Federal law enforcement agents in the U.S. have arrested a Los Angeles County man wanted by Mexican authorities in connection with the killing of a Tijuana sex worker and possibly two others, according to officials in both countries.
Bryant Rivera, a 30-year-old Downey resident, is charged in Baja California with at least one count of femicide and was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a Mexican judge in November, according to a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles.
Baja California's attorney general described Rivera as a suspected "serial killer" and said in a news release that he is "presumed to be the perpetrator of three femicides" in Tijuana between September 2021 and February 2022. Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said investigators "gathered evidence that placed him in the location where the crimes were committed and the victims were found."
Last year, Carpio likened the suspect in the slayings to Ted Bundy, the prolific serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of girls and young women in the 1970s. Carpio said investigators were probing other similar deaths in recent years to try to determine if they might also be linked to the same suspect.
According to the investigative magazine Zeta Tijuana, which first identified Rivera last year, the three sex workers were beaten and strangled to death.
Rivera — who sometimes went by Eduardo according to the complaint and witnesses who spoke with investigators — was reportedly taken into custody Thursday morning. He appeared that afternoon in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where prosecutors asked a judge to keep him behind bars indefinitely in anticipation of a formal extradition request from Mexico, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles filed the complaint against Rivera under seal late last month. It sought Rivera's "provisional arrest with a view toward extradition," stating that the Mexican government, through diplomatic channels, requested Rivera's arrest.
The document was unsealed Thursday after Rivera was taken into custody. Prosecutors noted that while they were seeking a warrant for his arrest on just one charge of femicide, they understood "that Mexico may add additional charges when it submits the formal request for extradition."
The killing outlined in the complaint is that of Ángela Carolina Acosta Flores and occurred Jan. 24, 2022. According to Mexican officials, Acosta began working in September 2021 as a dancer at Hong Kong Gentleman's Club in Tijuana's red-light district, known as La Zona Norte, an area that's known as a "tolerance zone" for sex work. Her mother told authorities that she occasionally performed sex work.
The mother told investigators that Acosta texted her at 10:12 p.m. that night informing her that she was about to spend 30 minutes with a client, according to the complaint. She told her the name of the hotel, which is attached to the strip club, and the room number where she'd be. But when the half-hour passed, Acosta's mother couldn't reach her.
Eventually, Acosta's boyfriend and mother went to the hotel and waited for hours, until about noon the next day, when hotel employees went inside the room and discovered Acosta naked and strangled to death, according to the complaint. When her mother used an iPhone tracking application, she discovered her daughter's phone was in Riverside.
Employees at the strip club and hotel identified Rivera as the client that Acosta had accompanied to the room at Hotel Cascadas, according to the complaint. Surveillance footage inside the hotel showed the pair entering the room together and showed Rivera leaving alone about 90 minutes later.
Thirteen minutes after leaving the hotel, video surveillance from the San Ysidro Port of Entry showed Rivera walking into the U.S., according to the complaint.
According to Zeta Tijuana, authorities are also investigating a slaying that occurred in August 2021. The victim was a 28-year-old mother and native of the state of Veracruz who also worked at Hong Kong, as well as Adelita Bar, another strip club. Her body was discovered about three days after her family reported her missing.
A third victim was 25 years old and also worked at Hong Kong, according to Zeta. She was found three days after Valentine's Day 2022, strangled to death, her naked and bludgeoned body discovered inside her SUV.
Carpio, the Baja California attorney general, released a video Friday showing partially blurred photos of three women over a map of Tijuana near where their bodies were found. Although their names were not released, the locations match Zeta's reporting. The video said that through scientific investigation work, authorities determined the same suspect had committed all three killings.
"The state Attorney General's Office continues to work on strengthening each of the investigations in order to present the authorities with solid and irrefutable evidence that will convict the alleged perpetrator of the femicides with the maximum penalty," Carpio said in a statement.
Femicide, a law first used in Baja California in 2015 that seeks to prosecute men who violently kill women because of their gender, is a hate crime in Mexico that carries a minimum sentence of 40 years in prison. A former Rutgers basketball player who admitted to killing a 19-year-old sex worker in February 2021 at Adelita Bar was initially charged with femicide before accepting a plea deal last year on a lesser charge. A judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison.
Carpio promised his office would use "all the legal and technological instruments necessary to find those responsible for any crime, particularly those considered gender-based." He said Rivera is expected to be handed over to Mexican authorities "in the coming days."
The spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles said Rivera is set for a detention hearing Monday and that a judge set a September hearing to give the Mexican government time to submit its formal extradition request.
(Staff writer Alexandra Mendoza contributed to this report.)
