Death, Voodoo, Stalk Those Trying to Cut In on Cocaine Business

Despite David Petz’s delight at finally signing a contract to sell his four-bedroom home in El Paso’s swank Upper Valley--it had sat vacant for weeks--he insisted on a final walk-through check before the deal closed.

He hadn’t left anything behind. But somebody else had.

Stacked neatly on the floor were big cartons. Inside the cartons were tightly wrapped bundles. He knew the shape of the containers instantly. He was an intelligence agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the cartons were stuffed with more than 400 pounds of near-pure Colombian cocaine, enough coke to supply dealers in five Western states for weeks.

Border Stash House

The people to whom he was deeding his home were international drug dealers. His family’s home was about to be a border stash house, cocaine warehouse and distribution center.

A stakeout nabbed a gaggle of unsuspecting home buyers, part of a criminal conspiracy that employed grandmothers as couriers and former police officers as soldiers. The ring distributed as far away as California and held ties to major Colombian networks based in Miami, according to the federal indictment. Eleven defendants were named.

“Here was a million-in-one shot, a Lee Trevino hole in one,” says Phillip Jordan, special agent in charge of the DEA’s field office in Dallas. “We plain lucked out.”

The bust took place in June. It was one of the biggest on record. But it was followed by much bigger seizures. In August a ton of coke was confiscated from a vehicle at an interstate checkpoint between Las Cruces and Demming, N. M.

A month later came the big score. An unmarked tractor-trailer rig was halted near an El Paso border security crossing point.

‘Didn’t Measure Up’

“It was one of those long trucks where the outside of the cargo compartment measured 20 feet and the inside 15 feet,” says Ernest Perez, resident agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso office. “Something didn’t measure up.”

Inspectors tore away a false section and were startled to find a seamless wall of alabaster, 3,600 pounds of glistening cocaine, nine times the volume of the huge DEA house bust.

The giant seizures recently in the Southwest and mounting evidence going back more than two years reflect two trends.

First: Drug-dealing Colombians and others squeezed by law enforcement pressure in South Florida have shifted operations to the 2,000-mile stretch of river and wire separating the United States from Mexico.

“There’s been a great increase in shipments coming through the Southwest border regions,” says Ray Vinsik, chief of cocaine investigations for the DEA. “There is clearly a movement afoot.”

Roughly 30% or more of the nation’s cocaine supply now moves across this new area, traditionally a smuggling ground for Mexican-controlled marijuana and brown heroin.

Joint Venture Struck

And second: A joint venture has been struck between the cocaine traffickers and the crime lords of Mexico. In exchange for a piece of the action, Mexican organizations grant rights of passage, including financial and material help, in smuggling the goods across the border.

“The Mexicans and the South Americans have joined in a criminal partnership,” says Jordan. “Because of the alliance, Bolivians, Panamanians, Colombians and others, find the U.S. border irresistibly enticing.”

Accompanying this tide of crime is death and exotic violence. In Dallas, newly arrived waves of Jamaicans have launched a crime spree accounting for at least 50 deaths in the last two years. “Of the 500 to 700 known (cocaine dealers) in town, 90% are Jamaicans,” says Dallas police investigator Charles Storey. “They’ve arrived like killer ants, wiping out everything before them.”

Houston has become a battleground between established coke dealers and young Colombian canoneros , or rogue thieves seeking to snatch drug wealth and out-terrorize the drug dealers. In recent months there have been 11 murders in the Colombian underworld, including at least three execution-style killings. In one case blood was drained from a victim’s body after he had been ritualistically slaughtered. His tongue was bitten so his evil spirit would not haunt his superstitious murderers.

‘Live, Breathe Violence’

“So many crimes are just senseless,” says Jaime Escalante, Houston police investigator for Colombian homicide cases. “These guys live and breathe violence. They find a guy with cocaine. They kidnap and torture him. They take his money, his guns, his drugs. They gang-rape his wife. Then they kill him, a shot to the back of the head usually.

“The point is, they want to scare or eliminate the dealers who may come after them for vengeance,” says Escalante. “They do a pretty good job.”

Ironically, tips from established drug dealers, frightened for their lives and livelihood, are now helping police round up the free-lance thieves and killers.

The new cocaine entrepreneurs come from the western shores of Colombia, cities like Buenaventura or Tumaco, says Escalante. Many are black, illiterate and superstitious, followers of folk cults, particularly the blend of Christianity and voodoo known as santeria .

“In our double homicides, they perform rituals before they do the killings,” says Escalante. “They carry little packets and a variety of necklaces with powders to keep the police off their backs. They even sacrifice animals before they sacrifice people.”

Cocaine, more than other illicit drugs, evokes violence, the experts say.

‘Cash Brings Violence’

“Cocaine brings quick and enormous wealth, and it is a cash business,” says the DEA’s Vinsik. “That much cash brings violence.”

In addition, importers of cocaine--85% of which comes from Colombia, 12% from Bolivia--come from societies in which “life is held less dearly than in the U.S.,” says Vinsik.

In the United States, frictions are increased with competition between the cocaine overlords--Cubans, Jamaicans, Bolivians, Colombians--seeking to carve up the street markets, not unlike the Italians in the rum battles of the 1920s.

“Forget about drug-related crimes in general,” says a Dallas police investigator. “Ninety percent of (drug-related) homicides come from one drug alone, and that drug is cocaine.”

How does cocaine slip across the border?

“Typically, a Colombian aircraft flies into a remote Mexican region where it is met by its Mexican connection,” says Jordan. “Sometimes its cargo is loaded into planes with U.S. or Mexican registry to minimize suspicion.”

The craft then flies to a secluded landing field near the U.S. border--officials estimate that there are more than 700 such hidden tracts south of the Rio Grande alone. Its cargo is then loaded onto trucks and other vehicles for final smuggling into the country.

Ideal Staging Area

Often the planes will continue straight across the border, guided by contraband smugglers who know the many gaps in land radar. A key passageway is formed by the mountain ranges, which run north to south through eastern New Mexico and West Texas, creating a kind of radar-proofed funnel for smugglers. The El Paso-Juarez area, geographic midpoint between California and the gulf, makes an ideal staging area, experts say.

Additionally, drugs are hidden aboard foreign-registry ships, which visit the more than two dozen tiny ports dotting the Texas coastline.

Increased vigilance has seen results. Seizures by the DEA and their state and local counterparts have skyrocketed.

Last year, the DEA confiscated 94,764 grams of cocaine. This year the total peaked at more than 2.6 million, an increase of more than 2,000%. The El Paso office accounted for 73% of the southwest division’s total, compared to 30% in 1986.

Heroin and marijuana busts are also up significantly, but cocaine is the big-ticket mover among drug commodities, and enforcement efforts have been insufficient to stem the tide. A key indicator: cocaine prices on the street have been plunging. The same supply-demand principles that drive down the prices of pork bellies and winter wheat apply to the economies of the criminal underground. Since coke is glutting the market, prices have dropped.

Price Down Sharply

“The price has dropped to an extremely low level in many parts of the country,” Vinsik says. “We’ve had quotes of $11,000 a kilo, sometimes down to $9,000 a kilo.” A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.