WHEN George Norman Harrison opened his Tijuana pizzeria in 2007, he plastered the neighbourhood with flyers and hired delivery boys to zip up and down the shanty-lined hills on motor scooters.
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Business was good and he liked Mexico's low cost of living. But the stout, mustachioed former construction worker knew the dangers and kept a handgun on his property, one of four weapons he owned without Mexican permission.
On February 3, three gunmen abducted the 38-year-old American from the pizzeria and held him captive for a month, extracting two ransom payments from his family in the US. Then his captors beheaded him, chopped off his limbs and tossed his body in a weed-choked lot with those of two other men, with a taunting sign about "snitches."
The gruesome slaying has left Harrison's family and Mexican authorities at odds over why he was killed.
The Baja California attorney-general's office considers Harrison's death another organised crime slaying, one of about 800 in the past year. They suspect his pizzeria businesses - he owned another near the beach - were a front for drug trafficking, and he crossed the wrong person or owed a drug debt, noting he had a drug conviction in 2001.
"He was keeping bad company, and was taken by people they knew," said the assistant attorney-general, Rafael Gonzalez.
Harrison's family says Mexican authorities have been too quick to categorise his death as drug-related, claiming he had put his conviction behind him and was targeted because of his business success.
If Harrison's death is drug-related, it would fit neatly among the vast majority of homicides in Tijuana: a lethal adjusting of accounts among suspected traffickers, gunmen, addicts and other criminals in the cross-hairs of crime bosses battling for control of the city.
But Tijuana ranks among the world's most dangerous cities for ransom kidnappings.
Harrison was born in San Diego and moved to Tijuana 12 years ago. He dubbed his eatery Harley's Pizza, after his beloved Harley-Davidsons. The biker theme became the pizzeria's motif.
"He was a great boss," said one employee. "He treated us like sons."
Police extorted regular payments and he said their actions, though corrupt, gave him a sense of security.
In the weeks after the gunmen, armed with AK-47s, dragged Harrison from his pizzeria, his girlfriend in Tijuana got daily phone calls from the kidnappers. They demanded that the family raise money by selling his motorcycles and other vehicles.
After the kidnappers chopped off two fingers, the family paid an undisclosed ransom in two instalments. They spoke on the phone. "We thought he was coming home," said a family member.
Then the family heard three bodies had been found near the beachside bullring. They identified his body by a tattoo of one of his daughters.
To Mexican authorities, the crime scene bore many signs of a retaliatory killing, the mutilation also suggesting the killers were trying to intimidate rivals. The family is convinced the slaying, like most others in Tijuana, will never be solved.
Los Angeles Times
