Autopsy Backs Claims That Jail Death Was Murder : Killing: Mexican authorities say North Hollywood man committed suicide, but relatives have insisted he was slain while in custody.

An autopsy commissioned by the Mexican government and released Friday indicates that a North Hollywood man who died in a Rosarito jail did not commit suicide as Baja California authorities have contended, but that he was murdered, as his family has insisted for the last year.

The autopsy report, released by a Kings County forensic pathologist hired by the Mexican government, will undoubtedly escalate the controversy over the death of Mario Amado, 29, who was found hanging by a sweater in a dank, tiny cell in the Rosarito municipal jail June 6.

Family members, a U.S. congressman and a special investigator from the human rights organization Amnesty International have pledged to hold Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari responsible for the case until the alleged murderers are tried and convicted.

Partial results of the autopsy were released by three of Amado’s family members in an emotional news conference as they left the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, where U.S. authorities gave them the results. They said they felt vindicated, after nearly a year of pressuring Mexican officials for answers.

“My mission was to find out if he was really murdered, and he was really murdered,” said Amado’s brother Joe, 50, of Van Nuys. “It is now time for the Mexican government to give us Americans some justice. It was a major cover-up, and now it’s out.”

Salinas has promised to seek criminal prosecution of any and all alleged co-conspirators in the case, and a government spokesman said Friday that the state of Baja California’s attorney general’s office will continue with its investigation into the matter with the help of federal prosecutors from Mexico City.

Officers present during Amado’s stay in jail have denied any wrongdoing, as have four inmates who were in the same cell, according to Baja authorities.

Mario Amado was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct after fighting with a woman friend and was taken to cell No. 2 in the jail, next to the police station on the main street in Rosarito, a resort town 20 miles south of the border. Less than an hour later, he was dead. Police said he had hanged himself from the front crossbars of the cell.

Two initial autopsies offered conflicting conclusions, one performed in Mexico labeling the death a suicide, one commissioned by the Amado family saying he died at the hands of another.

But even with the results of the “tie-breaker” autopsy, questions remain. For example, Mario Amado had talked of suicide with his brother Joe and another friend in the months before his death, according to the Mexican Judicial Police detective who investigated the case. Joe Amado vehemently denied that Friday, saying: “Mario never talked about suicide. This is where the lies come in, to cover up.”

The new autopsy states that Amado had been drinking and was under the influence of “a significant level” of cocaine. Dr. Armand Dollinger, the forensic pathologist who recently had Amado’s body exhumed from a family plot in a Kings County cemetery and performed the autopsy, said Friday that he could not comment on the case. But in his report, he states that the level of cocaine Amado ingested “is not the toxicological pattern I would expect in a person experiencing a suicidal depression.”

In his conclusion to the 11-page autopsy report, Dollinger said it was his opinion that Amado was strangled with some kind of ligature other than a sweater. Dollinger said a contributing factor was blunt force trauma to his abdomen that ruptured his liver. A prior autopsy said that Amado probably passed out from hemorrhaging before his death.

The autopsy further disclosed results of laboratory tests undertaken by the FBI, which suggested that the “instrument of strangulation” may have been something other than the sweater that was wrapped around his neck. According to the autopsy, the FBI’s conclusion was based on the existence of unexplained fibers embedded in Amado’s neck, possibly from “a cord, rope or narrow belt.”

Family members and the arresting Rosarito police officer, Marco Antonio Castillo, said in interviews with The Times that Amado had been fighting with a female friend on the afternoon he was arrested but had expressed no outward signs of distress, confusion or interest in suicide when taken to jail. “He was very calm and very normal, no problems,” Castillo said recently at the jail.

But Martin Esquivel Gutierrez, local head of the Baja Judicial Police last summer, said Joe Amado and the woman with whom Mario Amado had been fighting told him they had heard Mario Amado express thoughts of suicide. “He said to Joe one or two times that he wanted to kill himself,” Esquivel said.

Esquivel said that due to the extraordinary interest in the case by Salinas and other top Mexican officials, he was interrogated by special agents of the federal attorney general’s office and federal district attorney’s office several months ago about the thoroughness of his investigation and the possibility that Amado was murdered. “My conscience is clear,” he said. “I’m satisfied with my work.”

For his part, Joe Amado said that even though there were four drunk inmates in the cell with his brother, he is certain who is responsible for the death. “He was in police custody,” Joe Amado said, “so that’s who I’m pointing the finger at.”

Stymied at first by months of what he called indifference by Mexican authorities, Joe Amado turned to the media, and to U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) who also came to believe Amado was murdered based on examinations of the autopsy evidence by a private pathologist and Los Angeles County’s top medical examiner.

On Friday, Berman said he too felt vindicated. “Our suspicions have been confirmed,” Berman said. “And we certainly hope and I would expect that the president and state (of Baja) will proceed with an investigation into how this happened and prosecute the people who were involved in the killing.”

Berman refused to speculate on who may have killed Amado. But he said “one of the oldest lines in the book is that an individual committed suicide in a jail cell; that’s how you cover up improper conduct. Without some extraordinary intervention, this would have been left as a suicide.”

Dolores Amado, 53, Amado’s sister, grew tearful Friday when discussing the case, which she said has consumed her close-knit family for nearly a year. “My mother doesn’t want to rest until they bring his killers to justice,” she said, “and neither do we.”