Tijuana Cartel Linked to Killing of Ex-Investigator

A notorious Tijuana drug cartel ordered the murder earlier this month of a former state attorney general who led the investigation into the 1993 assassination of Guadalajara’s cardinal, an 18-year-old arrested in the recent killing has allegedly told police.

State authorities said late Saturday that Jose Luis Castro Ruiz, known as “The Donkey,” implicated seven other men in the death of former Jalisco state Atty. Gen. Leobardo Larios Guzman, a killing Castro Ruiz said was organized by Tijuana’s Arellano brothers.

The drug cartel leaders, suspected of masterminding the May 24, 1993, shootout at Guadalajara’s airport that killed Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six others, have eluded police for nearly two years.

Police had previously suspected the Arellano gang of involvement in Larios’ slaying but had no hard evidence to support that theory until Castro Ruiz’s arrest late last week in a joint operation of State Judicial Police and military intelligence officers.

Indications of the gang’s involvement were also bolstered by the arrest Saturday in the resort city of Mazatlan of Jose Luis Moreno Beltran, who was not named by Castro Ruiz, in connection with Larios’ killing. Moreno Beltran, known as “The Godson,” is believed to be a gunslinger for one of the Arellano subordinates, according to news reports.

Law enforcement authorities consider the Arellano brothers to be particularly prone to violence and apt to recruit younger gunslingers, such as the San Diego gang members believed to have been involved in the cardinal’s slaying.

According to Castro Ruiz’s statement to police, the Arellano gang wanted Larios dead in revenge for his refusal to take a bribe in September, 1994, to release five men arrested in connection with the cardinal’s death and a drug-related hotel bombing in Guadalajara, the Jalisco state capital and a major drug transport center.

Larios left the state government in February because of a change in administration and returned to teaching law. He was gunned down in a gangland-style killing outside his Guadalajara home early in the morning May 10.

Castro Ruiz is believed to have been a block away from the former attorney general’s home at the time of the killing, according to news reports. Those reports indicated that he had instructions to throw a hand grenade at Larios’ house if he had not walked out the door by 10 a.m.

The current Jalisco state attorney general, Jorge Lopez Vergara, said in a statement that Castro Ruiz claimed that he and two other men involved in the Larios slaying were also at the airport when the cardinal was killed. Suspects arrested in that slaying have claimed that they were hired by the Arellano brothers.

As the second anniversary of the cardinal’s slaying approaches, the motive for the assassination is not clear. At first, investigators suspected that the gunmen confused the cleric with a rival gang leader who was at the airport at the same time.

Lately, however, church leaders have pressured authorities to investigate whether the drug dealers had reasons for wanting the cardinal dead.

The cardinal’s death was the first of three assassinations of major public figures that have shocked this country over the past two years. Since the cardinal was killed, ruling party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and top ruling party official Francisco Ruiz Massieu have also been gunned down in killings that many Mexicans believe are related to drug gangs.