Posted on 08/20/2007 10:11:44 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
LAREDO — When police investigators realized the hit men they had under surveillance were about to attack a local dentist driving a Hummer, they issued a hurried order to a patrol car.
Pull the Hummer over, right now.
A few frantic moments later, the dentist was parked, the police cruiser behind him, lights flashing. The hit men kept driving, thrown off by an apparent routine traffic stop.
They had almost killed the wrong man — again.
But police were only days away from stopping them for good.
At its ferocious peak in 2005 and 2006, a war between Mexico's two biggest drug cartels for control of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, made international headlines. But only recently have details emerged on how part of it was fought in the United States, in the streets of Laredo.
Court testimony and documents, police investigative reports and interviews with law enforcement officers show the Gulf Cartel organized three cells of gunmen to operate in Laredo as it defended its turf against the Sinaloa Cartel.
They killed five people in about a year before the Laredo cops brought them down.
Before and since, both cartels have sent individual assassins on U.S. missions, officials say, although most of their warfare has been confined to their own country.
But the Gulf Cartel's work in Laredo displayed a persistence and tactical efficiency that eventually helped it repel the Sinaloans and maintain its grip on the area, which provides drug shipping access up Interstate 35 to San Antonio and beyond.
"To have a hit squad living here, tracking competitors, tracking the organization's own members and being able to have that information chronicled for their bosses in a very military-type fashion, we've never seen before," said Jesse Guillen, the Webb County assistant district attorney prosecuting the Laredo cases.
The most effective of the three teams was homegrown, with three young high school dropouts from Laredo.
Another was comprised of Mexican gunmen, whose lone assassination attempt in Laredo was badly botched, causing detectives here to jokingly refer to them as "the Keystones," after the clownish police characters of the silent movie era.
But border security wasn't a joking matter, then as now, to a city built on international freight, warehousing, trucking and tourism.
Even as cartel killers were operating in her city, then-Laredo Mayor Betty Flores was insisting Nuevo Laredo's drug battle was not spilling over the border, while Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores (no relation to the former mayor) was warning Middle Eastern terror groups could arrive at any moment.
The truth, it turns out, was somewhere in the middle.
The hit men, or sicarios, were backed by accomplices, getaway vehicles and intelligence. They were very well paid. They could have continued killing if Laredo police had not discovered their structure and disabled it, Guillen said.
Two hits, one day
Detectives here suspected the cartels from the beginning, but it would be months before all the pieces came together.
On June 8, 2005, this is what they had: Two apparent executions in broad daylight, hours apart and across town from each other.
The day's second victim, Cesario Antonio Carrera, 28, was lured out of a car dealership where his Mercedes was being worked on and shot several times at close range, police said.
It was done by Sinaloa Cartel thugs, sources familiar with the investigation said. Though unrelated to the first slaying, the accidental timing had officers speculating from Day 1 that something bigger was afoot.
More interesting circumstances marked the first killing, on the city's northwest side. Police found Bruno Alberto Orozco Juarez, 24, a former Nuevo Laredo cop, shot dead — his shirt stained with blood, a gold chain with a Virgin of Guadalupe pendant around his neck and handcuffs locked on his right wrist.
Orozco had stopped for the flashing lights of what appeared to be a police car, according to an investigative report. He resisted, yelling for help, when he realized the "officer" arresting him was a fake. One of his would-be kidnappers shot him with an automatic rifle.
Witnesses described a getaway vehicle, and a police patrol grabbed two suspects downtown. Both men talked, so police knew they were working for the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's feared enforcement arm founded by Mexican army deserters.
One suspect was a 20-year-old American named Gabriel Cardona. The other was named Richard Guerrero. At least two others for whom police still have arrest warrants, Wenceslao Tovar and Ivan Martinez, fled.
The motive was murky. What had Orozco done to merit getting killed?
According to an investigative report, Cardona told police Orozco was "involved or somehow connected to several deaths in Nuevo Laredo," and that Orozco still had a Mexican police radio on which he broadcast comments about how the Zetas "were going down one by one."
They were just following orders, Guerrero told police interrogators. Orders from Mexico.
The violent times
The Gulf Cartel, based across from Brownsville in Matamoros, Mexico, and the Sinaloa Cartel, led from that state by one of Mexico's most wanted men, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, still are at war. But the front lines have shifted. The violence in Nuevo Laredo decreased noticeably this year. The murder rate in its sister city, Laredo, dropped as well.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI agents say the recent relative peace can be attributed to reports that the Zetas have quelled the Sinaloans' attempt to push the Gulf Cartel out of Nuevo Laredo.
The Gulf Cartel lieutenant who oversaw this successful defense was a man known as "El Cuarenta," or "40."
In 2005, he was very busy. Ambushes, kidnappings and shootouts marked life in Nuevo Laredo. Police were targeted. Innocent bystanders were hit. The city police chief was killed on the same day as the two executions in Laredo.
The Zeta cell that killed Orozco in Laredo had been broken up by quick arrests in June, but by the end of 2005, it was fully reconstituted.
A Nuevo Laredoan named Lucio Velez Quintero, aka "El Viejon," arrived to organize new teams. He reported directly to "40."
