After killings, Mexican hamlet fears 'ghost town' if U.S. neighbors flee

Neighbors of the American families murdered in northern Mexico this week worry the massacre will spell the end for two villages that have grown to rely on one another since breakaway Mormons set up home in the isolated hills decades ago. Unknown gunmen killed three mothers and six children from families with Mormon roots and U.S.-Mexican dual citizenship on Monday, in an attack that spread outrage in both countries and increased U.S. pressure on Mexico to rein in drug cartels. All the victims lived in La Mora, a cluster of suburban-style homes settled more than 70 years back by a breakaway Mormon sect from the United States on land 56 miles (90 km) south of the U.S.-Mexico border at Arizona.