeared from the public eye and for decades kept absolutely silent, [music] but they continued living, they continued existing and probably continued carrying the weight of secrets that they never revealed.

  [music] Irma Pérez de Anda, Víctor’s widow, lived until 2011 when she died at the age of 71.  For 24 years after her husband’s death, she remained silent about that night.  She never gave a revealing interview.   He never wrote a memoir confessing what really happened.  He took his secrets to the grave, exactly as his fear probably demanded.

[music] His children also maintained an extremely low profile.  Victor, Manuel, and Lucy, who witnessed that terrifying night, never sought the spotlight, never tried to capitalize on their father’s famous name; they simply lived private lives far removed from everything that had killed Victor.

  And there is a silent tragedy in that, because they spent their entire lives carrying the trauma not only of having lost their father brutally, but of knowing or strongly suspecting who killed him and not being able to do anything about it. It’s the kind of trauma that haunts you every day, that affects every decision you make, that makes you live in constant fear that if you speak out, it will reach you too.

  And then there’s this question about Victor’s musical legacy, because he was a talented singer with an extensive discography, but after his death his music was tainted by the circumstances of his murder.  You could no longer listen to Veronica or Felicidad without thinking about how it ended.  It was no longer just a romantic song, it was a song sung by a man who died in a pool of blood for reasons that were never fully clarified.

  and that association damaged his legacy.  Younger generations who did not know him in real life only know him [musically] as the singer that the drug lord killed.  Not as an artist in my own right, but as a victim, as a warning, as a symbol of what happens when you cross paths with the wrong people.  It is unfair because it reduces an entire life and extensive career to a single violent moment, but it is the reality of how public memory works , especially in an era where drug-related violence is so omnipresent that it becomes the only lens through which

we see everything related to it.   We also need to talk about the role of the press in all of this, because Mexican media covered Victor’s death extensively.  Front pages, body photos, wild speculation, but [music] afterwards, when the case was closed, the media mostly let it go.  There were no in-depth journalistic investigations that kept pressure on the authorities.

   There was no rigorous follow-up demanding answers.  [music] Part of that was self-censorship. Journalists knew that investigating  drug trafficking connections too deeply could make them targets themselves.  And in 1987 protections for journalists in Mexico were practically nonexistent, but part of that was also due to a lack of resources and sustained interest.

  In other words, another scandal always replaced the previous one.  Another death always made headlines, and the public had a limited attention span.  Thus, the case of Victor Turbo gradually faded from public memory until it was just a footnote in the history of drug-related violence in Mexico.  And there is a dark irony in that now, decades later, the case is being rediscovered by a new generation that did not live through those events.

  [music] Podcasts about unsolved crimes, YouTube videos analyzing theories, social media posts speculating about what really happened.  A case that was forgotten by the generation that lived through it is being exhumed by a generation that only knows it as history.  And that new attention brings renewed questions.

   Is there any chance the case has been reopened?  Technically, murder does not have a statute of limitations in Mexico.  The case could be reinvestigated if new evidence emerged or if there were political will to do so, but realistically the probability is almost zero.  Key witnesses are dead.

  Physical evidence was lost decades ago.  Police [music] records were probably destroyed or filed away where they will never be found.  And people who may have ordered the murder, if they are still alive, have 38 years between them and the crime.  [music] Almost impossible to test connection now.   In addition, Mexican authorities literally have hundreds of thousands of more recent homicides to solve.

Allocating limited resources to a 1987 case  when there are unsolved murders from 2024 and 2025 would be difficult to justify politically.  So most likely the case of Victor and Turbo will remain exactly as it is.  [music] Unsolved mystery.  Eternal speculation.   A reminder of the era when drug traffickers were consolidating power and learning that they could kill with impunity.

  But there is value in remembering and re-examining the case, because it teaches us lessons that remain relevant today.  It teaches us about the dangers of associating with criminals, even indirectly.  It teaches us about how fear can silence entire families.  It teaches us about corruption and incompetence in systems that are supposed to protect us.

[music] and teaches us about the impunity that allows these crimes to continue and teaches us something more fundamental, that violence does not happen in a vacuum.  Victor Turbeck was not only murdered by three hitmen, he was murdered by the entire system that allowed those hitmen to operate, by authorities who did not investigate seriously, by a society that accepted superficial explanations.

   It was the entertainment industry that had normalized dangerous relationships with criminals.  We are all complicit when we allow these crimes to go unsolved, when we accept that this is how things are, when we resign ourselves to impunity as an inevitable reality instead of a combatable injustice.

  And that is perhaps the most important reason to continue talking about the Víctor Turbe case 38 years later.  Not because we’re going to solve a mystery—we probably won’t—but because remembering is a way of resisting.  Remembering is a way of saying that these lives mattered, that these deaths were unjust, and that although criminals escaped human justice, they will not escape the judgment of history.

