On Tuesday 13th May, fashion and beauty influencer Valeria Márquez was streaming live to her tens of thousands of followers from the Blossom beauty salon- which she owned- in the city of Zapopan, Mexico, when tragedy struck.

Off-camera, a man entered the salon and can be heard asking her if her name is Valeria. She smiled at the stranger and confirmed her name. According to reports, the man gained entry to the salon on the pretence that he was delivering a gift.

The man then shot Valeria in the head and chest, killing the 23-year-old instantly. The livestream continued broadcasting until minutes later a woman reached over and shut the camera off.

Police arrived at the scene around 18:30 local time and confirmed Valeria’s death.

Valeria was a Mexican model and influencer who began to make a name for herself in 2021 when she won the Miss Rostro (Miss Face) beauty pageant. She soon began posting videos online of her travel vlogs and make-up and beauty tips. At the time of her death, she had over 200,000 followers on Instagram, with another 100,000 followers on TikTok.

The murder took place in one of the most violent municipalities in Jalisco where, according to the US Department of Justice, more than 50% of the real estate and commercial development in the area is connected to the laundering of drug trafficking money. Jalisco ranks sixth among Mexico’s 32 states in terms of homicides, with 906 murders reported since October 2024 according to data consulting firm TResearch. 15,000 people have disappeared from Zapopan since 2018. The state attorney’s office has also long been accused of having links to cartels, which it denies.

There have also been unconfirmed reports that Márquez may have been romantically involved with a senior member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a gang which operates in Zapopan and is notorious for its extreme use of violence.

While these are alleged reports, it is true that Valeria was seeing a mystery man. Two years ago, Valeria mentioned to her followers she had a new boyfriend. Although she never named her new beau, she referred to him as ‘The Doll.’ However, things between them soured recently and she alluded to being threatened in several posts before her death. In one social media post she said that an unidentified ex-partner should be held ‘responsible for anything that happens to me and my family.’ During one of her final livestreams, she mentioned that she suspected that someone wanted to kill her. However, Mayor of Zapopan Juan José Frangie said his office had no record of Ms Márquez requesting help from the authorities due to threats against her.

Valeria isn’t the only social media star to be murdered in recent months either. In October 2024, a TikTok broadcaster also known as ‘El Chilango’- whose real name was Juan Carlos López- was killed by two men while recording a video of him selling sweets on the streets of Culiacán. It is now believed that this savage crime was carried out because a rival gang saw Juan as a sympathiser for ‘Los Chapitos’, a cartel formed by the sons of the notorious drug lord, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, who is currently serving a life imprisonment sentence in a US jail. A month later, also in Culiacán, a YouTuber who uploaded videos under the name ‘El Jasper’ – whose real name was Jesús Miguel Vivanco García- was found dead with 70 bullet wounds and signs of torture on his body. In December, Leobardo Aispuro Soto, also known by the moniker ‘Fat Peruci’, was murdered by a group of armed men when he was out walking with his wife. Weeks later, aeroplanes flew over Culiacán dropping pamphlets informing the public that Juan, Jesús and Leobardo were all killed because of their links to the ‘Chapitos,’ El Chapo’s son’s cartel. The very next day, there was yet another murder- this time of Agustín Paúl, whose alias was ‘El Pinky,’ who had tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

Despite the possible cartel links to Valeria’s murder, the prosecution’s office has suggested that it may be because of her gender. The Mexican authorities say they are investigating the killing as a femicide, the deliberate killing of a woman or girl because of their gender, which is plaguing the country. Femicides are a phenomenon often blamed on Mexico’s enduring macho culture. In 2024, there were almost 850 reported cases of femicide nationwide, with a further 162 in the first three months of 2025, according to the Mexican government’s official figures.

In an eerily similar crime just days before Valeria’s death, a mayoral candidate called Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez was shot dead in Veracruz, and her entire murder was caught on a Facebook livestream.

Regardless of the reasons behind Valeria Márquez’s murder, the president of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum has assured the public that an investigation into her death is underway, saying, ‘We’re working to catch those responsible and find out why this happened.’