Drugs Cited as 6 Charged in Slaying of Mexican TV Star

Mexican authorities Friday charged six people in connection with the June slaying of a local television star, detailing a tangled web of drugs, debts and betrayal leading to the daytime Mafia-style hit.

Mexico City prosecutor Samuel del Villar told a news conference that a suspected drug lord, Luis Amezcua, wanted in the United States as an alleged top methamphetamine trafficker, ordered Francisco “Paco” Stanley’s killing from his Mexico City prison cell.

“Luis Amezcua decided upon, prepared and arranged the murder of Mr. Stanley,” del Villar said.

The motive, according to del Villar, was that Stanley owed Amezcua a large sum of money for “questions involving drugs.”

Amezcua directly recruited a Uruguayan showgirl from Stanley’s daytime variety show and a suspected hit man, who in turn involved Stanley’s longtime comic sidekick, his driver and an aide in the carefully plotted slaying outside a Mexico City restaurant on June 7, del Villar said.

Stanley, 56, was shot four times in the head as he sat in the passenger seat of his sport-utility vehicle.

The brazen midday attack, in which a bystander was also killed, stunned Mexicans and was initially taken as a sign that street crime in Mexico City had spun out of control.

But del Villar said it was now clear that Stanley’s slaying was not a street crime but instead a well-orchestrated drug-related hit.

He said Stanley, found to have traces of cocaine in his system when he was killed, had “a close relationship” with drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in 1997 after botched plastic surgery.

“Stanley’s ties with drugs are not limited to cocaine possession and the positive toxicological tests that were done on his cadaver,” del Villar said. He did not, however, provide further details.

The most prominent figure among those charged was Mario Bezares, Stanley’s comic sidekick on a series of variety shows. Del Villar said Bezares helped set up his longtime partner in order to clear debts owed to Amezcua and Stanley.

But Bezares, along with others charged in the case, has fervently denied involvement in Stanley’s death.

“Where is justice?” a teary-eyed Bezares said before he was arrested Friday.