October 12, 2016 - 2:56 PM
MEXICO CITY - The son of slain Mexican film director Leon Serment denied arranging to pay two assailants to kill his parents, saying they had their differences but it would never occur to him to settle them through violence.
In a jailhouse interview with Televisa journalist Joaquin Lopez-Doriga that aired Tuesday night, Benjamin Serment also said he was never after an inheritance.
"I am innocent," he said.
Leon Serment was killed by two attackers outside his Mexico City home the night of Aug. 27. His wife, film producer Adriana Rosique, was found hanged in her home on Sept. 19.
The younger Serment denied prosecutors' contention that he left the door to the home open for attackers to gain entry and kill Rosique. He said he locked the door when he left that night, but acknowledged not engaging the deadbolt.
Serment, his girlfriend and the two alleged assailants were arrested in late September. Prosecutors accuse him of arranging the killings for the equivalent of about $5,200 per victim.
The suspect acknowledged that his girlfriend was a longtime friend of one of the alleged attackers and said he had met the other one only once at a party. He said he has no memory of a purported meeting at a metro station to arrange the hits ever occurring.
"I deny being the intellectual author of the death of my parents," he told Televisa.
"I miss my parents. I miss seeing them. I miss being able to be with them. ... In truth I only wish for this to be resolved in the best possible way and as soon as possible," Benjamin Serment said.
Leon Serment directed the 2010 film "Tequila Effect," a thriller about Mexico's 1994 peso crisis.
News from © The Associated Press, 2016