2 Agents Trailing Alleged Kingpin Slain in Mexico

Two federal agents who disappeared while tracking Mexico’s most-wanted suspected cocaine baron have turned up dead in the trunk of a stolen car, authorities said Sunday.

As Mexican law enforcement turns up the heat on alleged drug kingpins such as Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the drug traffickers are fighting back. And the list of slain Mexican drug agents is growing.

Agents Roberto Espinoza Mendoza and Marco Antonio Vazquez Armendariz disappeared in Mexico City on April 4 while investigating Carrillo, described by law enforcement authorities as Mexico’s No. 1 cocaine smuggler.

The men’s bodies were found Friday night in the trunk of a car left in a restaurant parking lot in the capital, but they were not identified until late Saturday.

The bodies were blindfolded and bore signs of torture--suggesting the agents had been pressed to divulge information. Each man was shot in the forehead.

Espinoza and Vazquez had been involved in investigations that led to a recent series of raids on homes allegedly used by Carrillo’s ring. Some homeowners have accused agents of trashing houses and stealing property.

American authorities have been pushing their Mexican counterparts to crack down on suspected drug barons, responsible for as much as 70% of the cocaine entering the United States.

Carrillo is under indictment on U.S. federal drug-smuggling charges in Texas and Florida.

Carrillo is known as “The Lord of the Skies” for his alleged use of old passenger jets to fly Colombian cocaine into Mexico for shipment to the United States.

He allegedly employed Mexico’s former drug czar, Gen. Jesus de Jose Gutierrez Rebollo, who was arrested in February on corruption charges.

Former Interior Minister Jorge Carpizo MacGregor said over the weekend that he took the job as Mexico’s ambassador to France in 1995 to get away from Mexican drug traffickers.

“I am now in Paris,” Carpizo said, “and I accepted this position because all of those gangsters were preparing to eliminate me.”