SAN DIEGO — U.S. Marshals have arrested a man in Downey, California, accusing him of crossing into Tijuana last year and murdering a sex worker in a hotel room.
Baja's attorney general said Bryant Rivera may also be linked to the deaths of two other sex workers in Tijuana.
Angela Acosta, age 20, was found naked, beaten, and strangled in January 2022 inside a hotel room bathroom in Tijuana’s red-light district.
Acosta had been working as a dancer and sex worker in Tijuana for about 5 months when prosecutors allege she was murdered by Rivera.
Federal agents arrested Rivera, 30, Thursday morning in Downey at the home he shared with his parents, according to a complaint in support of an arrest warrant filed in Los Angeles federal court.
Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said in a news release Friday that Rivera is “presumed to be the perpetrator of three registered femicides in Tijuana in the period from September 2021 to February 2022.”
The body of Elizabeth Martinez, 25, was found inside her Jeep in February of last year.
A third woman's body was found inside a dumpster near Tijuana's red-light district in 2021, according to Vicente Calderon, a veteran reporter with tijuanapress.com.
“From the beginning, the Mexican authorities labeled this as a serial killer,” said Calderon. “Sex work is legal in Mexico and it's even regulated in some ways for the local authorities, but also it’s sometimes more easy to prey on these vulnerable victims.”
The complaint included a surveillance still photo allegedly showing Rivera getting out of an elevator with Acosta and going into the hotel room where she was murdered around 10 p.m. on January 24 of last year.
Prosecutors allege Rivera was then seen leaving the room alone about an hour and a half later; and 13 minutes after that, surveillance showed him crossing back into San Diego on foot at San Ysidro.
“The detectives are very confident that they have enough information and proven data to link this guy with three separate cases,” Calderon said.
In a 2017 bankruptcy filing, Rivera wrote he was employed as a cashier making about $1,700 per month at a taco restaurant near his home in Downey.
Rivera's attorney, Deputy Federal Public Defender Alejandro Barrientos, did not respond to CBS 8 messages seeking comment.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles emailed CBS 8 the following statement:
“In court yesterday afternoon, the U.S. moved for detention. RIVERA asked to continue the detention hearing until Monday, July 10, at 2:00 p.m. at Room 580 of the Roybal Federal Building and Courthouse. The Court set a status conference 75 days out to give MX time to submit its formal request for extradition (Tuesday, September 19, at 11:00 a.m.). The parties were asked to meet and confer to see if we can stipulate to a briefing schedule, which would obviate the need for a status conference.”