‘Most wanted’ suspect in 1991 killing found using alias on Guatemalan farm, police say

After more than three decades on the lam, one of Massachusetts’ most-wanted fugitives, a suspect in a fatal stabbing, has been arrested, officials said.

In November 1991, police in Attleboro, Massachusetts, a small city near the Rhode Island border, found an unconscious man who appeared to have been stabbed, according to state police.

The man, identified as Ismael Recinos-Garcia, later died in a hospital of his injuries, police said.

He had a 3-year-old daughter, who now remembers little about her father, except his funeral, according to NBC Boston.

Shortly after Recinos-Garcia’s death, Mario Garcia, a 19-year-old from Guatemala, was identified as a suspect and a warrant was issued for his arrest, police said. Garcia immediately departed the area, and managed to elude authorities for the next 31 years.

In 2014, information was found leading police to believe Garcia, who had connections to Connecticut, Utah and Georgia, had decamped to ”a remote area of his native Guatemala,” according to a Dec. 14 state police press release.

Several more years passed while officials from multiple departments and agencies, including the Attleboro Police Department and the United States Marshals Service, continued working on the case, police said.

In 2022, officials obtained information that Garcia, who’d been newly added to Massachusetts’ Most Wanted Fugitives list, could be working on a shrimp farm on the coast of Guatemala, officials said.

The U.S. Marshals Service and State Department then deployed a team on the ground in Guatemala, which confirmed Garcia was working at the shrimp farm and operating under an alias.

After a warrant was issued for his arrest, the team arrived on Dec. 14 to arrest Garcia, now 50 years old. He leapt into a body of water in an attempt to escape, officials said, but was ultimately arrested.

“We don’t forget, we are persistent, and we never cease in our efforts to secure justice for victims,” Massachusetts State Police Col. Christopher S. Mason said in the release.

The Guatemalan Federal Police Force assisted in the operation, according to Attleboro police.

Garcia will be handed over to the United States to face prosecution for the 1991 killing, officials said.

Guatemala and the U.S. signed a mutual extradition treaty in 1903, according to the State Department.