Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu was quick to blame Mexican cartels for the grisly deaths of five people in a case that Tempe law-enforcement authorities are convinced is a murder-suicide unrelated to the bloody drug war south of the border.

Burned bodies found in Arizona desert: Stories, photos

For more than three days after the torched Ford SUV was discovered in Pinal County's remote Vekol Valley, a well-known drug- and immigrant-smuggling corridor, the sheriff repeatedly linked the apparent killings to Mexican drug violence. Babeu, a Republican who rose to prominence as a border-security hawk, even took a politically charged swipe at Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"All information is pointing that this is connected to the violent drug cartel smuggling in this high smuggling area," Babeu said Saturday via his Facebook page. "The border is NOT more secure than ever Ms. Napolitano!"

Through Tuesday, Babeu and his office continued to draw a connection between the five deaths and drug-cartel smuggling violence, even after receiving information from Tempe police on Monday that seemed to shift the focus of the investigation to a missing family who Tempe police suspected may have died in a murder-suicide incident.

Tempe police said Tuesday that they went to the family's house at 2 p.m. Monday and found obvious signs of a crime and notified the Pinal County Sheriff's Office shortly thereafter.

Late Tuesday morning, Tempe police informed the Sheriff's Office that they had confirmed that the burned vehicle found in the Vekol Valley belonged to the family.

At an afternoon news conference, Sgt. Jeff Glover said the victims were the Butwin family of Tempe and knocked down the theory that their deaths were linked to cartel drug smuggling, as Pinal County sheriff's investigators had originally stated.

Still, late Tuesday afternoon, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office continued to send out a news release that said homicide detectives were continuing to pursue a possible drug-smuggling/cartel connection. It wasn't until the end of the two-page release that the statement mentioned the missing Tempe family.

Babeu's reaction to the incident isn't the first time he has used violence in Pinal County to score points about an unsecure border and make claims about Mexican cartel violence spilling into Arizona. In April 2011, The Arizona Republic reported that there was no data to back up Babeu's frequent claim that Pinal County was "the No. 1 pass-through county in all of America for drug and human trafficking." The Republic also concluded that other claims by Babeu were either exaggerated or contradicted by statistics.

On Tuesday, Babeu was starting to feel blowback from his political opponents and other observers for his early comments about the torched SUV. Babeu is running for a second term after recently dropping a bid for Congress.

Late Tuesday night, a post on his Facebook page said, "My son lost a good friend this weekend, Daniel Butwin, and you are going to try to use this for some political bashing of our democrats in office. Shame on You." The post had been deleted by Wednesday morning.

Eric Olson, an expert on drug-cartel violence in Mexico, said he can understand why Babeu saw a connection to drug smuggling, given the area where the vehicle was found and the similarity with some of the killings carried out by cartels in Mexico. But he said Babeu was too quick to publicly blame the deaths on the drug cartels.

"It's not unreasonable to look into it, given the area that it took place, but it's really important to get to the facts before drawing conclusions," said Olson, associate director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Opponents in the crowded race for sheriff also criticized Babeu.

"Without a thorough investigation of that crime scene and pertinent knowledge of what you had going on, that type of announcement should not have been made at all," said Ty Morgan, an independent candidate for sheriff with several decades in Pinal County law enforcement. "When you're an officer, you certainly take a lot of care to make sure that all angles of your investigation are covered before you make any kind of announcement."

Babeu campaign manager Marty Hermanson defended the sheriff, saying that Babeu had visited the scene and was briefed by homicide detectives.

Babeu "in turn shared what information he had at the time with the media," Hermanson said, adding that "all the details still aren't known" to the sheriff or the public.

Early assumptions

On Saturday afternoon, about four hours after the bodies were found, Babeu held a news conference outside a gas station off Interstate 8 near the Vekol Valley to provide details about the investigation.

He made the first reference to drug trafficking, noting that the vehicle had driven off Interstate 8 into the desert earlier in the day after a Border Patrol agent tried to stop it.

"It appears in how it fled from law enforcement that all of this is consistent with drug trafficking," Babeu said.

Also on Saturday, Babeu posted a link on his Facebook page to a CNN story in which he is quoted as saying, "It looks like it's a cartel hit, where they exact revenge on people."

Babeu made similar statements to the Los Angeles Times in a story that ran Sunday.

