MEXICO.- When fugitive Mayor José Luis Abarca was just captured, he reportedly threatened to commit suicide after giving his declaration regarding the massacre that occurred under his watch on September 26th in Iguala, Guerrero. The mayor is said to be responsible for the assassination of six and the disappearance of 43 students at the hands of the municipal police force and organized crime.

After more than a month on the run along with his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the couple was captured and it was hoped that their declarations would lead to the location of the missing students. When Abarca was interrogated according to journalist Carlos Loret de Mola the ex-mayor said that suicide would be the best option for him given what was in store for him.

"Take off my handcuffs and I will shoot myself in the head" , threatened Abarca after he was captured. Shortly before being arrested on November 4th, authorities stated that the former mayor did not try to resist arrest. They said that the former mayor said, in a tired voice, that he was "tired of hiding".

According to psychologists, a personality like Abarca would never commit suicide. Conclusions of specialists are that this was more like a ploy to convince agents that he wasn't the man they thought he was, and to garner sympathy. "Leave me a rope in the cell and you will see how I hang myself" he said, according to an article by Loret de Mola.

Despite much insistence from agents to trick him into confessing, Abarca never confessed that he was guilty of the murder of the students, although it has been concluded that he and his wife had sufficient time to agree on a story to tell in the event that they were captured.

Both were detained as intellectual authors of the massacre, and complicit with the Guerreros Unidos Cartel. According to the Attorney General, the remains of the missing students have been found and are in the process of being tested to confirm matching DNA.

Elizabeth.rosales@sandiegored.com