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Gabriel
Arturo GARZA HOTH
A.K.A.:
"The Black Widower"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics:
Parricide - To collect
insurance money
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: April 17, 1991 / October 3, 1992 / May 11,
1997
Status:
Sentenced to 45 years in prison on October 27, 2000
Gabriel Arturo Garza Hoth
(born Mexico, ?) also known as "The Black Widower", was a Mexican
serial killer active between 1991 and 1998 in Mexico City. He
collected life insurance payments on his wife and lovers, gaining
a total of 500,000 dollars.
His first victim was his first wife, named
Soledad Valdez, who had a heart attack and died in 1991, but the
doctors believed that maybe she had been poisoned. His second
victim was his girlfriend named Marcela Palacios, who died in 1992
in a "violent assault". The final victim was Ana Gloria
Gomezpalacio who died in other "assault".
The coincidences were alerted to the police,
but Garza escaped to Spain. He was captured in 1998 and
transported to Mexico, where he was condemned to life in prison.
Wikipedia.org
'Black Widower' given 45
years for killing fiancee
Amarillo.com
Sunday, October 29, 2000
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A Mexican man known as The
Black Widower for allegedly killing off his girlfriends was
convicted Friday of homicide in the 1997 death of his fiancee, and
was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Gabriel Garza Hoth was also sentenced to pay
fines totaling $2,200 for shooting his fiancee, Ana Gloria Gomez,
and then trying to collect on a $400,000 insurance policy.
Garza Hoth initially told police that Gomez had
been killed by armed assailants who tried to rob the couple on a
Mexico City street in August 1997.
A judge concluded that he fired the shoots
himself, and then tried to cover up the crime by making it look
like a bungled robbery attempt, the government news agency Notimex
reported.
His story began to fall apart when
investigators learned that other women who had relationships with
him had also met violent deaths.
According to prosecutors, he collected on a
$125,000 insurance policy when his former wife, Soledad Valdes,
died of an apparent heart attack in 1991.
Another girlfriend, Marcela Munoz Palacios, was
found dead of gunshot wounds in a Mexico City parking lot just a
year later. Munoz Palacios also had life insurance policies
totaling about $400,000, but it remains unclear whether Garza Hoth
collected on those.
Garza Hoth fled Mexico after a warrant was
issued for his arrest in the Gomez case, and was arrested in Spain
in November, 1998 and extradited to Mexico in January.