  [music] Víctor Turbe deserves to be remembered not only as a victim, but as a complete human being , as a talented singer who brought joy to millions, [music] as a husband and father who loved his family, as an imperfect person who made mistakes [music] and paid a terrible price for them, as a symbol of a violent era in Mexican history, and his family, although they remained silent, also deserves compassion because they lived in fear that we as outside spectators will never fully understand.  They made decisions that

from the outside seem cowardly, but from the inside they probably seemed the only way to survive, and they carried secrets that weighed on them every day of their lives. We cannot judge him without having been in his shoes, without having received an implicit or explicit threat that if they speak out they will be close.

Without having to choose between seeking justice for a deceased loved one and protecting loved ones who are still alive. It’s an impossible choice.  And they did it in a way that allowed them to survive, perhaps not with peace, perhaps not with justice, but with life.  And in Mexico, where drug traffickers kill with impunity, survival is a victory in itself.

  Thus ends the complete story of Víctor and Turbel Pirulí, a singer with a velvety voice who charmed generations, an imperfect man who became entangled with dangerous people, a victim of brutal execution whose music sent chills through the entertainment industry, a symbol of impunity who taught Mexico that drug traffickers could touch anyone, and unsolved mysteries that 38 years later continue to teach lessons about the price of fame and the dangers of silence.

  and the failure of systems that should protect us, but chose to look the other way while the enemy slept under our own national roof.  If this story made you reflect on how many similar cases remain buried in forgotten police files , like and subscribe because there are more investigations into the crimes that Mexico preferred to forget, but that history demands we remember.

  and a final reflection on what the case [music] of Víctor Turbe represents in the broader context of drug-related violence in Mexico, because his murder in 1987 was a prelude.  It was a warning that no one heard loud enough.  It was the first crack that indicated it would eventually break completely, releasing a tsunami of violence that Mexico still suffers today.

  In 1987, drug trafficking had existed for decades, but it operated in the shadows.  It was [music] a known problem, but not openly discussed.  It was a national disgrace that was publicly denied while being privately tolerated.  And drug-related murders did occur, but mainly among criminals in remote locations, far from big cities and respectable people.

  The murder of Víctor Turbe broke that pattern.  It was in an exclusive gated community .  She was a beloved public figure. It was impossible to ignore or deny.  and it was executed with audacity that revealed a new level of confidence on the part of drug traffickers.   They were no longer afraid of attracting attention; in fact, they wanted attention.

  They wanted everyone to know they could do this.  And the message was received by other artists who understood that they were in danger, by police officers who understood that investigating too deeply could cost them their lives, by politicians who understood that confronting drug traffickers directly was politically and literally suicidal.

  And society in general began to understand that Mexico was changing in fundamental and terrifying ways, and in the following years the violence only escalated. [music] Fragmentation of large cartels into smaller, more violent cartels. War between cartels for territories. War between cartels and government, when the government finally decided to fight back and tens of thousands of deaths.

  Mostly civilians who never wanted to be involved in a war they didn’t ask for. And at each stage of that escalation we can trace direct lines back to the impunity that allowed the murder of Víctor Turbe to go unsolved. Because every unpunished crime empowers criminals.  It teaches them that they can get away with it, takes away their fear of consequences, and encourages them to be bolder, more violent, and more public in their next crime.

  If the murders of Víctor and Turbe had been aggressively investigated, if the hitmen had been captured, if the person who ordered the execution had been identified and prosecuted, if there had been real consequences, then perhaps, just perhaps, some of the crimes that came after would have been prevented, because criminals would have learned that there are limits, that there are lines they cannot cross without paying a price.

  But instead, they learned the opposite lesson.  They learned that there are no limits, no lines, that they can kill whoever they want, [music] whenever they want, and they will probably never face justice.  And that election was disastrous for Mexico.  And we are still living with the consequences, because impunity has become the norm, not the exception.

  According to official statistics, approximately 95% of homicides in Mexico remain unsolved.  95%. That means only five out of every 100 murderers face justice.  Another 95 are walking free, knowing they will probably escape punishment.  It is a massive systemic failure and has its roots in cases exactly like that of Victor and Turbe.

Cases that should have been resolved, but were not.  Cases where authorities chose the easy path of closing the case instead of the difficult path of seeking the truth.  And there is another pattern that connects Victor’s case with the present, [music] silence of families. Because even today, with human rights organizations, with a specialized prosecutor’s office for disappearances, with greater public awareness about violence, thousands of Mexican families remain silent about what happened to their loved ones.  Not because they don’t want justice.

[music] Pulsino because they are afraid.  Fear that if they speak they will be close.  Fear based on real experience that criminals can reach you no matter where you hide.  Fear that paralyzes and keeps crimes hidden, perpetrators unidentified, and truth buried.  And breaking that silence requires more than just individual courage from families.

