U.S. Drops 1989 Murder Charges Against Mexican Drug Trafficker

U.S. prosecutors dropped two murder charges earlier this year against a convicted drug trafficker implicated in the brutal slayings of several Americans a dozen years ago in Guadalajara, after questions were raised about the credibility of witnesses against him, records and interviews show.

The same paid government informants were among those used to obtain controversial convictions in the 1985 slaying of Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique Camarena, which are now being challenged by defense attorneys and reviewed by the federal government.

Prosecutors say the decision to drop the murder charges was unrelated to questions raised about the witnesses’ credibility. But the dismissal has been recently cited in a defense motion as further evidence that the government no longer has confidence in its witnesses.

At issue is the decision to drop charges against Ezequiel Godinez, 55, whose arrest in Texas last year initially had been portrayed as a major breakthrough for investigators of the violent Guadalajara drug cartel believed to be responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Camarena and his pilot, as well as the killings of six other U.S. residents.

Since 1989, Godinez had been sought on charges that he was part of a group who stabbed two U.S. residents with ice picks and beat them to death after they stumbled into a party of drug traffickers in a Guadalajara restaurant.

Witnesses also had linked Godinez to other slayings for which he was not charged: the murders of Camarena and his pilot and of four Jehovah’s Witnesses snatched off the streets while selling religious books door-to-door.

In March, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles dropped the only murder charges against Godinez--those connected to the restaurant slayings. Instead they settled for his guilty plea to drug trafficking and prison escape charges, carrying a 26-year sentence.

Relatives of the murder victims had pressed the government for years to solve the crimes. But they said they knew nothing about Godinez’s arrest and reacted bitterly when told of the outcome. “This is only one more instance in which the government has shown that they did not care about the death of my husband,” said Mary Evelyn Walker, whose husband was killed in the restaurant.

Godinez’s lawyer said the government had told him that its case was based on the testimony of three informants who also were critical witnesses in the Camarena prosecutions. Statements from those eyewitnesses depict Godinez as taking part in six brutal slayings around the time of the Camarena kidnapping--a crime that triggered one of the most far-ranging U.S. investigations in history.

At least two of the witnesses said Godinez participated in the restaurant murders, according to witness statements obtained by The Times. Two also said that Godinez was present when Camarena was kidnapped, tortured and killed. And at least one said Godinez sexually assaulted the two female Jehovah’s Witnesses, and then was ordered by a drug lord to kill the women and their husbands.

Godinez’s attorney, William S. Harris, said prosecutors did not tell him that the credibility of those witnesses was challenged in a six-volume report a few months earlier by an attorney who alleged that they falsely implicated Mexican officials in the Camarena case.

Last week, Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Drooyan in Los Angeles said the decision to drop the charges was not based on concerns about witness credibility. He said prosecutors concluded that the dismissal was the “best way to handle it,” given Godinez’s age, the penalties he already was facing for drug trafficking, and the fact that the murders occurred so long ago.

One defendant convicted of murdering Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Camarena is citing the decision to drop the murder charges in his efforts to win a new trial.

The motion on behalf of Ruben Zuno Arce, the brother-in-law of a former Mexican president, contended that the dismissal shows that the government has reservations about its witnesses. “It is difficult to imagine why” the government would dismiss murder charges against Godinez unless officials now have “substantial doubts as to the credibility” of their informants, he said. Zuno is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Texas.

The DEA and the Justice Department are conducting reviews of allegations that some prosecutions stemming from the investigation into Camarena’s murder relied upon false testimony. The Times reported in October that its own independent examination demonstrated that some portions of the testimony appear false.

Although the government believes that a large number of drug traffickers took part in the restaurant killings, Javier Vasquez Velasco is the only person to have been convicted in the United States. His attorney requested a new trial last month after a government informant said his testimony at Vasquez’s trial was false.

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Federal authorities now believe that the Camarena slaying in February 1985 was part of a violent offensive by Mexican drug cartel members against people suspected of helping the DEA.

One of the early incidents occurred when the four Jehovah’s Witnesses disappeared Dec. 2, 1984, while proselytizing near the home of an alleged drug lord.

On Jan. 30, 1985, Albert Radelat, a 27-year-old Cuban native who lived in Forth Worth, Texas, and John Walker, a 34-year old journalist from St. Paul, Minn., disappeared after they went out to dinner together. Officials say the two had entered La Langosta restaurant, where drug dealers were having a party, and did not came out alive.

The first indictments in the Camarena investigation were handed down in 1987. No bodies were recovered in the Jehovah’s Witness slayings, and the five-year statute of limitations for bringing charges ran out in 1989. But that year officials announced a “major step” in the restaurant killings:

A witness told the grand jury he had been present at the Guadalajara restaurant when a large group of drug traffickers shouted that Radelat and Walker were from the DEA, cursed them, then pummeled them as they were carried to the back of the restaurant.

The grand jury indicted two alleged members of the drug cartel, as well as Godinez and two cousins, Javier Vasquez Velasco and Antonio Vasquez Velasco.

Several other informants made allegations against Godinez. According to a confidential DEA report, one member of the Vasquez Velasco family said he had seen Godinez “completely soaked in blood from the waist up” and quoted him as saying, “I had to kill the gringos, because no one else wanted to do it.”

Godinez remained on the loose when Javier Vasquez Velasco was tried and convicted in 1990.

Later, the DEA recruited three new informants, who were given immunity and paid monthly stipends. The informants implicated Godinez in the restaurant and Jehovah’s Witness slayings. Two of them implicated themselves as well.

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The decision to drop the charges against Godinez is only the latest blow to the families of the victims.

From the start, they say, U.S. investigators seemed interested only in pursuing the Camarena case. So family members said they did what they could to seek justice on their own. They traveled to Mexico to talk to government officials and potential witnesses. They called members of Congress and the White House.

“We were a thorn in their side,” said Florence Walker, John’s mother, from Edina, Minn. “If it wasn’t for us, nothing would have been done at all.”

Walker’s widow, Eve, said that she had resettled with her two young daughters in Mexico when, at the urging of prosecutors, she left her belongings behind and returned to the United States to testify in 1990.

“I believed in our government, and that it was important to seek justice,” said Walker, now a Pasadena resident. “I left my car, my home and my job. I was left to fend for myself.”

Walker said she is particularly embittered when she thinks of the benefits that were provided to the paid informants. So too is Mercy Mascarenas of Ely, Nev., the mother of Jehovah’s Witness Ben Mascarenas.

“I don’t understand at all how they paid these murderers--these creeps--while our government lets us suffer this way,” she said.

The idea that murder charges now have been dropped against Godinez only adds to that anguish. “They at least could have prosecuted him for the two murders,” Mascarenas said. “It is such an injustice.”