The end of the road for the fugitive "imperial couple" who owned jewelry stores and ruled a southern Mexican city came in a scruffy working-class neighborhood of the nation's capital.

Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of Iguala, in Guerrero state, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda fled a few days after 43 students vanished in an attack by their gang-infiltrated municipal police on September 26.

More than a month later, federal police finally caught the couple in a pre-dawn raid, on Tuesday, at a modest house in Mexico City's densely populated Iztapalapa district.

A woman accused of helping them hide was also arrested.

Abarca and Pineda were taken before prosecutors to answer allegations that they ordered police to attack the students to head off a protest that would interrupt a speech Pineda was giving as head of a local child protection agency.

In all, six people died, 25 were wounded and 43 went missing in a night of terror. Authorities say the officers handed the students to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which works with the police.

The students have yet to be found despite a massive manhunt around Iguala. The case has infuriated Mexicans tired of a drug war that has left 100,000 people dead or missing since 2006.

The Guerrero state congress has since impeached Abarca.

Police payoffs

The investigation has revealed the extent of the Guerreros Unidos' influence in Iguala while the search has led to the gruesome discovery of mass graves containing 38 unidentified bodies.

Prosecutors say Abarca periodically paid the gang between two million and three million pesos ($150,000 and $220,000), and part of the cash was used for police payoffs.

The head of the Guerreros Unidos told investigators after his arrest last month that Pineda ran the gang's criminal activities from city hall in complicity with her husband and the police chief.

Three of her brothers are linked to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.

In Iguala, few can explain how Abarca, who once sold clothing and straw hats on the street, rose to become a local magnate and mayor.

Members of his own Democratic Revolution Party accused him of murdering a farm activist last year, but prosecutors say they never charged him due to a lack of evidence.

Ashamed to find their city's seedy underbelly exposed to the world, locals have defined this "imperial couple" as proud and arrogant.

Maria, who works at a small jewelry shop that also sells dollars to businesses, recalled Abarca treating her with contempt when she delivered cash to him five years ago.

"What are you bringing me? Garbage?" Abarca said when she offered bills of one, five or 10 dollars.

"He was a despot. Anything less than $100 was garbage to him," recalled Maria, who declined to give her last name.

Always dressed to the nines, the cold and haughty Pineda was considered the dominant half of the couple, with ambitions to succeed her husband.

"We were scared," said a city hall employee.

'Hardworking' man

Abarca's family gives a starkly different image of the man said to own 17 properties in the city, including a shopping center.

"He is a hardworking boy who set about meeting many challenges. He earned his money himself and was in a very good situation economically long before becoming mayor," his sister Roselia, a school principal, told AFP, insisting on his innocence.

The son of modest shopkeepers and the third of five brothers, Abarca dropped out of medical school to go into business.

(China Daily 11/06/2014 page11)