MEXICO CITY , Mexico -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A recently retired Mexican army general whose bullet-riddled body was found Tuesday near Cancun had taken over as the area 's top antidrug official less than 24 hours earlier , officials said . A soldier guards the forensics office where the body of a slain former general was taken in Cancun , Mexico . Retired Gen . Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñonez , his aide and a driver were tortured before being killed , said Quintana Roo state prosecutor Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo . He said there was no doubt Tello and the others were victims of organized crime . `` The general was the most mistreated , '' Rodriguez said at a Tuesday night news conference monitored by El Universal newspaper . `` He had burns on his skin and bones in his hands and wrists were broken . '' An autopsy revealed Tello also suffered broken knees and was shot 11 times , Mexico City 's Excelsior newspaper said . Tello had just been appointed a special drug-fighting consultant for Gregorio Sanchez Martinez , the mayor of the Benito Juarez municipality , which includes the city of Cancun . Tello , who retired from the army in January at the mandatory age of 63 , had moved to the resort area three weeks ago . The three victims were found inside a white Toyota pickup truck outside of Cancun on the road to Merida . The truck belongs to the Benito Juarez municipality , Excelsior said , citing Luis Raymundo Canche , an assistant prosecutor for Quintana Roo state . The three men were abducted Monday night , possibly in Cancun , tortured and then later shot to death , El Universal said , citing prosecutor Rodriguez . The bodies were found with their hands bound , the newspaper said . The killings happened around 4 a.m. , the prosecutor said . The other two victims were identified as Lt. Julio Cesar Roman Zuniga , who was Tello 's aide and the chief bodyguard for Mayor Martínez , and civilian driver Juan Ramirez Sanchez . Tello is the second high-ranking army officer to be killed in the area in the past few years . Lt. Col. Wilfrido Flores Saucedo and his aide were gunned down on a Cancun street in 2006 . That crime remains unsolved . The killings come as Mexico grapples with the highest violent-death rates in its history -- around 5,400 slayings in 2008 , more than double the 2,477 reported in 2007 , according to Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora . Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has characterized the battle among drug cartels and with government authorities as a `` civil war . '' On Tuesday , 12 men were gunned down in Chihuahua state in northern Mexico , Excelsior reported Wednesday . Eight other people were shot and killed in Chihuahua last weekend . More than 200 people have been killed this year in Ciudad Juarez , the largest city in Chihuahua and considered the most violent town in Mexico , El Tiempo newspaper said , citing local authorities . Last year , according to the National Commission on Human Rights , there were 1,900 organized crime killings in the state of Chihuahua . About 1,600 of those slayings occurred in Ciudad Juarez .