Telegram Contradicts Key Witness in Camarena Case

A Los Angeles federal judge Tuesday agreed to admit into evidence a 1985 telegram that could severely weaken the credibility of a key prosecution witness in the Enrique Camarena murder trial.

The telegram was sent by Mexico-based U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Robert Castillo to his superiors in Washington. It dealt with revelations about the Jan. 30, 1985, murder of two men at a Guadalajara restaurant one week before Camarena, a veteran DEA agent, was kidnaped and murdered in that Mexican city.

In the telegram, the DEA agent described how he heard Luis Gonzalez Ontiveros, a Mexican Federal Security Directorate agent with ties to drug traffickers, confess to Mexican police officials his involvement in the killings of John Walker, an American writer, and Alberto Radelat, a Cuban medical student. They inadvertently stumbled into a party of drug traffickers and were murdered after being mistaken for DEA agents.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie has consolidated the Camarena case and the restaurant killings because he found that there was a significant connection between the two incidents. Prosecutors contend that the murders were all carried out by members of the Guadalajara narcotics cartel in retaliation for raids against their marijuana ranches that cost them about $5 billion in 1984.

Of the four defendants on trial in Rafeedie’s courtroom, only Javier Vasquez Velasco is accused of being one of the murderers of Radelat and Walker. He is not accused of participating in the Feb. 7, 1985, kidnaping of Camarena or his murder.

The judge’s action came the same day that testimony concluded in the eight-week trial.

Gonzalez’s confession largely contradicts the account of the killings described at the trial by Enrique Plascencia Aguilar, a U.S.-paid witness against Vasquez. Plascencia testified last month that he saw Vasquez beating Walker at the restaurant on Jan. 30, 1985.

Plascencia also testified that he and Gonzalez left the restaurant shortly after they saw Walker and Radelat being beaten by aides to some of Guadalajara’s major narcotics traffickers. However, when he was asked to identify Vasquez, Plascencia was unable to do so after looking around the courtroom for two minutes. Later, he testified that he had picked Vasquez out of a series of photographs he was shown by prosecutors.

DEA Agent Castillo heard Gonzalez give Mexican police a different account, and that account of the killings is contained in the telegram the judge admitted into evidence Tuesday.

Gonzalez said he dragged one of the two victims into the restaurant, where they were beaten, and that he assisted other men in placing the two severely beaten victims in a car in which they were then transported to a Guadalajara park. There, he said, Walker and Radelat were shot and buried as he stood guard at the car.

In his Nov. 14, 1985, confession, Gonzalez made no mention of Vasquez being involved in the incident or of Plascencia being at the restaurant.

Two weeks later, Gonzales recanted this confession, saying he had been tortured before it was given. However, in his subsequent statement, Gonzalez said he was not present at the restaurant the night of the killings, also contradicting Plascencia’s testimony.

Neither Castillo’s telegram, nor testimony he gave in court here, indicated that improper means had been used to secure the confession. Ultimately, Gonzalez was convicted of involvement in the killings and given a long prison term in Mexico.

The only other testimony against Vasquez was offered by another government-paid witness, Hector Cervantes Santos, who said Vasquez called the home of a drug trafficker to tell him about the killings shortly after they occurred. However, Rafeedie last week admitted into evidence records of the national telephone company of Mexico that there was no telephone at the house in question.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano, one of the prosecutors, strenuously objected to Castillo’s telegram being introduced to the jury, saying it contained an account of a confession that was obtained by duress.

But Rafeedie said he was admitting evidence of a confession made to foreign law enforcement officials--something that is not usually done in U.S. courts--for several reasons. In particular, the judge said that Castillo’s description of the confession indicated that it had not been obtained improperly. Castillo later said he did not see Mexican police beat or do anything else improper to Gonzalez during the interrogation.

Vasquez’s lawyer, Gregory Nicolaysen, said Rafeedie’s decision to admit Castillo’s telegram enhanced his client’s prospect of acquittal because it contradicted the testimony of Plascencia.