Killer of 2 U.S. Tourists Gets 30 Years in Jail

A Mexican drug trafficker has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 1985 torture slayings of two U.S. tourists who stumbled into a meeting of drug bosses.

Judge Jaime Gomez told the government’s Notimex news agency on Friday that he had sentenced Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo this week for the slayings of Albert Radelat, a dental student from Fort Worth, and John Walker, a free-lance writer from Minneapolis, both in their thirties.

Fonseca, believed to be about 70 years old, already was serving a 30-year sentence for the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena and 11 1/2 years for drug trafficking. Prison terms are typically served concurrently in Mexico.

Fonseca and other drug figures were holding a party at La Langosta restaurant in Guadalajara when Radelat and Walker entered.

Suspecting the two might be agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the traffickers seized the tourists, then took them away and tortured them to death with beatings, knives and ice picks.

A week later, many of the same traffickers were involved in torturing and killing Camarena, whose body was found near those of the tourists.

Several other men already have been convicted in connection with the Radelat-Walker case.

Fonseca was widely seen as a mentor to his nephew, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who may have been Mexico’s most important drug trafficker before he died during surgery to change his appearance in 1997.

Last July, Fonseca’s daughter Ofelia was sentenced to 16 years in prison for drug smuggling. Her husband had been sentenced to 21 years earlier.