Aide Returns Chief’s Murder to Spotlight : Homicide: Slain Tijuana police leader’s secretary demands action. She accuses key officials of abandoning her boss in his anti-drug efforts and failing to bring his killers to justice.

Until a secretary named Maria de los Angeles Villarino stepped into this city’s dangerous arena of crime and politics last month, the 10-month investigation into the murder of Tijuana’s crusading police chief had faded into relative obscurity.

Politicians, journalists and police had known the apparent suspects and motive almost from the start: Corrupt federal police commanders allegedly killed the chief after he refused a bribe from a notorious drug lord.

But months passed without arrests or progress--a seeming display of the drug underworld’s impunity. Finally, an emotional Villarino, the former secretary of slain Chief Federico Benitez Lopez, took a risk that more powerful and better-protected figures have avoided: She demanded action.

In explosive declarations to journalists, Villarino implicated a former top federal police official and a current municipal police commander, alleging that they attended a meeting at which Benitez was offered $100,000 to call off aggressive anti-drug operations.

And she had stern words for Mayor Hector Osuna Jaime, Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel and the state attorney general, saying they abandoned the chief in his fight against drug corruption and then failed to bring his killers to justice.

“Ten days before his death he asked for help . . . and they did not return his calls,” Villarino said. “The governor has said the investigation is 95% complete. The authorities must resolve this case.”

Her dramatic statements were followed recently by a flurry of false rumors about an attempt on Gov. Ruffo’s life and spectacular developments at the national level in two assassination cases. The combined result was to revive a climate of menace and intrigue generated by “narco-violence” in this border city last year.

Ruffo, who canceled his public appearances and surrounded himself with at least 15 bodyguards, said he thinks Villarino is sincere.

“I believe she became frustrated and is sharing what she knows,” Ruffo told reporters. “It’s fine that she was motivated to come forward. . . . I think she is doing this because she wants this matter resolved, as all of us do. She assumes some things and complements them with others that she experienced. Perhaps some of the things she says are inaccurate, but surely they originate from things she experienced.”

A knowledgeable U.S. law enforcement official said Villarino appears credible.

“By her coming forward, her life is in jeopardy,” the official said. “Why would she come forward and put her life on the line? She has nothing to gain.”

Authorities said Villarino may be called to testify by two separate special prosecutors: one investigating the Benitez case for the state and another conducting a federal probe of the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the ruling party presidential candidate. Colosio was killed five weeks before the chief’s death.

The secretary says the chief had learned of threats against Colosio’s life beforehand and had embarked on a parallel investigation of the assassination. The special federal prosecutor is examining possible links between the cases, which both appear to involve politics and drug cartels.

The stunning arrest recently of an alleged second gunman in the Colosio case, accompanied by allegations of a federal cover-up, only deepened suspicions of a connection to the Benitez murder; the chief was looking into the discovery at the crime scene of a bullet, which authorities now say was planted.

Benitez, a newcomer to law enforcement, was a trusted confidant of Gov. Ruffo, who used him in sensitive matters beyond the usual scope of a municipal chief’s duties, such as the Colosio case and police corruption probes. The chief’s mix of courage, honesty and inexperience put him on a collision course with powerful adversaries. His death last April ignited the worst crisis in the five-year rule of the opposition National Action Party, or PAN, in Baja California, leaving the governor and mayor fearing for their lives.

Ruffo says his detectives have built a strong case against the suspected killers. But he insists that they need federal cooperation to make the arrests without provoking violence between state and federal forces.

The historic appointment in December of a member of the PAN as Mexico’s attorney general raised expectations of progress in the Benitez case that remain unfulfilled. And recently Zeta, a well-connected weekly publication that often supports the PAN, has prodded state authorities with a tantalizing series of articles.

Zeta has asserted that the probe has stalled because authorities are afraid to act. Giving details but no names, Zeta described recently how two federal police commanders allegedly carried out the machine-gun ambush of Benitez on the orders of a gangster, then smoked cigarettes on the steps of federal headquarters while officers filled the streets hunting for the assassins.

According to Mexican and U.S. law enforcement sources, the gangster who ordered the murder was Ismael (El Mayel) Higuera Guerrero, identified by the DEA and Mexican federal police as a kingpin in the Arellano drug cartel. Higuera is wanted by Mexican authorities in another case: a deadly shootout a year ago between federal agents and state police officers who were allegedly serving as Higuera’s bodyguards, according to the sources.

Tijuana drug lords got angry early last year because the municipal police, whose role in Mexico is mainly street-level enforcement, racked up a series of major cocaine and marijuana busts, law enforcement officials say.

In at least one of those operations, Benitez and officers of the elite Grupo Tactico (Tactical Group) engaged in a harrowing stand-off with federal and state officers, who were allegedly guarding a drug load on its way to be smuggled across the border, sources say.

“On the day that they killed him, he told me what had happened,” said Villarino, the chief’s former secretary. “He said, ‘I am risking my life, my family’s life and the lives of the Grupo Tactico.’ ”

Higuera requested a meeting with Benitez that was held about 10 days before the murder, according to law enforcement officials. The secretary told reporters that the secret meeting took place at a high-rise luxury hotel in downtown Tijuana. Villarino said at a press conference that she saw Benitez talking to Salvador Gomez Avila, a former top official of the federal attorney general’s office in Tijuana, and Valente Montijo Pompa, a commander of the municipal police.

“In that meeting was when he received the offer of $100,000 and when he said no,” Villarino told reporters. “He said he felt very betrayed. Because Mr. Valente Montijo was the one who took him there and the one who betrayed him. Because Mr. Valente Montijo told him to accept.”

Gomez, who as the federal attorney general’s deputy delegate oversaw the federal police in Tijuana, was removed from his post last year. He angrily denied Villarino’s charges and said he is considering legal action against her for defamation.

Montijo, the municipal commander, has also denied any involvement.

Villarino described Benitez as a man who felt himself abandoned by his allies and who, during the conversation on the day of his death, was preparing for the worst.

“He told me that afternoon that he had explained to his wife about the life insurance policies, everything about what to do if something happened to him,” she said.

Gov. Ruffo confirmed that Benitez was intensely preoccupied by the dangers of the job during the last weeks of his life. Despite warnings by colleagues, Ruffo said, Benitez continued his stubborn fight against drug traffickers, which is the jurisdiction of the federal police.

“What would happen was that he would come across the (drug) criminals and then he had no choice, because by law he had to report it,” Ruffo said. “I used to tell him, ‘Don’t get involved in investigating.’ But he would say, ‘If I run into them, what am I supposed to do?’ ”

The governor gently rebutted Villarino’s criticism that he had failed to support the chief. “The fight was by all of us, and all of us were in danger,” he said.

Ruffo said he does not know if Villarino’s emergence has any connection to the subsequent rumor about an attempt on his life. The rumor originated in Mexico City and spread rapidly to Baja California last week as Ruffo returned from a visit with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo in the capital. The governor said he has reinforced his security “just in case.”

Asked if the rumor may be a warning to back off the Benitez investigation, Ruffo said: “Perhaps we are reaching the point where it might be difficult for someone, or dangerous.”