Ex-Investigator Shot to Death in Guadalajara

The former state attorney general who led an investigation into the murder of Guadalajara’s Roman Catholic cardinal two years ago was gunned down Wednesday in an execution-style slaying that officials suspect is linked to drug cartels.

The killing of Leobardo Larios Guzman, 55, as he left his home in a middle-class Guadalajara neighborhood, was the latest of several high-profile assassinations that have fueled Mexico’s economic and political crises this year.

The slaying spread anger and fear in the nation’s second-largest city and temporarily rocked Mexico City’s financial markets, which are just beginning to recover from their worst crisis in more than a decade. The markets closed down slightly after heavy losses early in the day.

But as federal and local officials began to link Larios’ killing to the drug gangs that each year smuggle across Mexico a huge amount of the cocaine that ends up in the United States, Wednesday’s assassination refocused this nation’s attention--and its anxiety--on the powerful ties between the drug cartels and official corruption, what Mexicans have come to call “narco-politics.”

Jalisco Atty. Gen. Jorge Lopez Vergara, who replaced Larios two months ago when the opposition National Action Party swept the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party from power in the state, confirmed at a news conference that police already have identified two suspects in the slaying.

He said authorities are investigating a former police official whom Larios had fired for ties to the drug cartels and a suspected assassin tied to drug traffickers, described by witnesses and later named by anonymous callers.

Late Wednesday, the official Notimex news agency reported that two suspects were arrested in Tijuana on the California border, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.

It said the two men, both Mexicans, were picked up by federal and state police. It gave no other details.

Detailing the ambush-murder, Vergara said Larios was shot at 6:55 a.m. as he entered his blue Ford Cougar. He was heading to teach law at the University of Guadalajara when one of four suspects emerged from a gray car parked nearby and pumped seven bullets from a .38-Special into his head and chest.

Vergara said Larios’ family told investigators that he had not received death threats and traveled without bodyguards. They and neighbors described in detail the gunman they saw fleeing the scene; sources in Guadalajara unofficially said he is a notorious, hired killer associated with drug traffickers.

“Basically, we are working on two hypotheses: one of them is possibly related to revenge by someone involved in drugs; the other could be due to a personal type of revenge,” Vergara said.

Sources said police are pursuing a suspect whom Vergara identified as Francisco Reyna Rios, alias “El Panchillo.” He already is wanted for a triple murder and for the attempted rescue of a drug trafficker from police custody at a Guadalajara hospital last year, police said. His release from prison last year was ordered by a Jalisco judge, who is also a fugitive charged with taking a payoff from Reyna, sources said.

Another Mexican law enforcement official said that he believes Larios was gunned down by one of the rival drug mafias involved in the killing of Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six others on May 24, 1993--the murder Larios was investigating until he stepped down from his post March 1.

Posadas was raked with gunfire outside the Guadalajara airport when, federal authorities have said, he was mistakenly caught in a shootout between members of the Arellano drug cartel of Tijuana and their bitter rival Joaquin (Chapo) Guzman.

Federal prosecutors assumed the lead role in the investigation soon after that murder because it involved drug crimes, but Larios remained in charge of the state probe.

The slaying of Larios “is a demonstration of the power of the mafias,” said the official, who is knowledgeable about the Posadas case. Assessing Wednesday’s killing, he said of criminal elements, “They are sending a message to all of Guadalajara to show that they are still in charge.”

In a city already exhausted from violence and murder, that message was received swiftly and bitterly.

“The first sensation here is, ‘Well, we’ve just had enough,’ ” said Jorge Zepeda, a political analyst and editor of Guadalajara’s daily newspaper, Siglo 21. “It’s also the feeling that no one is safe anymore. There’s a lot of concern about not knowing who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

“This guy (Larios) was not our Elliot Ness,” he said, referring to the legendary American “Untouchable.”

Fueling those fears, the three brothers who run the Arellano cartel--who already have been tied to Posadas’ slaying--have been fugitives since the cardinal’s murder.

In the aftermath of Posadas’ murder, federal police jailed Guzman and scores of low-ranking suspects--hired guns and allegedly corrupt officers of the federal and Jalisco police--aligned with the cartels.

But the Arellanos, who escaped on a flight to Tijuana with the aid of police allies in Guadalajara and the border city, remain at large. And the war between the cartels continues unabated.

The inability of the police to track down the Tijuana drug lords has fed doubts about the government’s version that gunmen killed the cardinal simply because he arrived at the airport at the same time as Guzman’s entourage and was mistaken for a trafficker.

The cardinal wore black clerical garb when he was shot 14 times at point-blank range; church officials and other critics say he was the victim of a politically motivated murder.

The Mexican official and other sources contend the Arellanos are the most probable suspects in the Larios murder.

Fineman reported from Mexico City and Rotella from San Diego.