Someone's killing country music stars

K-Paz de la Sierra

They sing of romance, lost love, violence, drug smuggling and cartel hitmen, and now, for some of Mexico's country music stars, their art has brutally forced itself into their lives.

In the past year and a half, 13 musicians – three since Dec. 1 – have been violently killed in attacks that bear the signs of Mexican underworld killings, reported Scotland on Sunday. None of the cases has been solved.

The motives for the murders are unknown and no evidence links them to a single killer. Love triangles, links to organized crime, reprisals for narcocorridos – ballads about drug dealers – that offended someone, and a slow drift into the criminal culture celebrated by their music have been suggested.

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The murder of Sergio Gomez, founder and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, early this month, doesn't fit any of the speculation, friends and family said.

Gomez, kidnapped after leaving a concert in his home state of Michoacan, was found a day later, dumped along a roadside. He had been beaten, tortured and strangled to death.

Gomez, who had just been nominated for a Grammy Award, wasn't known for narcocorridos. His band's biggest hits were love songs played in the Durango dance style.

"This man didn't even smoke or drink," said Froylan Gomez, the dead man's uncle. "We cannot understand why it happened."

Gomez and his band returned to his hometown of Ciudad Hidalgo each year and donated thousands of dollars to the school where he studied.

Zayda Pe?a

On the day Gomez's body was found, someone walked into the Matamoros hospital room where Zayda Pe?a, vocalist for Zayda y Los Culpables, was recovering from a gunshot she received at a hotel several days before. It the earlier shooting, another woman and a hotel employee were killed. The assassins killed Pe?a with two shots to the face on the second attempt. Reports in the Brownsville Herald said Mexican authorities suspected a love triangle.

One of Pe?a's hits was 'Tiro de Gracia,' a song that refers to gangland executions.

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Ten days ago, Jose Luis Aquino, 33, a trumpet player with Los Conde, was found beaten to death in Oaxaca state. He had a plastic bag over his head and his hands and feet were tied.

Jose Luis Aquino

The killings have been going on for over a year: Last December, Javier Morales Gomez of the band Los Implacables del Norte was shot to death in a park in Michoacan. In February, gunmen armed with with machine-guns killed four members of the Tecno Banda Fugaz after they also performed in Michoacan. Valent?n Elizalde, 25, murdered in 2006, was well known for his ballads about bandits and drug kingpins.

"Sometimes there is a direct relationship between the musician and the narcotics trafficker," Miguel Olmos, a musicologist at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, told Scotland on Sunday. "But also there are a lot of passionate crimes. That is to say, the musician establishes some sort of sentimental relationship with people who are linked to this culture of violence and of narcotics trafficking and somehow it gets out of hand. They always touch some nerve of the trafficker."

The most recent killings have Mexico's musicians on edge. News of Gomez's death caused some to cancel concerts in Michoacan.

"We are in shock because it's a weird thing that in one week three members of the grupero wave would be killed," Jose Angel Medina, leader of the Patrulla 81, said. "We are afraid because we are super-exposed and this could keep going. We don't know who's next."

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