Gabriel Cardona, free while awaiting trial on a murder charge because of a generous bond reduction, was assigned to work with two other Americans, Rosalio Reta, then 16, and another teen, Jesus Gonzalez III.
"These are neighborhood kids who got mixed up with these gangs," said Guillen, the prosecutor. "These kids would go across and frequent certain bars and were somehow introduced, recruited and offered work."
Velez also formed a second cell of legal and undocumented Mexican immigrants.
Each of the squad members got $500 a week just to be ready when "40" authorized a target, Cardona would later tell authorities. The next known target was approved on Dec. 8, 2005.
Velez gave the Americans their orders, and the three took Gonzalez's white Ford Expedition to a Torta Mex restaurant. They circled the block several times, then pulled into the parking lot to block a white Lexus that was leaving.
Reta walked up to the driver's side window and fired several rounds, killing a man named Moises García. Gonzalez sped to a nearby H-E-B grocery, where an accomplice picked them up and took them to a safe house, according to a court document.
There, Velez paid Reta a bonus of $10,000 and two kilograms of cocaine, the document states.
This time, police had no quick suspects or arrests, just an unsolved murder on their hands.
Miss and hit
The very next night, Dec. 9, the second cell of sicarios also was given a mission. David Martinez Cerezo, 26, and Pablo Perez Gonzalez, 22, together with a third man, were assigned to kill a former Gulf Cartel trafficker who had defected to the Sinaloa Cartel, federal court documents show.
Only Martinez and Perez went on the job, tracking their target (who was not identified in court records) to a Wal-Mart Super Center in east Laredo. Handguns hidden, they searched the store.
As they exited, they spotted the defector getting into a Hummer. Martinez and Perez blazed away with their pistols, then fled in a waiting Chevy Suburban. The Hummer drove off.
Later, investigators would apply a nickname to these gunmen: the Keystone sicarios. But no one was laughing at the time.
Apparently it was obvious to "40" that Cardona, Reta and Gonzalez were the A-Team. Court documents say he ordered their next hit for Jan. 8, 2006.
A Laredo man named Mike Lopez owed the cartel a drug debt, Cardona would later tell police — although the cops believe the true motive was that Lopez was dating one of "40's" ex-girlfriends.
The young Americans got a call from "40" himself, instructing them to use a car already parked at an H-E-B. They'd know it by the water bottle atop it. Keys were under the mat.
On Jan. 8, with Reta at the wheel, Cardona next to him and Gonzalez in back, they tracked Lopez and some friends to his home on Frost Street. The group had just celebrated Lopez's birthday at a bar, court documents state.
The killers parked the 1991 Nissan Sentra in front of the house, but Gonzalez was afraid, so Cardona got out, Reta later told police.
"I heard gunshots — lots of them," Juan Muñoz, a friend of Lopez, recalled at Reta's trial for murder. Or, as Guillen told jurors, "The order was given, no questions were asked, the execution was carried out."
But the Gulf Cartel had killed the wrong man. Cardona's bullets had struck Noe Flores, Lopez's stepbrother.
Lopez straddled the body of his slain sibling and tried to lift him by his shirt, shouting, "No, no, don't do this to me! Get up! Get up!" Muñoz testified.
The sicarios ditched their car three blocks away and were picked up by Aurora del Bosque, an accomplice who also aided them after the Garcia slaying.
Not one to skip an opportunity, "40" called his assassins as they fled to a safehouse, telling them Lopez was crying over his brother. He wanted them to return and finish the job, according to a court document.
Out of caution, they didn't turn around. But they weren't cautious enough.
Left in the abandoned Sentra was a half-full pack of Marlboro Reds and a months-old convenience store receipt for a mobile phone card, items that would help police end the killings.
The hit squad continued to operate. On April 2, 2006, it completed its final mission.
Reta and Gonzalez were hiding in Mexico, but Cardona, the reliable one, and some new accomplices were assigned to kill a former Gulf Cartel trafficker who had started working with the Sinaloans.
They hid in a pickup and followed Jesus María Resendez from a house he owned in Rio Bravo, a small town near Laredo. They pulled alongside Resendez's truck at a red light and killed him and his 15-year-old nephew Mariano Resendez with automatic weapons.
Breaking the case
A routine Border Patrol stop of suspected undocumented immigrants in January 2006, about halfway through the hit squad's reign, turned out to be something much more.
Agents picked up three men near a border fence, federal court documents state. The Border Patrol learned police wanted to talk to two of them — Pablo Perez Gonzalez and David Martinez Cerezo.
How they became suspects is unclear, but under questioning, the Keystones opened up. Detectives had heard of "40." They and other observers of the drug war knew his real name. Now they had firsthand operational details.
Both Martinez and Perez were convicted on federal weapons charges that contain details of their attempt to kill a Gulf Cartel enemy in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Almost all the other hit squad participants have been charged with murder, including "40," who — like Velez and a few others — hasn't been caught. The rest are in custody. Several have pleaded guilty and received lengthy prison terms.
So far, only Reta has fought the charge, but pleaded guilty after a judge allowed his confession into evidence at trial.
