The six-year-old boy hid. He clung to some form of ancestral wisdom—to a shred of the childhood world that had just been torn apart—and tucked his small bones, his fear, and his terror away in that refuge, a hiding place beyond the reach of the bad man. He was the only one who survived. His sister, his father, his mother, the young woman who looked after him, and even the dog—they all died. The bad man killed them.
Whether the boy understood it at the time is unknown. Whether he dared to look once it was all over is also unknown. There is one terrible, criminal, unbearable detail: the boy spent more than three hours alongside their bodies. They were all together in that hell until, finally, at midnight, the police arrived.
The bad man’s name is Diego Sebastián. The case has gripped all of Mexico, primarily due to the sheer brutality of the perpetrator, who was allegedly an associate of one of the victims—the only male, the boy’s father.
His name was Jonathan Meléndez; he was 38 years old and widely known as “Honas,” the keyboardist for the popular band Camilo Séptimo. After binding him, Diego Sebastián killed him with a gunshot to the head. The boy’s mother, Ana Paola—who was four months pregnant—suffered the same fate. He also shot the boy’s three-year-old sister, Sofía, in the head, though he did not tie her up. He shot their nanny, Aleyda, in the back—a cowardly, treacherous act.
The boy heard it all—the gunshots, the screams, his entire world utterly shattered… It is also unbearable to think about the preceding minutes, the state of unawareness before the horror unfolded. It was 5:24 PM on Tuesday, and Diego Sebastián was heading up to the home—an apartment tower in Atizapán, one of the many residential areas in the capital’s metropolitan region.
There is elevator footage. The alleged killer appears alone in the lift, wearing a cap and sunglasses and carrying a backpack. At one point, he looks at the camera mounted in an upper corner of the cabin. “After that video, he took the lives of the family, the domestic worker, and the pet,” sources close to the case explained.
Authorities have assigned the surname “N” to Diego Sebastián—a measure intended to protect the identity and presumption of innocence of the alleged perpetrator of the massacre. Yet, in a hyper-connected world obsessed with social media, such official safeguards are flimsy at best. The alleged killer’s surname has been spreading like wildfire online since Wednesday morning, alongside details trickling out from the investigation—particularly the gruesome aspects of the massacre: the victims’ bloody footprints, photos of their lifeless feet, and shots of police officers in military-style gear inside the home.
There are significant details, too. Authorities announced the arrest of two individuals on Wednesday. One is Diego Sebastián, captured in La Marquesa—a beautiful area west of the capital where, at the very time of the murders, a violent hailstorm had blanketed the grasslands in white.
The other man, identified as Gerardo N, appears to be the first suspect’s driver; he drove him to the scene and later drove him away. It is currently unknown whether he was aware of the visit’s purpose. After all, he and Honas were business partners. The driver might well have felt the same sense of ease as the singer’s family, who opened the door and let him into the house. In any case, these details remain unknown.
Authorities have stated that the alleged killer—a 51-year-old Mexican national—and Honas were business partners. Sources close to the case told that “robbery is a possible motive for the homicide.” It has also been reported that both individuals “owned homes in Valle de Bravo”—a tourist town in the State of Mexico—and “rented them out via Airbnb.” However, no company listing both of them as partners appears in the Ministry of Economy’s Public Commercial Registry. When asked about their business partnership, the same sources point to a company called Nomad Property Management, an Airbnb-style platform offering high-end luxury homes—not only in Valle de Bravo but also in Tepoztlán, Acapulco, and Cuernavaca.
Before his Instagram account was deactivated, Diego Sebastián displayed a peculiar motto in his bio: “The idea is to die young—as late as possible.” Next to this phrase was a link to the Nomad website. Since Wednesday afternoon, internet users have been surfacing various social media complaints against the alleged killer and his partner regarding vacation rental fraud. One of the complaints dates back to July; the complainant alleges the theft of half a million pesos—approximately $30,000 USD. None of the complaints mention Honas, either by nickname or by name.
