Chicago couple found dead in Mexico City months after vanishing

Authorities recovered four bodies on the outskirts of Mexico City, and two were confirmed as Zafar Padamese Mawani and Guillermo Jafett Hidalgo Ortiz. Investigators have not publicly explained how the Chicago couple got there, and their family confirmed on June 24 that Mawani and Hidalgo Ortiz were among the dead.

Mawani and Hidalgo Ortiz were both 56 when they disappeared on May 20, 2026, while living in Tlalpan, in southern Mexico City. They had moved there in October after living in Chicago and Oak Park for decades and gone to Mexico to help care for Mawani’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s. At the time they vanished, the couple was in the process of buying a lift chair for her. Ortiz shared his location before his phone was turned off, and investigators later saw unusual withdrawals from the men’s bank accounts.

Mexico City prosecutors made arrests tied to the disappearance before detainees described where investigators should search. After a request for assistance from Mexico City investigators, the State of Mexico prosecutor’s office found the bodies, and Mexican authorities later located four unidentified bodies in the mountains outside the capital. The family’s confirmation turned the case into a death investigation.

Mexico has more than 135,000 missing people, and the country’s official registry recorded 977 missing-person reports in May 2026 alone. In May, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called Mexico’s disappearances a humanitarian crisis that has persisted since 2018, and its report included 40 recommendations to strengthen searches and investigations. The commission estimated the number of missing people at more than 128,000 when the report was finalized in June 2025, while independent sources estimated there were more than 70,000 unidentified bodies in state custody.