Crusading Journalist, Family Found Dead

Police discovered the bodies of a crusading journalist, his wife and their three children. They had been beaten to death in their beds.

The blood-soaked bodies of Fernando Balderas, his wife, Yolanda Figueroa, daughter Patricia, 18, and sons Paul, 13, and Fernando, 8, were found Thursday night in their home in a fashionable section of Mexico City.

They were all bludgeoned, and appeared to have been dead more than 24 hours, police said.

Balderas published the magazine Cuarto Poder (“Fourth Estate”), which specialized in exposing corruption in Mexico, and vengeance was being investigated as a possible motive for the killings.

Whether the killing were drug-related “is a line of investigation that must be followed,” said Jose Elias Romero, deputy attorney general for Mexico City.