A Mexican cartel leader was arrested for allegedly ordering a hitman to kill beauty influencer Valeria Márquez after she broke up with his son, according to authorities.
Márquez, 23, was in the middle of a TikTok livestream from her beauty salon, Blossom the Beauty Lounge, in Zapopan when a man posing as a delivery driver entered the salon in May 2025 and asked her to confirm her name before opening fire. She collapsed on camera after being shot in the chest and head.
More than one year after the murder, prosecutors accused Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala of ordering the hit. Ayala, who is commonly known as “El R-1,” is a well known senior figure in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which is considered to be one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations.
Federal security secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch claimed that Ayala’s son, Francisco Alvarez, called him to orchestrate Márquez’s killing after she split from him.
Both Alvarez and the hitman are still on the loose despite their suspected involvement in the killing, and Ayala has since been taken into custody.
It is not currently clear if Ayala has entered a plea or retained legal counsel following his arrest.
“The son of R1 had a romantic relationship with Valeria [Márquez], he had threatened her on several occasions, and everything indicates — and this will be proven — that the son asked his father, R1, to commit the femicide,” Harfuch said in a statement via X, translated to English.
Márquez’s followers witnessed her murder during the livestream.
“They’re coming,” she told her followers while looking out the window of her salon. Meanwhile, a voice offscreen was heard asking, “Hey Vale?”
Hours before she was killed, Márquez told her followers that a masked courier had tried to deliver her an expensive gift. She added that “maybe they were going to kill me or something.”
“Were they going to come and take me away, or what? I’m worried,” she added.
Prior to her death, Márquez also claimed she was being threatened and said that her ex-boyfriend should be held “responsible for anything that happens to me and my family.”
At the time of the killing, Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Denis Rodríguez told AP News that the man posing as a delivery driver and another man on a motorcycle were looking for Márquez when they arrived at the salon.
“The aggressor arrived asking if the victim was there. So it appears he didn’t know her,” Rodríguez said. “With that, you can deduce — without jumping to conclusions — that this was a person who was paid. It was obviously someone who came with a purpose.”
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