Body of U.S. Drug Agent Believed Found in Mexico : Remains of Pilot Also Reported

Mexican police today found two badly beaten and decomposed bodies near a ranch 100 miles east of Guadalajara and said they believed they were the remains of a kidnaped U.S. drug agent and a Mexican pilot who worked with him, the state prosecutor’s office said.

The bodies--one nude and the other clad in yellow shirt and gray trousers--were found wrapped in plastic bags near a ranch that was the scene of a bloody weekend shoot-out between Mexican police and heavily armed drug runners.

In Washington, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration said American officials flew to the site to determine if it was their agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, who had been found.

Camarena and Alfredo Zavala Avelar, a Mexican Agriculture Ministry pilot who flew DEA missions with the U.S. agent, were kidnaped hours apart last month in the western city of Guadalajara.

Signs of Heavy Beating

The prosecutor’s office in Mexico City said the two bodies were found 10 yards from a road leading to El Mareno ranch, near the town of Zamora in Michoacan state. Both bore signs of heavy beating.

They were taken to a hospital in Zamora where two DEA agents who knew Camarena tried to identify him. But both bodies were too decomposed to be immediately identifiable, according to prosecutor’s office spokesman Francisco Fonseca.

The bodies will be flown to Guadalajara for expert examination using dental records and other methods, he said.

Although there were no positive identifications, the major newspaper Excelsior reported in its afternoon edition that the bodies were those of Camarena, 37, of Calexico, Calif., and Zavala.

Seized Near Consulate

Camarena was abducted Feb. 7 within sight of the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, 332 miles northwest of the capital.

The kidnaping of Camarena triggered a U.S.-Mexican row after top DEA officials said Mexican police were not doing all they could to find the abductors, believed to have been drug traffickers.

During one week last month, U.S. border police searched every car at the 21 crossing points along the 1,900-mile border, drawing a Mexican diplomatic protest.

The official reason for the search was to turn up clues in the Camarena case, but U.S. diplomats said it was also meant to pressure Mexican police into action.

Found During Night

Manuel Beltran, commander of the federal judicial police in Guadalajara, said in a telephone interview that the bodies were found during the night near the ranch and brought to a morgue.

The independent Mexico City newspaper La Jornada had reported the ranch was being searched “centimeter by centimeter.”

Five people, including a federal policeman, were killed during the 1 1/2-hour shoot-out at El Mareno ranch Saturday in Michoacan state where authorities had conducted a search for Camarena. The ranch is near the village of Vistahermosa, about 60 miles east of Guadalajara.

Five people were arrested, according to the attorney general’s office in a weekend report that did not say whether the missing agent had been found.