The article noted that while the deaths took place in a popular smuggling corridor, it was unclear whether the deaths were related to either drug or immigrant smuggling, but Babeu suspected the case was connected to Mexican drug-cartel violence.

"We definitely believe this was five people who were murdered," Babeu told the Times. "We don't see this kind of violence. We've seen bodies dumped and vehicles torched, but our experience here in Pinal County is this is likely connected to some kind of drug trafficking, possibly to the cartels. It's very concerning."

On Monday, Babeu told the Associated Press that his office was treating the five deaths as a smuggling-related crime and that investigators were looking into the possibility of one cartel targeting rivals and burning the car to hide evidence and evade authorities.

The Associated Press also quoted National Border Patrol Council President George McCubbin as saying he had no doubt the burned bodies were the work of a cartel.

Even after Tempe police on Monday notified the Pinal County Sheriff's Office about the possible connection to the Butwin family, Babeu continued to focus on drug cartels.

On Tuesday, Babeu's office issued a news release that emphasized a theory, based on a telephone tip, that the victims could have been five men who headed to the Vekol Valley to participate in illegal activity. The Sheriff's Office said it was withholding the names because "the family fears possible retaliation from the drug cartel."

The statement also included a quote from the Boston Herald, citing an anonymous Border Patrol official who speculated that the driver had escaped and may have carried out a hit for the Zetas drug cartel.

Tim Gaffney, a Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the information Babeu provided to the media was based on "the exact same information" the sheriff received from homicide investigators and members of the U.S. Border Patrol.

He also said that Babeu repeatedly stated during the briefings and interviews "indicators were pointing to possible cartel involvement."

Smuggling corridor

Gaffney noted that in the past few years there have been numerous instances of smuggling-related violence in the area where the SUV was found, including a homicide last year in Casa Grande involving a man suspected of informing on the cartels, and the killing last year of a two suspected members of a "rip crew," gangs of smugglers that steal drug loads from other smugglers.

Olson, the expert on cartels, said there is a difference between the drug-smuggling violence that takes place in the U.S. and the horrific, large-scale cartel violence taking place in Mexico.

In Mexico, drug cartels are engaged in a vicious battle among themselves over drug-trafficking routes and with the Mexican government, which has been waging a major crackdown on the cartels since 2006. The violence has resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 and has become increasingly gruesome, with headless and mutilated bodies often dumped in public areas.

Olson said there "isn't a lot of incentive" for cartels to battle it out in border areas in the U.S because they don't want to risk disrupting their goal of moving drugs into this country.

Although there have been some recent deaths in Texas linked to cartels, most of the drug-smuggling violence that takes place on this side of the border involves disputes between local drug-smuggling organizations not directly tied to the cartels, Olson said.

"The difference is that the cartels are about moving large shipments to the U.S., and they fight over trafficking routes and access points into the U.S. And most of the violence, though not all of it, in the U.S. tends to be conflicts between distributors in the U.S. that are more local ... that aren't necessarily working for the Zetas or the Sinaloa or the Familia Michoacana."

Officials' reaction

Republican sheriff candidate Tom Bearup, who was chief executive to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio before a falling out, said Babeu should have waited until facts were confirmed to place blame.

"Just like all the other things that Paul does, he wants to capture attention. And his way of getting out in the public is by glamorizing or saying how wicked everything is that's happening in that area," Bearup said. He called Babeu's comments a campaign maneuver to prove he's "this tough, drug-fighting sheriff."

Bearup said Babeu has sought publicity before, such as when the sheriff blamed cartels for the Vekol Valley shooting of a Pinal County deputy that experts later argued appeared self-inflicted and Babeu taking credit for a $2 billion drug bust that involved two dozen agencies.

Bearup said it wasn't a stretch for law enforcement to initially look at links to drug cartels, given the burned car's location.

"But is it appropriate to put that out ... until you know for a fact?" he asked. "You're putting fear into the public."

U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle, an Arizona Republican who serves on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, cautioned against jumping to conclusions while investigators do their work.

"Drug-cartel violence is very well-noted, especially in that corridor and the control that they have south of the border, but I think that at this time we should wait to see what the investigation bears out," Quayle said. Should the incident turn out to be domestic violence, "in no way does this minimize the threat that drug cartels pose to our communities," he said.

Republic reporter Eugene Scott contributed to this article.