California man Bryant “Eduardo” Rivera named stripper serial killer
A California man and suspected serial killer was arrested Thursday, more than a year after he allegedly killed three sex workers in a Mexican border city.
Bryant “Eduardo” Rivera, 30, was busted outside Los Angeles and will be extradited in the coming days to Baja California, where he will be charged in a murder spree that spanned six months, according to the State Attorney General’s Office.
US authorities were acting on an extradition request from Mexican investigators, who had been hunting for the man they called a “serial killer” since November 2022.
“We will apply all the legal and technological instruments necessary to find those responsible for any crime, particularly those considered for gender reasons, so with a strong hand we will seek to bring all those criminals to justice, even when they try to evade it by hiding in another country,” Baja California Prosecutor Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said in a statement.
Carpio added that Rivera has displayed “violent and psychopathic behavior.”
Though Rivera is wanted for three murders in Mexico, US officials have only charged him with one femicide, a federal complaint shows.
Investigators believe the California man strangled sex worker Ángela Carolina Acosta Flores to death on January 24, 2022 inside a hotel room next to the Tijuana bar where he had picked her up.
Rivera had been frequenting the Hong Kong Bar for several months, and had allegedly already killed at least one other prostitute who worked there before murdering Flores.
Surveillance footage shows the two walking into the neighboring hotel together around 10:15 p.m., but Rivera leaving alone just an hour and a half later.
Though Flores’ mother and boyfriend suspected the dancer was in grave danger because she wasn’t answering her phone, staff wouldn’t open the hotel door to find Flores’ naked body until noon the following day.
By that time, Rivera was already back in the US — video surveillance taken from the San Ysidro Port of Entry caught him reentering the country just 13 minutes after leaving the hotel, according to the complaint.
He may have also taken her phone along with him — the device’s last location was tracked in Riverside, 114 miles north of Tijuana.
Witnesses immediately identified well-known customer Rivera as the man who was last seen with Flores, though he used the name “Eduardo” when mingling with the dancers and checking out hotel rooms.
One prostitute told investigators Rivera had taken her to the hotel room for a “service” just hours before he allegedly killed her colleague.
Despite being fingered as the girl’s killer, Rivera returned to the Hong Kong bar just one month later to allegedly kill another dancer.
The 25-year-old victim was found strangled to death, naked and bludgeoned inside her SUV three days after she went missing, according to the San Diego Tribune.
Mexican authorities — who last year likened Rivera to Ted Bundy — believe the California man is also responsible for the August 2021 slaying of a 28-year-old mother who worked at the Hong Kong bar as well as Adelita Bar, another strip club.
Carpio said investigators were also looking into similar murders from recent years to determine whether they could also be linked to Rivera.
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