Mexican Clowns Deny Drug Lord Assassins Were Part Of Their Group

Whoever they sent in, they weren't clowns.

Authorities say gunmen dressed in wigs and red noses fatally shot Mexican drug lord Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix last week. The Tijuana cartel elder was shot in the chest and the head during a children's party at a rented house at a Cabo San Lucas resort on the Baja California peninsula.

But a clown leader says that the people who assassinated Arellano Felix were not true clowns.

"The people who do that, they're not clowns. I can swear on my mother's grave it wasn't a clown," Tomas Morales, whose stage name is Payaso Llantom, told the Associated Press. Morales said that clowns are frequently victims of robberies, and their costumes and masks are then used to commit other crimes.

About 500 clowns held a "laugh-a-thon" rally for peace during an international clown convention in Mexico City this week. The clowns distanced themselves from the recent violence.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with us. We do the complete opposite,” another clown, Alberto Villanueva, told the AP. “We laugh at the very things that hurt us."