A drug trafficker from Mexico pleaded guilty Monday in San Diego federal court to taking part in the shooting deaths of a married couple with whom he had allegedly conspired to traffic drugs, including a mother who was six months pregnant with her fourth child.
Benjamin Madrigal Birrueta, 24, admitted in a plea agreement that he and others shot and killed the husband in August 2022 during a dispute on a ranch in Washington state. Madrigal admitted that several days later, he lured the man’s pregnant wife to the same ranch with the promise that she could speak with her husband, but instead his co-conspirators shot and killed her.
Benjamin Madrigal Birrueta is read his Miranda rights after being arrested in March 2023 (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California via U.S. District Court filing)
Madrigal admitted that he directed co-conspirators to bury the victims’ bodies in the high desert outside Yakima, Wash. Their remains went undiscovered for more than a year.
Prosecutors previously said the victims — Cesar Armando Murillo, 44, and Maira Sofia Hernandez, 33, both residents of Yakima — disappeared just days after federal agents interviewed them in relation to a drug-trafficking investigation.
Madrigal pleaded guilty to two counts of killing or causing the killing of Murillo and Hernandez while engaged in a drug-trafficking conspiracy. He also pleaded guilty to one count of causing the death of a child in utero while engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise.
Prosecutors could have sought the death penalty against Madrigal, but chose not to.
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According to court documents in the case, special agents with Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego launched an investigation in the summer of 2021 that was centered on a drug-smuggling cell that was bringing methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine from Mexico into the U.S. through San Diego ports of entry.
According to documents from several related cases, members of the group would steal newer model, high-end vehicles — such as a 2019 Ford F-150 Raptor, a 2020 Ford Mustang, a 2021 Acura RDX SUV — in the U.S. and then take them to Mexico, where they would change the VIN numbers of the vehicles. Then the group would load the vehicles with drugs and drive them across the border.
The leadership of the group was allegedly based in Yakima, an agricultural city in central Washington. The group was allegedly “staging the drugs in Yakima, and distributing them to a network of buyers across the United States,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
According to filings by his attorneys and prosecutors, Madrigal came to the U.S. in late 2020 when he was 19 years old. His attorneys wrote in court papers that he came to escape “violence that had already claimed the lives of two older brothers in Jalisco.” He lived in several areas, including Phoenix, Portland and Fresno, working in construction as a roofer before being recruited into the drug-trafficking group.
Prosecutors alleged that Murillo and another man were leaders of the group when Madrigal joined. In court documents, prosecutors wrote that Madrigal took on a leadership role in early 2022 when one of the leaders died. He allegedly took full control of the cell later that year after killing Murillo, according to prosecutors.
Authorities seized these weapons in September 2022 while serving a pair of warrants in Yakima, Washington, related to a drug-trafficking group that operated in San Diego. (via U.S. District Court filing)
In his plea agreement, Madrigal admitted that on Aug. 28, 2022, he and Murillo drove together to a ranch outside of Yakima. Once at the ranch, an argument broke out, threats were exchanged and several people including Madrigal, Murillo and others all fired their guns, according to the plea agreement.
Madrigal, who initially told investigators that he killed Murillo in self-defense, admitted in the plea that he and his co-conspirators “shot (Murillo) multiple times in the back of the head and torso.” He also admitted that he “used greater force than was reasonably necessary under the circumstances to prevent his or his co-conspirators’ death or great bodily harm.”
About five days later, Madrigal convinced Hernandez to go to the same ranch, telling her that her husband was there and wanted to speak with her, according to the plea agreement. Madrigal picked up Hernandez and drove her to the ranch, where co-conspirators shot her “multiple times in the head.”
The slayings occurred just days after an HSI agent from San Diego had interviewed Murillo and Hernandez about their roles in the smuggling and trafficking organization.
Authorities arrested Madrigal in March 2023 on the outskirts of Fresno, where he was living at the time, and he admitted to burying the bodies near the ranch in Yakima. It took investigators until September 2023 to locate the unmarked grave. A Washington State Police forensic evidence team exhumed the bodies. Prosecutors said two forensic pathologists examined the remains separately, both concluding the victims died from gunshots to the head.
Madrigal had been set to stand trial next month. A co-defendant, Jose Alfredo Orizaba Zendejas, is still set to go on trial. The names of several other co-defendants in the case remain redacted from public indictments. They’re believed to still be fugitives.
Madrigal is set to be sentenced early next year. According to his plea agreement, he faces a minimum of 20 years in prison.