US detectives used social media to track a fugitive to Oaxaca, Mexico, 20 years after he allegedly shot and killed a man outside an Ohio bar — and there they discovered he’d landed an unexpected new job as a police officer.
Suspect Antonio “El Diablo” Liano, now 62, was charged with first-degree murder, arrested in the city of Zapotitlán Palmas and handed over to federal marshals in Mexico City on Thursday, the agency said in a news release.
Liano fled Ohio after shooting and killing 25-year-old Benjamin Beccara outside the Roundhouse Bar in Hamilton, Ohio, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati, on December 19, 2004.
Witnesses said Liano and Becarra got into an argument inside the bar, and when the argument moved outside, security cameras captured Liano shooting the other man in the face, killing him.
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Antonio Liano was most recently photographed in his latest arrest last week, ending two decades on the run. (Butler County Sheriff’s Office)
“At the time of his arrest in Mexico, Liano was identified as working as a local police officer,” the US Marshals’ Office said in a statement. Photographs of the fugitive taken at the time of his arrest showed him wearing a police uniform.
when a 62-year-old man was detained at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. WKRC Television Asked why he became a police officer, he replied in Spanish, “I wanted to help the Mexican people.”
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When asked by the department if he had killed Bekara, he replied: “No, I didn’t.”
Police told the outlet that charging Liano was easy: Butler County sheriff’s deputies said they had security camera footage of him buying ammunition at a nearby Walmart hours before the shootings, and that they had found the murder weapon hidden under a floorboard in his Ohio home.
“We had all the evidence we needed,” Detective Mark Henson, who worked the case in 2004, told WKRC. “We already had a direct indictment against the defendant. We just had to wait to find him.”
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Antonio Liano in a 2004 mugshot. (Butler County Sheriff’s Office)
Henson said he tracked Liano to New Jersey, where his sister lives, before hearing he had fled to his hometown of Oaxaca.
“Honestly, at that point I wondered if I would ever see him again,” Henson told WKRC-TV.
Prior to his arrest, Liano was on the Butler County Sheriff’s Office’s “Most Wanted” list and was featured on an episode of “America’s Most Wanted.”
Authorities began an “active search” for Liano in January, said Paul Newton, a former deputy investigator who now works for the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office.
Zapotitlán Palmas Police Station, Oaxaca. (Google Maps)
They quickly found his Facebook page and learned that he currently works as a police officer for the Zapotitlán Palmas Police Department and lives in Oaxaca.
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“I thought, ‘Oh my God, there he is!'” Newton told WKRC. “He was a little grayer, a little older, but it was him.”
WKRC reported that Liano left his wife and three children behind in Ohio when he fled the country, and that Becarra’s family had been notified of his arrest and extradition.
