B-King and Regio Clown: Who were the Colombian musicians found dead after going missing in Mexico?

On Monday, prosecutors in Mexico City and the State of Mexico confirmed the discovery of the bodies of Colombian urban musicians Bayron Sánchez—known by his stage name B-King—and DJ Jorge Luis Herrera Lemos, known as Regio Clown. The artists were last seen on September 16 and had been missing since then. Sánchez’s relatives identified him on Monday during a proceeding at the deputy attorney general’s office in Tlalnepantla, in the State of Mexico.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, via a post on X, lamented the deaths. “They killed our youths in the United States of Mexico. An international mafia strengthened by stupid military and prohibitionist policies, called the ‘war on drugs,’ which they are forcing on humanity and on Latin America. More young people killed by an anti-drug policy that is not an anti-drug trafficking policy,” he wrote in his post. Over the weekend, the Colombian leader had issued an alert about the disappearance of the emerging artists in Mexico.

From the beginning, Petro has insisted that the case has ties to drug trafficking. However, Mexican authorities have not detailed the motive for the deaths of the two musicians, who had just performed one of their first international concerts a couple of days before going missing.

Alerts about the musicians’ disappearance were issued on Sunday, when Petro asked Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for help in finding B-King and Regio Clown. The Mexican president responded to the request on Monday during her morning press conference, where she reported that search efforts were already underway.

The latest video posted by B-King on his Instagram account is from September 15. In it, he is seen in a dressing room getting ready for a performance with his team. “Excellent. Breaking out in Mexico. In D.F. [Distrito Federal, as the capital was formerly known]. I feel happy, grateful. We’re going to break out in the name of Jesus of the Armies,“ he tells the person recording him with a device. ”Is this your first concert in Mexico?“ asks his interlocutor. ”Yes, starting today, big things are coming in the name of God,” Sánchez replies in the same video.

Regio Clown had also announced his show with B-King on his Instagram account. It took place on September 14 at the ElectroLab nightclub and was called Sin Censura (Without Censorship). In the video, Herrera can be seen sitting next to Sánchez, as well as the artist agent Juan Camilo Gallego and the Venezuelan singer Angie Miller.

The artists were last seen on Tuesday at a gym in the wealthy Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. Gallego, B-King’s manager, gave details about his clients’ disappearance in an interview with Noticias Caracol. He said that he was staying with the musicians at a hotel located on Masaryk Avenue. Around noon, B-King and Regio Clown left for the gym. That was the last time they were seen in public. They had told him that they would have lunch with some acquaintances of Regio Clown, without specifying who, and agreed to meet again in the evening at the hotel for a work meeting.

“We were all staying at the same hotel. They left around noon. They arrived at the gym, uploaded videos from inside the gym, and after the conversation about lunch, communication was completely lost. They were no longer receiving messages. I waited until 7:30 p.m. to call them. Neither Regio nor B-King answered the call. Suddenly, their cell phones turned off, and at that moment, I was not yet worried. At midnight, then at 1 a.m., I became very concerned,” Gallego told Colombian radio station.

Bayron Sánchez, known as B-King, was 31 years old and originally from the Colombian department of Santander, but he settled in Medellín where, like other urban artists, he found a platform to develop his musical career. The singer debuted in 2016 and performed in various nightclubs in his country. The concert for which he traveled to Mexico was one of his first opportunities to showcase his project internationally. “I feel happy, grateful,” he said in the latest video he posted on his social media. B-King has 387,000 followers on Instagram, and his music has thousands of streams on Spotify. His best-known songs are Muévete Latina, Me Quieres, Diosa, and Como Yo, a single he released at the end of August. The singer’s family, including his sister, the influencer Stefania Agudelo, had asked for support from the community and authorities to advance the search a few hours before the artists were found dead.

According to El Espectador, Jorge Luis Herrera Lemos, a Colombian DJ who performed under the stage name Regio Clown, was 35 years old and originally from Valle de Cauca, although his photos show he had been in Mexico for months. On social media, Herrera claimed to be an entrepreneur, coach and spiritual guide, and his projects include an image consulting studio. On Instagram, where he has 41,600 followers, he announced a September 14 concert with B-King at a bar on Insurgentes Sur Avenue. His last post was a reflective message in which he wrote: “We live in a world full of diversity, of thoughts, emotions, intentions, and beings that are often not aligned with our own way of feeling. It’s not about judging, but about recognizing who contributes and who only subtracts. In that diversity, I have learned to distinguish genuine companionship from a self-serving presence.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition