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Noiser presents Real Narcos. In this episode, the hunt for two missing people has become a hunt for their killers. Felix Gallardo, godfather of the Mexican drug world and his Guadalajara cartel are suspected of the first ever kidnap and murder of a DEA agent on foreign soil. It's one thing to threaten DEA agents. It's another thing entirely to carry out that threat. There's only one man in Mexico who could have pulled off such a brazen act.
someone the DEA have been tracking for nine years. These guys are the real deal. And this is Real Narcos. The beach town of Puerto Vallarta sits on the golden coastline of Mexico's Jalisco State. It's a few hours drive west of Guadalajara. Tourists come here for sun, sea, and sand.
But very recently, the crime rate has skyrocketed. In late 1984 and early 1985, there had been several assaults on foreign tourists, especially women. And the consul general had been to visit the authorities in Puerto Vallarta complaining about the assaults on American women and Canadian women.
And so to protect the tourist industry, the Mexican government had sent a militarized police team to Puerto Vallarta to try to calm down some of the violent crime so the tourists wouldn't go away. One night in Puerto Vallarta, a group of men start a fight in a bar. It gets pretty violent. While this team is in town, some men visit a club getting into a violent altercation and flee one of the clubs and the police chase them.
The police track the men to a mansion. Then things go up a notch. What started as a routine call out to a bar brawl is about to snowball into something much greater. As the local cops approach the building, men carrying weapons appear at the windows. The cops bid a hasty retreat back to their cars. This is beyond their pay grade. The cops call in a SWAT team. Recognizing they're outmanned and outgunned, the armed men give themselves up.
The SWAT team surrounds the place. Without any gunfire, they get inside. And inside, they arrest a number of people, 10 or 12. They're all armed. Many of them have state police credentials or other types of credentials indicating that there's some kind of law enforcement officer. Inside the house, the SWAT team find an arsenal of automatic weapons, remote control explosives, and grenade launchers. They also discover a box full of audio cassette tapes
More on those later. The police set about identifying the arrested men, and they are stunned to discover that one of them is much more high profile than expected. One of these bar brawlers, way out here in Jalisco State, is a guy wanted in connection with the kidnap and murder of Agent Camarena. The Guadalajara cartel boss Ernesto Fonseca, the guy known as Don Neto, or Sir Good Price. He's taken to jail where he's interrogated.
They arrest a guy who is ultimately identified as Mr. Fonseca Carrillo. They take him straight to Mexico City and interrogate them. Fonseca quickly succumbs to the interrogation. Fonseca said that he had been at a particular house in Guadalajara at the time Kiki Camarena was there. The DEA hope Fonseca will point the finger at Felix Gallardo, but instead he pins the blame squarely on Carl Quintero.
He accuses Rafael Caro of orchestrating the kidnapping.
Early on, there were other arrests made of Mexican state judicial police in Jalisco. And those people came up with a story. This is what happened. This is who took him. This is where they took him. Then when Rafael Caro's crowd gets arrested in Costa Rica, they come up with a story. And it contradicts the first one. Then when Fonseca and his crowd get arrested in Puerto Vallarta,
They have a story and it contradicts the first two. So who's telling the truth? Who knows? Really, who knows? Fonseca blames Quintero. Quintero pleads ignorance. And on top of that, all the layers of corruption in the Mexican authorities. These are difficult waters for the DEA to navigate. But it's progress. With Quintero and Fonseca both in custody, two of the three kingpins of the Guadalajara cartel are down. Only Gallardo is left.
The DEA agents pursue the one huge lead from this mass takedown of Fonseca and his cronies. One of the men arrested in Puerto Vallarta with Fonseca says he knows exactly where Agent Camarena was tortured and killed. 881 Lope de Vega. It's a street in an upper-class neighborhood in Guadalajara. And, as it turns out, the house in question belongs to Carl Quintero. Kuykendall and several DEA agents race to the address.
Any evidence they find here could be crucial in nailing all three cartel chiefs for the murder of Agent Camarena.
Fonseca's people come up with an address in Guadalajara. The address is a house that was purchased by Rafael Cotto. Some of us go to the address and we find that there is a U.S. news team parked across the street with their cameras. So they already know about the place before we ever know. We never did find out exactly who leaked it to them.
But the Federal Judicial Police are already inside and they welcome us in and we go inside and look through this house. Kirkendall stalks through the house, his men at his back. Their eyes scan the floor and surfaces, desperate for any shreds of incriminating evidence.
The kitchen was a mess. There was food and dishes stacked on every cabinet, every counter. The house was a mess. It was a two-story house, typical for Guadalajara. It had a small room behind it. It had a swimming pool. It hadn't been cleaned in a long time.
There was a picnic area with a cover by the pool. There was a tennis court in the back end. It was two lots. It went from street to street. It had ranch house-type furniture in it. I don't recall how many bedrooms, four or five. But other than that, it was just a pretty common, upper-class home for Guadalajara. If this is where Kiki Camarena was murdered, Kirkendall's men find no obvious clues.
They began to conduct a very minute search of the house. I mean, very minute. They were very, very professional in their methods. Not at all afraid to get their hands dirty. And I mean, they did an amazing job. They took soil samples and wall samples and paint samples and vacuumed up everything you could possibly think of, including hair or whatever. They searched the grounds. They searched the small house.
There's a drain in the yard near the tennis court where they found a crumpled up license plate. There was a Volkswagen car parked in the carport. They were so thorough, they went into the closets and took the plastic garment bags that come from the cleaners, took them with them. They took a lot of things. They took a lot of things. Then something catches the eye of one of the agents. When Camarena's body was found at the roadside, he was tied up. That window sash cord over there?
Swaying gently in the breeze from the open window, it looks identical to the rope that was used to bind Kiki. Then a second clue: hairs are discovered on a rug. They're rushed off to labs in Washington DC for analysis. When the forensic specialists get the results, their jaws hit the floor. They match Enrique Camarena's hair. This is physical proof that the agent was held captive in this house by members of the cartel. With two of the cartel's leaders already locked up,
The DEA can focus solely on catching the ones still at large: Ed Honcho, Felix Gallardo. And on top of this, agent in charge James Kirkendall thinks he might just have an ace up his sleeve. The audio cassettes found at the house in Puerto Vallarta. Kirkendall thinks he knows what's on those tapes. It doesn't bear thinking about, but it could just be the missing piece of the puzzle. Kirkendall takes the tapes and gets on a plane to Washington, D.C. At DEA headquarters, copies are made for study.
The originals are retained in an evidence locker. The blinds are turned down at the windows of an office full of DEA higher-ups. A hand loads a cassette tape player. As the tape plays, Kirkendall hears shouting and beating. Then, his stomach drops as he hears a voice he recognizes only too well. That of his friend, Kiki Camarena. He's being interrogated, to put it mildly.
While he's being interrogated, he's being mistreated, he's being tortured. He's asked about the identity of some of the agents. Several of the agents' names are mentioned, including mine. He is asked who the informants were that provided some of the information. And they're using the water torture. At one or two points during the interrogation, they threaten him with more water. Some of the language is very abusive. There are more than one interrogator.
Several voices. They get a little personal in there. They ask him things that he absolutely doesn't know. Some places it's very obvious in there that they're misinformed, that they think that we had something to do with some seizures and arrests that we didn't have anything to do with, we knew nothing about. They're blaming us for everything. They're blaming the DEA, Office of the United for everything that took place. For a lot of their losses that we had nothing to do with. And since that's the case, Waikiki, of course, knew nothing about that.
Like Kirkendall, Assistant US Attorney Jimmy Giroux will have to listen through the tapes time and time again in the process of building a legal case against Camarena's killers.
I listened to those tapes dozens, if not hundreds of times to see if there was something, you know, that I might be able to pick up that I'd missed and that could be valuable evidence that I could introduce a trial or develop more fully in the investigation. You're hearing a man being tortured, being murdered, and you're hearing him beg for his life. At one point, he says on the tapes, he says, "I have my children, you know, don't murder me. You know, my children need me."
He's begging for mercy, and he wasn't afforded any mercy. The audio tapes are key articles of evidence. With a solid legal case against them, Fonseca and Quintero are put on trial. Their court cases receive widespread media coverage. The horrific reality of Kiki's torture is brought to a broader audience. It was very hard for me. It was very hard for the jury. The tapes were played for the jury.
and I was able to put up on a screen the English translation. And I was able to kind of scroll through the English translation consistent with the tape itself, what was being said on the tape, and then had by that side by side the English translation so they could translate and understand what Kiki Camarena was saying at the time. And of course they could hear him.
of begging for his life, they could hear him asking for mercy and they could hear his cries from the pain that he was suffering from the torture that was being inflicted on him. The revelations in the tapes shock and sicken Americans and Mexicans alike.
According to witnesses and testimony from defendants, apparently, Caro Quintero came to the residence and he was a heavy coke user. So he was very high on coke and struck him with what we believe to be a lead pipe.
Later, Ernesto Fonseca came there and saw that Kiki Camarena was in the throes of death, and he slapped Caro Quintero, and in Spanish he said, this is your baby, now you live with it, and he deported the residents. If the forensic evidence wasn't enough, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Girul uncovers further proof via the tapes that ties Gallardo and his cartel to the house where Agent Camarena was tortured.
By the way, it was through those tapes that we were also able to corroborate that Camarena was being held at 881 Lopo de Vega. Because at one point on the tapes, he's questioned by his captors of the house that the DEA had under surveillance.
and there's questions about the location of that house. And Comadena was not able to give the captors an address, a specific number address of the house that they had under surveillance where they believed that one of the members of the drug cartel was residing. And so the captor says, "Well, could you give us directions of where that house is located from where we're at?"
So basically what Camarena does on the tape is he says, "Well, from that house to get to where we're at now, here's the roads that you need to travel. We need to go from this street to this street, make a right, go to the next street, make a left, go so many blocks, make a right to get to where we're at." And so I took a Guadalajara street map and I followed those directions. I mapped out those directions on the street map and it took you to 881 Lompa de Vega.
Harrowing as they are, the audio tapes finally reveal why it's been impossible to locate and take down Gallardo. During the interrogation, Camarena can be heard referring to one of his interrogators by his title: "Commandante".
They incriminated, at the very least, the comandante, the Mexican police official that was conducting the interrogation. It was pretty clear that that was a Mexican police official and a senior police official at that. So that's very embarrassing to the Mexican government. And then it's further clear from the tapes that there is government corruption at very high levels in relation to the members of the Guadalajara cartel, which would also be very embarrassing
to the Mexican government. So it would not be in their best interest to disclose that kind of information because of the incriminating and embarrassing and scandalous nature of those tapes. For years, DEA have had their suspicions that local law enforcement was in the pay of the cartel leaders. Now, at last, they have proof.
Felix Gallardo was able to evade capture because of the massive protective blanket that he had. He had a lot of very high ranking, very important politicians, government officials that he paid for protection. At the same time, the entire Guadalajara Police Department was on his payroll. So they protected him.
Additionally, he had numerous ranches, hotels, a lot of real estate that he owned. So he was able to move from location to location to location, didn't spend a lot of time at any given house. So he had a massive security blanket and it was very difficult to penetrate it. But, you know, eventually we were able to do so. But despite the overwhelming weight of evidence,
The DEA's hands are tied. As American operatives on foreign soil, they're reliant on the cooperation of the Mexican police. And while there are honorable officers out there, too many of the top brass have had their heads turned by Gallardo's cash. To finally bring Felix Gallardo to justice, they will need to find a truly incorruptible ally.
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Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. The DEA are hot on the heels of Felix Gallardo, the last remaining leader of the Guadalajara cartel. He remains the chief suspect behind the abduction and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Camarena's old boss and friend, James Kirkendall, has been overseeing the hunt with distinction, fighting an uphill battle against Gallardo's web of corruption.
But now, his time on the case is over. They needed to move me. I probably wasn't happy about it, but it was time for me to go. I was not effective anymore. In October 1985, Ed Heath replaces Kuykendall as Guadalajara's DEA supervisor. Under Heath's leadership, the hunt for Gallardo goes on. The drug kingpin has evaded capture by bribing officials and politicians, while many of his ranches and hotels double up as hideouts.
The DEA have pushed repeatedly for the phones of Gallardo's known associates to be tapped, but that move has been blocked until now. The US government chooses this moment to raise the stakes. Mexico owes America billions in debt. US officials are willing to cancel a large chunk of it if they receive full support in pursuing Gallardo.
I think it was pressure that was being placed on them by the U.S. government. And so I think that they're probably fearful that the U.S. were going to get their hands on Felix Gallardo. And if so, and he was brought to the United States, the fear was, what if he cooperates? You know, what if he starts naming names? What if he starts disclosing what he knows?
And so this may be somewhat cynical on my part, but I think they viewed it as, well, we're better off capturing him here because we can control him and we can make sure that he doesn't talk and doesn't disclose incriminating evidence to the U.S. authorities. So I don't think that his capture was about justice in Mexico. I think that his capture was really more about survival with respect to the Mexican government to protect themselves. 1989 marks a turning point.
Well, they were cooperative to a degree. This had become a very high-profile event. By that time, we have U.S. press in town, and the media is not hiding anything. They're driving all over the city trying to find everything they can, trying to meet with us, and we didn't meet with them. They tried to meet with the Mexican police. The Mexican police don't want to meet with them. The Mexican media is not going to say anything because they're afraid. The Mexican government was getting worried. They could not contain it.
The DEA are in desperate need of an incorruptible ally who can coordinate the hunt for Gallardo. Well, now they think they've found their man. He's one of the top commanders of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, Comandante Guillermo González Calderoni. González Calderoni was one of the top police commanders within the Mexican Federal Judicial Police. He was actually my counterpart when I was in Mexico City.
And we worked together on this operation where we tracked suspect aircraft coming from South America into Mexico. I had a very close working relationship with him. And he was one of the most intelligent federal police commanders that I've ever seen in Mexico. Highly competent, highly motivated, very aggressive person.
And he was probably the most feared Comandantes in Mexico by the drug traffickers. The drug traffickers absolutely feared him.
Well, he took down a lot of drug traffickers. For example, Pablo Acosta was a significant drug trafficker, you know, killed him in Ojinaga, Chihuahua. You know, also was responsible for capturing a lot of very significant drug traffickers. And when the Mexican government wanted to arrest
With Calderoni in charge, the DEA get what they've been asking for: a widespread tapping of phones belonging to people connected to Felix Gallardo. Rows of police officials sit with headsets on, listening in to phone calls.
The suspects talk in guarded terms, careful to mask important information in a veil of code names and slang, but study their language closely enough, and pretty soon patterns begin to emerge. They keep referring to one individual as Numero Uno or Number One. As code names go, it's not the most foolproof. The cops focus in on calls relating to this individual. Then they pinpoint calls where Numero Uno himself is on the other line.
After two and a half months, they're able to trace these calls to a house near Culiacan, a city in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Commandante Calderoni and his men rent an apartment in Sinaloa in order to spy on the house. They settle in for a stretch of surveillance. They watch as a string of state police go in and out of the house. Clearly, whoever's inside is a big deal. Someone with influence amongst the local police force. And whoever they're looking after has some pretty expensive tastes.
They saw state judicial police officers coming in and out of the residence. And then they saw him through a window when they delivered some ice chest with shrimp and lobster and what have you. And that's when he knew that he was in the residence. Finally, Calderoni lays eyes on his prey. The man inside the house is none other than Felix Gallardo.
Calderoni and his team of 14 men approaches the house. They're not afraid to use their weapons, but ideally, they want to take Gallardo alive. The president, allegedly the president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, told Cuello Trejo, the deputy attorney general, that he wanted him alive. Why? I have to assume that because, you know, a life trophy is better than a dead one.
and they wanted to showcase him. Whereas if they killed him, you know, it would just be a very quick report. You know, Felix Gallardo killed in a shootout with Mexican authorities, and that would have been the end of it. Now, with him being captured alive,
The way they do it in Mexico is they parade him before the media. And we're talking about not only Mexican media, but the international media. So it would have been a huge publicity coup to take him alive rather than dead. So yes, González Calderón was told that they wanted him alive, not to kill him. The officers must have the utmost vigilance. Gallardo is known to carry grenades on his person.
If all else fails, there is last line of defense. So when they approached the house, they yelled at him from outside. They saw him through the window and he would not lift up his arms. So they figured that he may have a grenade in his hand. Calderoni raises his weapon. The safety of his officers has to take priority over taking Gallardo alive. Then he catches sight of something. He lowers his gun.
It's not a grenade that's preventing the Godfather from raising his arms. He had an intravenous feed and he was carrying around a bottle of fluid that was being injected into his bloodstream. He had developed a cocaine habit and he was trying to get away from the addiction and he was undergoing treatment for cocaine addiction.
Calderoni's men break into the house. In the flesh, notorious drug lords are often a lot less impressive than their legends suggest. Calderoni and his men have finally tracked down and confronted Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker. Here he is, standing before them, in his pajamas. A hospital bag of serum hangs on a stick that Gallardo clings to as he hobbles around the property. They've taken him completely by surprise.
When he went in, Gonzalez Calderoni put an AK-47 barrel into his mouth and told him, you know, look, you know, you're under arrest. And Felix Gallardo said, look, you know, he says, I'll pay you $7 million if you release me. And he said, no, he said, I can't do that. And he says, well, then you're a dead man. He says, you know that you're going to be dead within days. And
And González Calderón responded and told him, look, the one that's going to be dead is you if I release information to your subordinates about the fact that you've been killing, you know, one of your primary lieutenant's son, that you've been killing family members. So let's forget about talking about this nonsense, because if somebody is going to get killed, it's going to be you.
Finally, they've got him. The trail of death and destruction has led here, to this house in Sinaloa. Mexico's most powerful drug lord is in police custody. That same day, a Mexican army squadron moves against scores of police officers in the city of Culiacan, Gallardo's hometown. It's an attempt to flush out the network of corruption that Gallardo has built around himself over the years.
Only time will tell if it's a success. For now, this is the boldest strike the Mexican government has ever launched against drug trafficking and corruption. Gallardo is taken into custody, along with the entire police force of Culiacan City. The manhunt for the Guadalajara cartel will go down as a turning point in the history of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
It made the DEA agents more worldwide renowned for a number of years. It increased the interest of the United States government in making it more effective and bringing it more into the 21st century. Its budget grew enormously. The number of agents grew. Its mission was better defined. It gained respect.
because of the effort that went into prosecuting the abductors of one of its agents. It caused pride within the ranks for the way that we reacted, that we cared that much, that the agency cared that much. Public opinion is another story, but as to whether or not drugs are something you should be doing something about. Agent James Kirkendall and his DEA colleagues are elated.
But they will never forget that their triumph over Gallardo and his cartel came at a bitter cost.
The courage and sacrifice of agent Kiki Camarena will never be forgotten. It's been 30 years. If any, there are very few DEA agents on the job today that were working when Kiki was abducted. You have some agents today that weren't even alive when Kiki was abducted. So his legacy, it's there. He's admired, not as much as I wish he were. But that legacy will begin to lose some of its intensity as the population grows older and older.
He was a true American hero. He was a good man. He was a good husband, a good father, a great investigator, fine friend, you know. He didn't have feet of clay. He was real. Somebody to emulate, somebody to look up to, especially in the Hispanic community. Kiki's name is well known. Yeah, I'm glad to have known him. It was an honor.
Gallardo has been taken down, but the web of corruption that facilitated his power and influence for so many years continues to be something of a mystery. Perhaps it always will be.
In Mexico, there's no definitive proof of anything. The interrogator was identified as a former official. There's still not definitive proof that Mexican government officials were involved in the murder of Kiki Camarena. A lot of people believe that active officials were, but nobody can prove that.
What seems clear is that the Mexican government did not act aggressively to try to find the murderers, stop members of the cartel and others from leaving the country, and that constitutes a cover-up. How deep it goes, how many people gave their consent to a cover-up, is still a matter of discussion and debate. Certain people who are Mexican federal judicial police officials, including the head of the agency,
and the head of the drug component of the agency are indicted in the United States for conspiracy. That means the Justice Department and the grand jury that heard the evidence had enough evidence to say that we believe beyond reasonable doubt that these people perpetrated a cover-up, Mexican officials. But who else was involved in the cover-up and how deep did it go? And did anybody give advance consent to the murder of the agent? We don't know that.
Ernesto Fonseca was convicted of drug trafficking, kidnapping, and murder. In 2016, he was transferred to house arrest on account of his old age. Rafael Caro Quintero was freed from jail on August 9, 2013, on a technicality. A state court found that he had been tried improperly. He served 28 years on his 40-year sentence. Under pressure from the U.S. government, the Mexican government issued a warrant to re-arrest Quintero.
He remains at large, a $20 million bounty on his head. In April 2018, while still on the run, Quintero gave an interview to the Huffington Post. Quintero's ostentatious lifestyle as a big shot drug trafficker seems light years behind him. He lives a modest existence in the mountains, still on the run, still haunted by the prospect of being recaptured. He's a frail old man, his health is failing.
Years of looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the DEA and the Mexican police coming over the crest of the hill, have taken their toll. And what of El Padrino? The Godfather himself? Miguel Felix Gallardo was charged in Mexico and the United States with the kidnapping of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, racketeering, drug smuggling, and multiple violent crimes. He is serving a 37-year sentence. It was on the way from the courthouse to prison when reality finally hit Gallardo.
When he was being transported there, the comandante that was taking him to Amaloya told me that he started crying and he said, "This is the end of me." Because, you know, he would not have access to women, liquor, cell phones, and he would be in a very tiny cell with no windows to the outside world and no contact with other prisoners.
For a time, Gallardo was able to control his cocaine empire from jail, but his grasp weakened as the different sections of his operation diverged under new leadership. Then in 2017, after decades of legal maneuvering, Gallardo was finally found guilty in court of the murder of Agent Camarena, to go with the existing conviction for kidnapping. And with that, any lingering influence Gallardo had over the Mexican drugs trade was gone. Over the years, Gallardo's health has declined.
In February 2019, a court denied his request to carry out the remainder of his sentence at home. He continues to live out his days in a cell. With Gallardo and Fonseca imprisoned, and Quintero an aging fugitive, a power vacuum is created at the top of the Mexican drug trade. Into this void steps their former understudy, a new fearsome enemy for the Mexican authorities and the DEA. Real Narcos will return with the extraordinary story of a man who escaped multiple times from custody.
A new godfather who brings the DEA's hunt for narco criminals right up to the present day. The man they call El Chapo.
Real Narcos is a Noiser podcast and World Media Rights co-production hosted by me, John Cuban. The series is created by Pascal Hughes, produced by Joel Duddle. It's been edited by James Tindall. Music by Oliver Baines from Fly Brigade. The sound mixer is Tom Pink. If you have a moment, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.