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After eluding capture for nearly 25 years for a gruesome murder committed in Hudson County, Anthony Mota was found buried in the country where he was born, the Dominican Republic.
Mota had been collecting debts for high-level Colombian drug dealers in New York City when he and a group of accomplices abducted a Queens man on Dec. 13, 1997, authorities said.
The victim, 38-year-old Eddie Acevedo, was taken to a home in Edison, where, over the next 24 hours, the kidnappers called family and friends demanding some or all of the $180,000 that he owed the dealers.
When loved ones could raise only $23,000, Acevedo's wife offered her car and Rolex -- to which Mota and the others agreed, according to a complaint on file in Superior Court in New Brunswick.
Acevedo's wife left the cash, car and watch on a Manhattan street, then paged the kidnappers.
Mota and two accomplices collected the ransom. They split the cash three ways, gave the watch to the drug dealers and ditched the car in a city parking garage.
When Acevedo failed to return home the next morning, his wife called police.
Acevedo was held for the next few days before the drug dealers told Mota and company that he was a snitch who had to be killed.
Acevedo was then put into his car, which Mota drove along Route 280 -- with an accomplice about a quarter-mile ahead of them.
They stopped in Harrison, where Acevedo was shot in the head and neck. The kidnappers then torched the car with his body still in it in an apparent bid to destroy evidence.
It was a whodunnit until one of the accused captors, Bienvenido Casilla, was arrested by New Jersey State Police and the NYPD four months later.
The Mota manhunt began soon after.
Mota had spent five years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He studied business management at Long Island University and collected "Godfather" memorabilia, authorities said.
A federal indictment returned in U.S. District Court in Newark in October 1998 charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on state charges of murder, racketeering, kidnapping, extortion, arson and weapons offenses.
State Police eventually placed Mota on their "12 Most Wanted" list of fugitives, publishing posters and releasing information through the media over the past two decades plus.
Last year, NJSP detectives and deputy U.S. Marshals zeroed in on the town of Nizao in the Dominican Republic. They learned that Mota had settled there as “Miguel Angel Gonzalez Perez." He'd even started a new family.
They also found out that Mota had died of an apparent heart attack there in June 2021 at 62 years old. So they had the body exhumed.
Earlier this month, the State Police lab reported that DNA from Mota's remains matched that of samples recovered from Acevedo's murder.
End of story, as some would say.
SEE: Murderous 'Most Wanted' Fugitive In NJ Torture Execution Found Dead In Dominican Republic
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