Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro Escápite (19 January 1942 – 20 April 2012) was a Mexican Army general who was shot dead in an incident in Mexico City.

[8] All of this information was attained after a protected witness, Gustavo Tarín Chávez—who was even sent to the United States to be interrogated—declared against several members of the Juárez Cartel, naming Acosta and Quirós along with them.

"[12] Tarín Chávez said that they only person that called him that was Amado Carrillo Fuentes, also known as El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies), the leader of the Juárez Cartel.

[12] During the phone call, Carrillo Fuentes reportedly told Acosta that he had spoken with Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, the former governor of Guerrero, and that "everything was settled.

"[12] Acosta Chaparro was given the orders to pick up over fifty AK-47s assault rifles, thirty pistols, twenty two-way radios, ten cartridges and a SUV from the drug lord and hand them over to the governor.

[14] El Informador newspaper reported that Acosta was accused in 2002 for the death of 22 peasants in the 1970s, but that the charges were dropped in February 2006 after there were no juridical elements to keep him in prison.

[18] On 30 June 2007, La Jornada newspaper published an article of an incident where ex-guerrilla members and their families complained about Acosta's release from jail and condemned the administration of President Felipe Calderón for doing so.

[19] In addition, Aurora Muñoz Martínez, the secretary of the Human Rights State Executive Committee (Spanish: Derechos Humanos del Comité Ejecutivo Estatal, CEE) of the PRD, said that she lamented the liberation of Acosta and recognized that no evidence was found against him; nonetheless, she said that Acosta's participation in the "dirty war" left hundreds disappeared.

[19] Proceso magazine reported on 20 April 2012 that Acosta was allegedly involved in torture and flying airplanes and throwing the bodies of guerrilla members at the ocean.

[22] On 7 November 2002, El Universal published an article with the confessions of Margarito Monroy Candia, a former mechanic at a military base in Pie de la Cuesta, Guerrero, who declared that Mario Acosta and Humberto Quirós would kill people extrajudicially.

[23] In fact, Monroy was the mechanic of the airplane that Acosta allegedly flew to throw the bodies of the activists and guerrilla members in the ocean.

[25] A letter written by the incarcerated drug baron Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "La Barbie," was published in the Reforma newspaper on November 28, 2012, after being shown to the journalist Anabel Hernandez.

In the letter, which alleges systematic corruption among all levels of Mexico's police forces, Valdez claims that General Acosta Chaparro was sent on a mission in 2009 by President Felipe Calderon's government to persuade Mexico's various rival drug cartels—the Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas, La Familia Michoacana, the Beltran-Leyvas, La Barbie, and the Juarez Cartel—to agree to a peace treaty.

[29] The Mexico City police carried out an operation in the area to find the gunman; they were able to detain Joel Figueroa Cortez, a man with similar characteristics to those provided by the witnesses of the armed assault.

[32] On 20 April 2012 at Anáhuac neighborhood in Mexico City, a witness told the authorities that Acosta had arrived at an auto shop to drop off his car when a lone gunman approached him and shot him three times in the head.

[39] The attorney general of Mexico City, Jesús Rodríguez Almeida, reported on 20 April 2012 that Acosta Chaparro's death was a "direct aggression" apparently by someone who had followed him all the way to the auto shop.

[41] According to the authorities, when Acosta was speaking with two people, the killer—a short-size man of approximately 25 years of age, who was wearing jeans and a white-colored shirt at the moment of execution—got close.

[40] He then walked past Acosta, turned around and looked at him, and then returned while pulling out a 9 mm pistol, shooting him at close distance as he conversed with a person.

[47] After the end of the autopsy at the Servicio Médico Forense (SEMEFO), the corpse of Acosta Chaparro was handed over to his family members early in the morning on 21 April 2012.

[49] The supposed suspected was detained after an anonymous call alerted the police of a man with similar features to the facial composite created by the Mexican authorities with the help of several eyewitnesses in the assassination.