Tijuana. – Federal investigators on Monday found human remains on an isolated country house perched on a hill where a confessed criminal said he disposed of as many as 60 bodies, a leading activist said.

After two days of excavation, investigators for SIEDO, the federal agency that targets organized crime, found the remains in a clandestine grave inside the property, said Fernando Ocegueda, a leader in a citizens' organization that represents the families of 234 people who disappeared.

The uninhabited property, covering about 3,000 square meters, is located in the eastern, semi-rural neighborhood called Loma Bonita.

Ocegueda said that human tissue also was found in a 55-gallon metallic drum inside a small warehouse where it's believed the criminal, Santiago Meza, dissolved bodies sent to him. The small building, which Tijuana firefighters had to vent, is located on the same property.

Meza, who was nicknamed "El Pozolero," or stew maker, was arrested by the Mexican military in January of 2009 in a home near Ensenada. He confessed to authorities that he had dissolved the bodies of some 300 victims on orders of drug traffickers supported by the Sinaloa cartel.

Ocegueda said he had been given access to Meza's declaration, and the criminal had indicated that as many as 60 victims could have been buried at the Loma Bonita property from 2004 to 2006.

Meza said he had worked there before moving to a rural piece of land in the community of Ojo de Agua, where SIEDO investigators found human remains of 10 people and believe many others could be buried there.

Ocegueda said there is a third plot of land east of the city, known as "La gallera," where Meza indicated the remains of 75 victims who disappeared between 2004 and 2008 could be found. That's where he believes the remains of his son, Fernando Ocegueda Ruelas, 23, are located. The son was taken from his own house by people dressed as officers in February of 2007 and has not been seen since.

"Santiago Meza never worked in a single spot; he had several security houses that he would go to when they told him the military was coming for him," Ocegueda said.

The SIEDO investigators searched the Loma Bonita property in February and found human tissue, which was taken to a laboratory in Mexico City for DNA testing. It will also be compared to samples in a gene bank of people who are looking for family members who disappeared. Those results are pending.

Starting at 11 a.m. on Sunday, with songs from a nearby evangelical church filling the air, 12 federal investigators began working at the Loma Bonita property. They stayed for six hours.

On Monday, they repeated that routine and may work there for the next 10 days. Then they will move to "La gallera," Ocegueda said, depending on what they find at Loma Bonita, an impoverished area that lacks paved streets and is near an industrial zone.

According to state authorities, two criminal groups waged a bloody war to control trafficking in the border region from 2008 to 2010. A criminal cell backed by the Sinaloa cartel and commanded by Teodoro "El Teo" García Simental and Raydel López Uriarte fought the Arellano Félix cartel, led by Fernando Sánchez Arellano, a nephew of the group's founders.

The death toll reached 2,327, with 390 disappeared and more than 100 kidnapped, just in Tijuana.

Dozens of innocent people also died in that confrontation.

Some 80 percent of the victims sought by Ocegueda's group, called the Citizens' Association Against Impunity, disappeared during that period.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com