At the trial, Martinez was an eager prosecution witness — for "personal reasons," as he cryptically put it — and gave "40's" name, perhaps the first time it had been uttered in a public forum: Miguel Treviño Morales.
It was the convenience store receipt for the phone card that unlocked much of the puzzle, detective Robert Garcia testified. It didn't belong to any of the sicarios, but to a local mechanic who sold the car to them.
Detectives Garcia and Carlos Adan got the phone, and found phone numbers for the American hit squad saved on it. The cigarette pack found in the car had one of Reta's fingerprints on it.
Coupled with the confessions of the Keystone sicarios, Garcia and Adan had enough to convince other arrested squad members to confess.
Martinez gave detectives details that other squad members eventually would confirm in their own confessions: the pay, the bonuses for the triggerman in a successful hit, and the fact it was Treviño — "40" — who gave the orders.
The operation was large, complex and constantly changing. But it wasn't the DEA or FBI that picked it apart. It was the Laredo Police Department.
"I can tell you that there was a certain amount of cooperation (with federal law enforcement agencies), but by and large this was Laredo PD's case," said Guillen, the prosecutor.
The Laredo police are under scrutiny. Two veteran officers recently were charged in a federal indictment, accused of allowing illegal gambling parlors to operate unmolested — just as the department was congratulating itself on Reta's conviction.
No matter how that turns out, Guillen said the department still can be credited with stopping cartel killers from taking more lives, like that of the dentist who almost became a casualty on April 8, 2006.
"It's reminiscent of the stuff you see on TV and movies," Guillen said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- marcas79@hotmail.com
Doing the jobs that Americans won’t do!
Los dos Laredos ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
An entire region of Texas taken over by the violent Third World. Nice.
ping
Does this mean that America is being invaded by armed soldiers of the
country of AZTLAN or MEChA and our Commander in Chief is having cocktails
with the leader of AZTLAN
Yes, that is what it means. When is our GOVERNMENT going to deploy its might and take back OUR country?
Someone or ones, very high up the food chain in federal law enforcement, is on the take. They are punishing anyone who interferes with the drug gangs whether they are local police or border patrol.
"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy"
These words he did say as I proudly stepped by
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die
"'Twas once in the saddle I used to go ridin'
Once in the saddle I used to go gay
First lead to drinkin', and then to card-playing
I'm shot in the breast and I'm dying today
"Let six jolly cowboys come carry my coffin
Let six pretty gals come to carry my pall
Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin
Throw roses to deaden the clods as they fall
"Oh, beat the drum slowly, and play the fife lowly
And play the dead march as you carry me along
Take me to the green valley and lay the earth o'er me
For I'm a poor cowboy and I know I've done wrong"
We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly
And bitterly wept as we carried him along
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome
We all loved our comrade although he done wrong
incredible story, and your accusation rings true.
Any day now... real soon...
BP Eyes Terrorism, Area Chief Declares
Laredo Morning Times, August 16, 2007
Border Patrol agents don't have the responsibility of apprehending illegal immigrants, Carlos X. Carrillo, chief patrol agent for the Laredo sector, said at a town hall meeting Wednesday.That seems to be in direct contradiction of this:"The Border Patrol is not equipped to stop illegal immigrants," Carrillo said, noting that illegal narcotics are also not on the agents priority list.
"The Border Patrol mission is not to do any of those things," he emphasized.
The Border Patrol's mission is to keep the country safe from terrorists and terrorist weapons, he said.
snip
CBP Border Patrol Overview: Mission [excerpts]
www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/overview.xml
While the Border Patrol has changed dramatically since its inception over 75 years ago, its primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States. Together with other law enforcement officers, the Border Patrol helps maintain borders that work - facilitating the flow of legal immigration and goods while preventing the illegal trafficking of people and contraband.The primary mission of the Border Patrol is the detection and apprehension of illegal aliens and smugglers of aliens at or near the land border.
Linewatch operations are conducted near international boundaries and coast lines in areas of Border Patrol jurisdiction to prevent the illegal entry and smuggling of aliens into the United States and to intercept those who do enter illegally before they can escape from border areas.
Traffic checks are conducted on major highways leading away from the border to (1) detect and apprehend illegal aliens attempting to travel further into the interior of the United States after evading detection at the border and (2) to detect illegal narcotics.
SNIP
Someone or ones, very high up the food chain in federal law enforcement, is on the take. They are punishing anyone who interferes with the drug gangs whether they are local police or border patrol.
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SEARCH ON “RITE RAIL”
I was in Laredo last week, and we even crossed over to have dinner at the Cadillac Bar.
The margaritas must be flowing freely as the three amigos sell America out.
One more thing, I've been here all day and have yet to see a house. It's just restaurants, businesses and hotels. Where do all these folks live?
Bump that !
Does this mean that America is being invaded by armed soldiers of the
country of AZTLAN or MEChA and our Commander in Chief is having cocktails
with the leader of AZTLAN
You are pretty much right!!
Check out the Regency neigborhood by the Del Norte Mall. Most of the homes reminded me of Tony Montana’s digs in Scarface.
I got in some shooting, but I have a friend with a friend with a ranch.
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