Days after the Mexican Navy announced it detained an alleged leader of the Zetas drug cartel who is suspected in the 2010 killing of American David Hartley on a lake near the U.S.-Mexico border, the victim’s wife told "Fox and Friends" that she's hopeful the suspect could provide answers to what happened to her husband.
"Maybe he knows where David’s remains are, or where he's located," Tiffany Hartley, the victim's widow, said.
Tiffany Hartley said she was with her husband riding Jet Skis on Falcon Lake in south Texas observing ruins on the Mexican side when they were ambushed. David Hartley was shot and his wife was unable to haul his body onto her watercraft before being forced to flee.
"Unfortunately, when they (cartel members) came back, I just had to make that survival decision and try to get out on my own," she said.
Tiffany Hartley said she had been pressing the State Department for a death certificate and any new development into the case. But she said she just receives the standard response from the department: this is an ongoing investigation.
"The nice thing about this news coming out is that Mexico, for the first time, is saying that they do believe the Zetas cartel killed David," she said.
There were some people who were under the impression that Tiffany Hartley might have played a role in the killing.
"There have been critics," she said. "This is the first time they’re saying, 'Look, the Zetas cartel did murder David Hartley, did murder my husband and they’re taking me out of that and they're admitting to it. So if anything, that's huge for me."
Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo was detained last week and presented to the media Monday.
Martinez, known as "The Squirrel," also is suspected of being behind the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement.
The statement also said Martinez was suspected to be responsible for graves found with more than 200 bodies in that state, "and the execution of more than 50 people by his own hands in different parts of the country."
When asked whether she had confidence that authorities had arrested the man responsible for killing her husband, she said, "It's really hard to really feel like this is going to be the final, but at the same time we're very hopeful that it will because we want some closure as a family."
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