Killers Slip Away to Mexico

Saul Zavala tucked a gun into his Levi’s and drove for hours up and down the hot, dusty streets of a tiny Mexican village, studying each face he passed.

If U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities would not punish his daughter’s killer, this grieving father from Lynwood felt he had no choice but to cross the border and “make justice with my own hands.”

The man he believes shot his daughter is among scores of Los Angeles County murder suspects who have sought refuge in Mexico. That government has long refused to extradite anyone who may face the death penalty in the United States. Recently, the Mexican Supreme Court extended that protection to fugitives who may face life in prison, provoking outrage among law enforcement officials in several border states.

Mexican officials say the policy arises from a philosophy that criminals should be rehabilitated, not locked up for life or killed, both of which they consider cruel and unusual punishment.

But for many U.S. authorities, their neighbor’s refusal to extradite means that criminals are literally getting away with murder--and flouting the U.S. justice system.

“A terrorist can commit a horrendous act ... and Mexico would be a haven,” said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. “It’s inevitable. It’s happening. It’s becoming a haven for murderers.”

One of those, authorities say, may be the man who shot Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy David March last month in Irwindale and is suspected of fleeing home to Mexico. Another is a man who allegedly killed a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Arizona.

“We have several fugitives down there who have participated in the murder of law enforcement [officers] and other serious crimes, and we can’t get them back,” said Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s attorney general. “It’s a total disaster.”

Although the district attorney’s office does not have an exact figure, officials estimate that more than 60 suspected killers from Los Angeles County are in Mexico, along with countless more fugitives suspected of rape, child molestation or attempted murder. Some have been picked up and prosecuted in Mexican courts, but others remain free.

Earlier this year, all 50 state attorneys general signed letters to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell pleading with them to negotiate a solution to the extradition problem. The letter warned that Mexico has created “a dangerous incentive for people to commit grievous crimes and escape” and that if terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were found there, even they could not be extradited unless the United States agreed not to sentence them to life in prison.

Zavala has put a face--a sad, haunted face--to the problem. Cooley calls him a symbol of the policy’s injustice.

Zavala’s anguish began the June morning three years ago when his daughter Jessica, 15, and her cousin Olivia Munguia, 17, were gunned down.

The inseparable cousins, who both dreamed of becoming soap opera stars, had set out together on foot that Tuesday for Lynwood High School.

They got only three blocks.

Olivia was shot first. Her body slumped onto a utility pole as Jessica stood beside her, screaming. Then the bullets ripped into her.

It took less than a month for Los Angeles officials to file a criminal complaint charging Juan Manuel Casillas, Olivia’s ex-boyfriend, with murder. Casillas, 24, who authorities say is a gang member from an affluent Mexican family, reportedly had been furious that Olivia had broken up with him.

A few weeks later, law enforcement officials located Casillas in Mexico.

Prosecutors in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office met with the girls’ parents and explained that Casillas most likely would remain south of the border. Gil Garcetti, who was then district attorney, refused to waive the death penalty at the outset in any case, saying it would set a bad precedent.

Another option for Casillas was prosecution in Mexico. Under a provision of Mexico’s treaty with the United States, boxes of evidence from the United States can be translated into Spanish and shipped south. Mexican officials say that since 1993, more than 150 U.S. criminals have been convicted under such circumstances, 109 of them from California.

But California officials say that many of those convicted in Mexico receive light sentences, and that some cases just seem to vanish, said Janice Maurizi, director of branch operations for the district attorney’s office.

That possibility wasn’t acceptable to the Zavalas.

“I want him here. He did it here,” Zavala said. “I am from Mexico. I know Mexico. If his father pays the money, he’ll get out right away.”

Meanwhile, without an agreement to waive the death penalty or a request from Los Angeles authorities to go forward with foreign prosecution, Mexican authorities did not arrest Casillas. It took Los Angeles officials nearly a year after the killings to ask Mexico to begin a foreign prosecution of Casillas.

The thought of him riding horses on his family’s ranch near Guadalajara tormented Zavala. The obsessed father made frequent visits to the district attorney’s office, carrying a white plastic photo album devoted to Olivia and Jessica and begging Garcetti to waive the death penalty and bring Casillas back.

With each refusal, Zavala grew angrier. Once, after a chance meeting with Garcetti at a march for victims of gun violence, he screamed at the prosecutor until friends pulled him away.