   It requires that the government create conditions where families can speak without fear, where witness protection is real, not just a promise on paper, where investigations are professional and thorough, not superficial and corrupt, where justice is possible, not just naive hope.  Mexico has not yet created those conditions, and until it does, we will continue to have cases like that of Víctor Turbe.

   We will continue to have families who prefer silence to the risk of revenge.  We will continue to have impunity that empowers criminals and leaves victims in despair.  Victor’s case also teaches us about the importance of examining how seemingly glamorous professions like entertainment can have dangerous dark sides.

  Because it wasn’t just Victor who had connections to drug trafficking; it was the entire industry that had normalized questionable relationships for decades. Producers who accepted investments from suspicious sources to finance films.  Record label owners who laundered money through fictitious record sales. Concert promoters who organized shows for drug traffickers on private ranches.

  Artists who accepted expensive gifts and well-paid performances without asking where the money came from.  Uh, all of that created a culture where lines between legitimate entertainment and organized crime were blurred.  And when lines are blurred, tragedies like Victor’s become more likely, because it’s no longer clear where normal business ends and mortal danger begins.

  And although the Mexican entertainment industry has tried to clean itself up since then, the reality is that connections still exist.  Artists still sing narcocorridos that glorify criminals. [music] Producers still accept money whose origin they don’t question too much.  And some artists still disappear or are killed when they cross invisible lines they didn’t know existed.

The Victory Turbe case is a constant reminder that glamour and danger can coexist, that fame is not protection.  Easy money often comes with strings attached that can strangle you, and the entertainment industry needs to take an honest look in the mirror and confront its own complicity with organized crime.

  And finally, Caso teaches us about the need for memory, because forgetting is a way of allowing horror to be repeated.  Remembering is a way to honor victims, to insist that their lives mattered, to keep pressure on systems that failed to protect them and to deliver justice after their deaths.  Victor Turbe deserves to be remembered, not glorified.

   He was an imperfect human being who made mistakes, [music] but remembered as a real person, whose life was brutally cut short and whose death was never brought to justice.  remembered as a warning, as a lesson, as a call to be better. And all the others, [musicians] whose deaths remained unsolved deserve the same.

  Journalists murdered for reporting the truth, activists eliminated for defending communities, politicians executed for not cooperating with criminals, women femicided by men who knew they would escape punishment, children caught in the crossfire of wars they did not start, all deserve to be remembered.  Everyone deserves justice.

  And although legal justice may be impossible in many cases after so much time, historical justice— remembering the truth, identifying patterns, holding accountable systems that failed— is still possible.  And that is a responsibility that we all [musicians] share.  Not just authorities, not just families of victims, all of us as a society.

  Because drug-related violence is not someone else’s problem, it’s Mexico’s problem. It is a problem that affects us all, and we will only solve it when we all— government, civil society, families, individuals—decide that impunity is unacceptable.  The case of Víctor and Turbe, the lollipop will probably never be solved .

  The hitmen who fired the shots are probably dead or impossible to find.  The person who ordered the execution is probably also dead or so protected that they will never be brought to justice.  And the secrets that the family kept died with them.  But can it still serve a purpose?  It can teach us, [music] can warn us, it can inspire us to demand better from our institutions and from ourselves.

  It can remind us that every victim of violence is a human being, with a history, with a family, with dreams that were stolen.  And it can remind us that silence, although understandable and sometimes necessary to survive, is also a way of allowing evil to continue,  that eventually, to break cycles of violence, someone has to speak out, someone has to take risks, someone has to say enough is enough.

  Victor Turbe was unable to speak after that night in November 1987. Six bullets silenced him permanently. His family chose silence to survive.  Authorities chose silence of indifference or corruption, and society chose silence of oblivion.  But we, almost four decades later, do not have to choose silence.  [music] We can talk, we can remember.

We can demand that cases like this not be forgotten, and we can insist that Mexico deserves better than the impunity that has defined its relationship with drug violence for generations. That is the only justice we can still give to Victor and Turbe and to thousands of others whose deaths remain unsolved.

  Justice through memory, truth told, and a renewed commitment to ensuring that the next generation does not have to live with the same fear and impunity that defined the lives of past generations.  Thus concludes the complete analysis of the case of Víctor Turbe el Pirulí, murdered on November 29, 1987 by six expanding bullets that turned his own door into a crime scene, buried with the tears of millions but without justice.

  Remembered as a warning of what happens when a drug cartel decides you’re a problem, forgotten by a system that preferred to close the case rather than confront the uncomfortable truth, and turned into an eternal symbol of Mexican impunity where the enemy can sleep under your own national roof.  I quote knocking on your door at midnight and disappearing into darkness, knowing that he will probably never pay a price for spilled blood, proving that sometimes the real crime is not just the murder, but the complicit silence that follows it and the

systematic indifference that allows the horror to be repeated again and again without consequences. And in that silence that allowed impunity lies the true tragedy.  Not only did Víctor die, but Mexico learned to look the other way when drug traffickers kill, normalizing horror that should have been unacceptable.