Remembering Our Dead

TDoR 2024 / 2023 / November / 13 / Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo

Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo

Age 38

13 Nov 2023
Aguascalientes, Estado de México (Mexico)
Stabbed

Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo [photo: laorquesta.mx]

Ociel was the first nonbinary judge in Mexico. They and their partner were both found dead in their home with stab wounds on Monday 13th November.

Subsequently the authorities concluded that Ociel was killed by their partner, Dorien Herrera.

The lead prosecutor investigating the killing of Jesús Ociel Baena, Mexico’s first nonbinary magistrate, said they were not the victim of a hate crime but were instead brutally slain in a razor blade murder-suicide at the hands of their lawyer and model boyfriend, Dorian Herrera.

The bloodied bodies of Baena, 38, and Herrera, 37, were discovered earlier this month at their home in the central Mexico city of Aguascalientes. The bodies were found at the base of the stairs of their two-story home. Baena had suffered 20 stab wounds from what has been described as a razor blade. They had defensive wounds to the arms and hands, but the fatal blow was a gash to the jugular. Herrera was found lying next to Baena, having suffered a gash to his jugular. Investigators say he had wounds to his hands and fingers consistent with the use of a razor in a fight.

Baena was a leading figure in Mexico’s LGBTQ+ community and was granted a special security detail due to receiving multiple death threats. Many initially suspected the two men were the victims of a hate crime, but the state prosecutor said all the evidence at the scene, including the wounds to the bodies, pointed to a murder-suicide at the hands of Herrera.

Ortega told Radio Formula that investigators believe a fight began in the upstairs bedroom and that Herrera attacked Baena with a blade, as evidenced by the state of the bed and the pattern of bloodstains. They say Herrera followed Baena downstairs, where he continued to slash the judge before killing them with a gash to the neck. Ortega said investigators believe Herrera went back upstairs to retrieve a knife, came back downstairs, lay next to Baena, and then slit his own throat.

“We found footprints, left and right, that go downstairs, and we figure he went back upstairs for another blade, which he used to cut his own throat, causing the loss of his life,” Figueroa told Radio Formula. “Both bodies were on the ground floor of the house, just centimeters from one another.”

Ortega also said investigators have reviewed video surveillance footage that shows the couple arriving home and entering the front door around 1:15 a.m. the day of the killings and roughly eight hours before the bodies were discovered. He said the front door was locked, that no one else was observed entering the residence, and that there was no evidence of another person other than Baena and Herrera at the scene.

nonbinary magistrate jesús ociel baena was murdered in mexico
they were a fighter for lgbtq+ rights, and they were the first nonbinary person to access as head of court in latin america
even after their death people are not respecting their pronouns
we will always remember them pic.twitter.com/qt9YnkELwj
— ???? (@thalergenesis) November 13, 2023