Mystery Shrouds Murder of Ex-INS Inspector

On the surface, Jeffrey William Anderson seemed ill-matched to the multicultural intrigue of the U.S.-Mexico border region. The fair-skinned, red-headed Anderson was the product of a small town in northern Illinois corn country. Hunting deer and fishing were among his major pastimes.

But Anderson did have a passion: law enforcement, which he studied in college and decided to pursue as a career. That interest would eventually result in Anderson landing a job as an immigration inspector at the giant San Ysidro border crossing that connects Tijuana and San Diego, far from the American Heartland.

On Jan. 13, the one-time high-school track star, universally described as personable and good-natured, was found dead along a heavily traveled road south of Tijuana. Anderson was 24. He was killed execution-style; a single 9-millimeter bullet pierced his left temple, police say.

More than 10 weeks after the slaying, Anderson’s murder remains a mystery. Privately, authorities on both sides of the border say Anderson’s murder may be linked to the profitable border drug trade. There has been no solid connection made between Anderson and the murky world of drug trafficking, though he had a housemate with known links to the drug world.

Officials have discounted robbery as a motive. On Anderson’s body were his watch, a gold chain and his wallet, containing $322 in cash and credit cards. Mexican police say the driver of a vehicle probably shot Anderson as he sat in the passenger seat, possibly while the vehicle was moving, then pushed the body out the door.

Anderson’s violent demise could not have been more incongruous with his small-town Midwestern upbringing.

“Everyone said he (Anderson) was a very decent kid,” said Rudy Murillo, an INS spokesman in San Diego. “But the one characteristic that keeps coming up is that he was very naive. . . . We just hope that whatever associations he made didn’t lead him into trouble.”

At the time of his death, Anderson was no longer working for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He had resigned Nov. 1, some 15 months after he had begun as an intern. He told family members that he was tired of the stressful inspection job and was upset about the deteriorating health of his wife, Norma, who had developed cancer in late 1989.

What Anderson did for a living in the last 10 weeks of his life, after he left the immigration service, remains unclear. He began wearing an electronic beeper and told his family he had taken on a job as a private investigator. But his father says he suspected that Jeffrey used that as a cover to conceal a more sensitive post--perhaps as an undercover agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I think he was working for the DEA or something like that, and now they’re trying to cover it up,” William Anderson, a longtime truck driver, said from his home in Tiskilwa, a northern Illinois town of about 1,000 people, where Anderson was reared. Anderson concedes he has no proof that his son was working for the DEA at the time of his death, or that he ever worked as a private investigator.

(Queried about the matter, James Mavromatis, a DEA spokesman in San Diego, said it was the agency’s policy neither to confirm or deny that an individual worked for the DEA.)

Law enforcement authorities in the United States and Mexico have privately suggested that Anderson may have become involved with drug traffickers, although no proof of any such relationship has emerged publicly. Such speculation is vehemently rejected by Anderson’s parents, who remain distraught about the killing and perplexed by its causes.

“We would have known if he were doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing,” said his mother, Sharon Anderson, speaking by telephone from Illinois. “He called us two or three times a week. . . . You pull away from your parents when you’re doing something like that, you don’t call them. He was really a good boy. He always was.”

The only public link between Anderson and the drug underworld is Luis Roberto Estrella Solano, who shared Anderson’s El Cajon home in the two weeks preceding the ex-inspector’s death. Estrella, a street-wise 29-year-old from the Mexican border city of Mexicali, has emerged as a key figure in the case.

Estrella, who says in court papers that he was a longtime informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, has been questioned extensively by both U.S. and Mexican authorities about the murder. Mexican authorities subjected him to almost five days of torture and beatings after he was turned over to them by U.S. officials in February, according to court papers on file in U.S. District Court in San Diego. Estrella has denied knowing who murdered Anderson.

Estrella says he came to know Anderson through his common-law wife, who had a longtime friendship with Anderson’s widow, Norma. Anderson met his wife, a Mexican citizen, while on duty at the busy border crossing; she passed through in her car. The two eloped on Jan. 4, 1989, about a year before Anderson’s death. Neither spoke the other’s native tongue fluently, relatives say, and they communicated in broken English and Spanish. Through her, he acquired acquaintances in Tijuana.

About two weeks before the murder, Estrella, his common-law wife, and his two daughters moved into the Andersons’ El Cajon home, according to Estrella. Estrella said that his common-law wife planned to help care for Norma Anderson and her 8-year-old son from a previous marriage. (Norma Anderson has been ill and unavailable for comment.)

Estrella is one of the last people known to have seen Anderson alive. On the evening of the murder, Jan. 13., Estrella said that he and Anderson were in the El Cajon home. At about 7:30 p.m., Estrella said in an interview, Anderson received a message on his electronic beeper. Anderson then made a telephone call, apparently arranging a rendezvous, according to Estrella.

About an hour later, Estrella said that Anderson went outside and entered a late-model Oldsmobile sedan driven by a man whom Estrella says he did not recognize. The two shook hands and drove off, said Estrella, who said he watched from an upstairs window.

“I didn’t pay much attention,” said Estrella, who said he did not know what business Anderson became involved in after he left the immigration service. “Jeffrey came and went, and I came and went.”

Anderson’s murder came as a shock to friends and family members. Some had wondered about his decision to leave the small-town security of Illinois.

“He was a very likable kind of guy,” recalled Charles Scanland, a former hunting buddy who owns a motor inn in Princeton, Ill., where Anderson worked as a maintenance man before leaving for California in mid-1988. “Talking with him sometime, I asked him if he knew what he was doing, leaving Illinois and getting into all that.”

Anderson had a longtime interest in law enforcement, the topic he had chosen as his major at Western Illinois University. He interned at the Bureau County, Ill., sheriff’s office. His two cousins served as village marshals, or policemen, of Tiskilwa.

“It seemed like I was always a role model for him,” recalled Dan Sissel, a cousin who is now a police officer in nearby Princeton, Ill. “He was also next to me at sporting events and other activities. He’d say, ‘This is my cousin. This is the village marshal.’ . . . He was always interested in police work. He was such an honest young kid.”

Anderson was also eager to get beyond rural Illinois. To his friend Charles Scanland, he mentioned his interest in working in anti-drug law enforcement, possibly in Dade County, Fla., a well-known trafficking center.

Eventually, Anderson tested for a job with the San Diego Police Department, in part because a family friend worked at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in San Diego. The friend eventually helped Anderson secure an internship with the immigration service in July, 1988. Anderson was excited about the move. He was later hired as a part-time border inspector, although he often worked 40 hours a week or more, his parents say. Immigration officials say Anderson never underwent the extensive training required of a full-time inspector.

Despite the initial exhilaration and novelty of being away from the small town, Anderson’s parents say their son soon tired of the long hours and difficult working conditions--especially the smothering vehicular exhausts--associated with San Ysidro. The young inspector wanted to be an investigator, his parents say, but he became discouraged about the prospect of advancing in the agency.

“It was like working in the sewer of the world--the fumes, the long hours,” his father recalled. “It wasn’t what he went to college for.”

Anderson resigned from the immigration service Nov. 1. His life thereafter is somewhat of a mystery, until his body was found on Jan. 13. There was no mention of money problems, say his parents, who say they were in constant touch with their son.

Now, his parents say they wish their son had never left for the West Coast and the border, a lament echoed by others who knew him. “I just don’t think he was hard to the ways of the world,” said Dan Sissel, his cousin. “His was just out of his league, you might say.”