Finally, Zavala said, one of Garcetti’s secretaries took him aside and whispered that he should go see Cooley, who was then challenging Garcetti for the district attorney’s job.

Cooley seemed the answer to Zavala’s prayers. He met with Zavala, looked at Jessica’s photographs, and vowed to get Casillas extradited if he won the election.

Zavala, who had never been involved in politics, began organizing marches and parties in support of Cooley’s campaign. He went on Spanish-language radio stations and told the story of his daughter’s death, urging people to vote for Cooley. A month after taking office, Cooley kept his promise, sending a letter to Mexico promising not to seek the death penalty in Casillas’ case.

For Cooley, it was to be a new era for justice in Los Angeles. Hundreds of victims’ family members across Los Angeles County could prepare for the closure of confronting perpetrators in court. But by then, Casillas’ trail had grown cold, and Mexican authorities said that they couldn’t find him.

About this time, Zavala and his wife, Petra, visited their hometown in the Mexican state of Michoacan. One morning before sunlight, without a word to his wife, Zavala rose. With his brother-in-law, Olivia’s father, he made the three-hour drive across the hills to Jalisco. After getting a tip from a woman who had heard Zavala speak about his plight on the radio, they thought they knew where to find Casillas.

It was early afternoon when their battered truck rumbled to the town plaza in Ayotlan, and the sun was beating down. The two men had guns, once used for hunting, in their waistbands. They carried pictures of Jessica and Olivia as well as a sketch of Casillas.

They approached merchants and shoppers. Had they seen this man, or anyone in his family?

They found Casillas’ house, but no one was home. Finally, they drove home. The next day, Zavala wanted to return to Casillas’ house, but Olivia’s father refused.

Thank God, Zavala now says.

“I was going to do something terrible there,” he said. “Even if I saw his mom, or his sister ... I was doing something terrible.”

Last fall, a few months after that clandestine trip, Casillas was arrested at a gas station in Mexico City as he filled his car to flee to Veracruz, officials there say. American officials quickly moved to have him extradited, and the Zavalas began to prepare themselves for the bittersweet victory of facing their daughter’s killer in court.

Then, on Oct. 2, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a one-page ruling that dashed their hopes. Life without parole is not rehabilitation, the court ruled. Casillas’ extradition was denied. Other suspects sought in California and other border states also had their tickets back to the United States canceled.

The extradition picture was further complicated last week. A Mexican federal tribunal ruled that drug kingpin Jesus Amezcua, wanted in San Diego, would not be extradited, even with the U.S. guarantee that he would not face a possible life term, indicating that the assurance wasn’t sufficient.

Maurizi, from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said that decision “just makes an impossible situation worse.”

Jorge Garcia-Villalobos, a federal prosecutor with the Mexican attorney general’s office in Los Angeles, said Mexican legal authorities haven’t yet figured out if the ruling will have broad application.

“We have to understand that Mexico and the United States have two different legal systems,” Garcia-Villalobos said. “The penalty should help rehabilitate them in order to reincorporate them into society. If the requesting country doesn’t give a less-serious punishment, we cannot extradite.”

But he added that Mexican officials were committed to working with their U.S. counterparts to put criminals where they can’t hurt people. “These days, if we don’t join forces, we cannot fight these guys,” he said. “These guys do not have borders.”

By international human rights standards, Mexico’s position on the death penalty is consistent with most of the rest of the world, especially Europe, said Jorge Vargas, an expert on Mexican law at UC San Diego.

While not defending the Mexican system, Vargas said the United States “is exactly the same when it comes to the death penalty as Saddam Hussein and Iraq. We’re one of the few countries in the world with the death penalty.”

This reasoning makes U.S. prosecutors crazy.

“Let’s talk about justice,” Cooley said. “Not someone’s view of humanity. The murders occurred here. We get to set the standards of justice in our community. The [Mexican] Supreme Court should not be interfering with the sovereignty of the United States.”

Meanwhile, this spring the Mexican government began prosecution of Casillas, which means he could not be prosecuted here even if he did return.

For Zavala, this is a torment. Even though he can think of no solution any more than prosecutors can, he won’t give up.

“I promised her that it’s never going to stop until I make justice for her,” he said about his daughter.

Jessica’s mother, agrees--to a point.

“Here is where he committed the murders,” Petra Zavala said. “But if they bring him here, or don’t bring him here, still, my daughter is not here.”

Times staff writer Hector Becerra contributed to this report.