A 72-year-old man from Ohio, Antonio Riano, has been taken into custody twenty years after he allegedly fled the country in 2004. Antonio was wanted by the Butler County Sheriff’s Office for homicide after the December 2004 shooting, but allegedly fled to Mexico to evade prosecution.
He has been on Ohio’s “Most Wanted” list for 20 years now, since the 2004 shooting death of Benjamin Becarra, 25.
His story was televised on America’s Most Wanted in 2005 but he eluded law enforcement agencies for nearly two more decades, even as he worked as one of them. Antonio reportedly tried to step in to help a bartender after Becarra was asked to leave the premises since he’d been part of a fight there a few weeks back. Antonio and Becarra allegedly began to argue and the barte asked them to take the dispute outside. Shortly after, gunshots were heard and Becarra was found lying face down on the sidewalk. Surveillance footage at the time showed Riano leaving the scene, but authorities were unable to locate him.
However, on August 1, 2024, he was finally apprehended and taken in after US Marshals reportedly found him working as an police officer in his hometown of Zapotitlán Palmas, State of Oaxaca, Mexico.
US Marshals Service explained that the sheriff’s office partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, who then worked with law enforcement in Mexico to arrest and extradite him. He is now being held at Butler County Jail without bond pending additional court proceedings.
US Marshal Michael D. Black in a statement said, “The United States Marshal Service, through our violent fugitive task forces, assisted our state and local law enforcement partners to apprehend the area’s most dangerous fugitives. This arrest is the result of the ongoing sharing of information between the agencies and the determination of the investigators who refused to give up on this case.”
Antonio was tracked to his mother’s house in Mexico, but by the time Marshals arrived, he was no longer there. The cold case was picked up again in January 2024 when the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office received its reapplication for the provisional warrant. At that time, Chief Investigator Paul Newton and his team used social media, including Facebook, to track him down. While purportedly working as a police officer in Mexico, according to the US Marshals’ release, Antonio left behind a wife and three kids in Hamilton, Ohio.
After the 2006 attempt failed, Newton said Antonio moved again. “We really didn’t see any evidence of him until 2023,” he said. “I think he thought he was home free.”
Now that he’s captured, he is facing two counts of murder and felony assault charges for the December 19, 2004 shooting of Becarra outside the Roadhouse Bar.
Police say they found the gun used in the shooting in a hidden compartment under the kitchen floor of his apartment in Hamilton with bullets beside it.
