Death of Armando Chayefsky
On the night of January 7, 2020, at approximately 11:30 p.m., the prison guards of the Isla Socorro maximum security prison found Mejican billionaire and criminal Armando Chayefsky unresponsive in his cell. Following unsuccessful attempts to revive him, he was transported to the medical facility within the prison, where he was declared dead at 12:03 a.m. on January 8, 2020. The official cause of death was later determined to be acute cardiac arrest, exacerbated by an overdose of prescribed medication, including a potent cocktail of antidepressants and anxiolytics.
After initially expressing suspicion, Attorney General Octavio Chalac described Chayefsky's death as a "storm of incongruences and conspiracies". He noted that the timing of his death, coming just hours after the publication of the leaked "Black Notebook", had led to great speculation regarding potential foul play. Despite these assertions, a wave of skepticism swept through social media platforms and news outlets, with many questioning the integrity of the investigation. Photographs of Chayefsky's corpse did not dissuade conspiracy theorists, as discrepancies in the autopsy report and unexplained bruising on his body, together with claims of a mismatch of his ears and nose, fueled debate and speculation. Some noted the absence of a proper toxicology report and the rush to cremate Chayefsky, and videos that have been proven to be AI-generated showed Chayefsky being "escorted" to a private plane.
The guards on duty were charged with negligence and failure to maintain proper surveillance, and the prison itself was questioned for what was termed as an "excessive presence" of contraband, including unauthorized medications. Multiple eyewitnesses within the prison reported hearing unusual noises, including raised voices and sounds of struggle in Chayefsky's cell prior to the discovery of his body. The prison also reported a power outage a couple of minutes before the discovery of the body, which lasted approximately fifteen minutes. Some former inmates reported that power outages were not uncommon in the facility, which had been plagued by a history of maintenance issues and aging infrastructure.
Due to the death of Chayefsky, were dropped, leading to outrage and calls for reform from anti-trafficking activists and other organizations. This decision generated a significant backlash from both politicians and the public, with critics arguing that Chayefsky's death had conveniently eliminated a high-profile witness to the alleged child trafficking ring that implicated numerous powerful individuals, who were allegedly named in the "black notebook" leak online. The original leaker was an anonymous user of the imageboard r3tablo, who posted a total of sixteen scanned pages and claimed that the rest of the notebook was "too damaged to be of any use". The anonymous nature of the website and the absence of a verified source contributed to the controversy surrounding the leak, and Chayefsky's death raised suspicions of a coordinated cover-up. Many have speculated that there are powerful, hidden figures implicated in the allegations that worked to silence Chayefsky.
According to a poll conducted by El Céfiro, the same newspaper that published the leaks, approximately 14% of Mejicans believe that Chayefsky indeed committed suicide, 39% believe that he was murdered, 5% believe he is still alive, and 42% have said they are unsure of the circumstances of his death. In June 2024, President Quadri ordered the re-opening of the investigation and a probe into the site r3tablo, which is hosted in Panama; the former to restore transparency and trust in the legal system, the latter to uncover the identity of the individual behind the anonymous leak. Critics have claimed that the website receives tens of millions of messages every year, complicating the effort to trace the origins of any particular post.