A restaurant worker accused of murdering one of his coworkers — and who had been a fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list since 2017 — has been arrested in Mexico, the bureau announced Saturday.
Alejandro Rosales Castillo, 27, had been wanted for nearly a decade in the robbery and murder of his fellow restaurant employee, 23-year-old “Sandy” Ly Le, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016.
Castillo, who had previously dated Ly Le, asked her to meet up to “pay back” money she loaned him but instead forced her to empty her bank account of $1,000 and then shot her in the head, authorities alleged.
Ly Le’s body was later found dumped in a ravine in a wooded area outside the city. Castillo, meanwhile, had disappeared.
Castillo was added to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in October of the following year.
Castillo, who was originally from Phoenix, Arizona, but lived in Charlotte, was seen on surveillance video crossing the border into Mexico and “speaks English and Spanish,” the FBI Charlotte office announced when he was added to the iconic list.
The FBI released the video of the border crossing in 2017.
Castillo was charged in 2016 in North Carolina with first-degree murder and the following year with a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
The Charlotte FBI office cited coordination with local Charlotte law enforcement and Mexican authorities to bring Castillo to justice.
“The FBI and our partners at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department have worked tirelessly to find and arrest Alex Castillo,” FBI Charlotte Special Agent in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said in a statement Saturday. “For more than nine years, he lived a normal life, likely believing he would never be captured, but our experienced investigators never gave up the hunt for justice.”
FBI Director Kash Patel added that the capture was “no accident” and credited great police work. He further weighed in on X, citing the bureau’s success rate in whittling down the most wanted list left by the Biden administration.
Patel wrote:
This is the FIFTH Ten Most Wanted Fugitive captured under this FBI in one year, since the beginning of 2025 — more captures in one year than the entire previous four years combined. It’s a credit to great investigative work and great leadership in this administration with @realdonaldtrump and @TheJusticeDept letting good cops be cops.
The director added, “Justice will be done.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
