Beyond The Horizon

ICYMI: Rafa Caro Quintero And The Murdered American Tourists

When you hear the name Caro Quintero, it's almost a sure thing the first thing you think about is Kiki Camerena. Well, he was not the only American that the notorious cartel boss killed and the family of one of those people, The Walker family, are hoping that Caro gets extradited and has to sit in an American jail for the rest of his life.

(commercial at 9:52)

to contact me:

bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

source:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/forgotten-us-victims-of-mexican-drug-lord-want-justice/ar-AAZLJ8x?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=acb8aa598121426aacaedf0102a0c0f9

Duration:: 15m
Broadcast on:: 12 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

This summer, saddle up with the only sports book where you can bet on horse racing, FanDuel. Right now, new customers can get a no-sweat first bet up to $500. Just download the app or go to fanduel.com/horses to score your no-sweat bet up to $500. 21+ in present in Colorado. Offer valid on first real money wager of $5 or more. Verify FD Racing account required. Bonus issued in non-withdrawable racing site credit that expires seven days after issuance. Max refund $500, restrictions apply. See terms at racing.fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gambler. This summer, saddle up with the only sports book where you can bet on horse racing, FanDuel. Right now, new customers can get a no-sweat first bet up to $500. That's right, you'll get up to 500 bucks back in racing credit if your first horse racing bet doesn't win. With FanDuel's sports book, you can even watch and bet select races live right in the app. So, bet horse racing on the same app where you bet all your other favorite sports. FanDuel, America's number one sports book. Just download the app or go to fanduel.com/horses to score your no-sweat bet up to $500. 21+ in present in Colorado. Offer valid on first real money wager of $5 or more. Verify FD Racing account required. Bonus issued in non-withdrawable racing site credit that expires seven days after issuance. Max refund $500, restrictions apply. See terms at racing.fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gambler. What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the program. Kato Kintato, being captured, is a pretty big deal. Not only for the United States government as a whole, but for the relatives of some of his victims. And today, we're going to talk about two of those American victims, two men who were murdered by Kato Kintato at a restaurant for no other reason than being American. Today's article is from the AP and the headline, "Forgotten U.S. victims of Mexican drug lord want justice." This article was authored by Mark Stevenson. When fugitive 1980's Mexican drug lord, Rafael Kato Kintato was arrested in Mexico last week, and it stirred up old, terrible memories for Lonnie Walker, the daughter of American writer John Clay Walker. Now, these guys were down in Mexico Guadalajara celebrating, right? And they go into a restaurant to celebrate, and in the other room is Rafa and his buddies. And they decide that the two Americans that are out in the restaurant, well, they're not tourists, but instead that they're DEA agents. So, of course, in their paranoia, they killed them. And it really was never solved, right? There was no justice ever for the families. But now that Rafa has been captured again, and there's talk of extradition, well, the families, they want justice here. And Lonnie Walker, the daughter of John Clay Walker, has been pretty vocal about that, and she deserves justice. While Rafa was only ever sentenced in Mexico for the killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Enrique Kiki Camarena, and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala-Avalar in 1985, his gang apparently killed as many as six U.S. citizens in the western city of Guadalajara around the same time. Look, these guys were violent killers. I know that shows like Narcos, they kind of puff these guys up and make them out to be characters that you want to root for almost in some circumstances. But the reality is, these aren't good people. Just like the guys in the mafia, they're not good people either. These are people that have a whole different way of looking at life. And if they feel like you've disrespected them in any manner, or if they even think that you're working for the government or you're an informer, they're likely to kill you. John Clay Walker, then 36, and a writer who had moved to Guadalajara to finish a book, was one of them. "We were both very glad to hear that Rafa had been captured, and that also brought back a lot of trauma for us," said Lonnie Walker. "My sister and I have lost almost 40 years with our father. There is nothing that can make up for that. Look, I understand as far as that goes, when my grandfather was sent to prison, and I lost seven years of being with him, not very much fun. So I can't even imagine, you know, someone getting taken away in the blink of an eye like that, and you never get to say goodbye, you never get to see them again, it's crazy. And all these guys were doing was living their lives, right? They weren't part of the DEA. They weren't involved in any kind of drug interdiction. But when feelings are running hot and there's a lot of distrust amongst the cartels and in the society that they live in general, well, everybody's a suspect to them. The U.S. writer and his friend, Alberto Radolat, a dental student from Fort Worth, had walked into the lobster, a high-end Guadalajara seafood restaurant, to celebrate Walker's plan return to the United States. They did not know that Rafa and his companions were holding a private party in a back room of the restaurant, so talk about wrong place, wrong time, right? This is like walking right into the pit of the Viper. Rafa is boys, everybody all gassed up on blow and other drugs, all fired up. You know, the buffalo fields were just burned, everyone's a DEA agent in their mind, and they went out into the room where Radolat and the other gentlemen were hanging out, Mr. Walker were hanging out, and they killed them, and they did it in a very vicious manner. Our father was an American citizen with no involvement in the Mexico United States drug war. He was an innocent bystander that unwittingly became caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous drug cartel, said Lonnie Walker. They began questioning my father and Al, asking them what they knew about the drug enforcement agents in Mexico, what they knew about the investigation. My father knew nothing. He was an innocent writer. They tortured him with an ice pick for hours, and when I say brutal, that's exactly what they did, they got out the ice pick, and they tortured these guys, all because they thought they were DEA agents. And then when they actually had a DEA agent, they did the same exact thing. Well, you see how that worked out for them though, right? Pretty much everybody who was ever involved in that was taken care of, either gunned down in a brutal fashion, or is in prison. But that's not going to bring back, Mr. Walker. That's not going to give these girls their time back with their father, or the family's time back with their loved ones. And that's strictly and directly on the shoulders of Rafa, and he should be punished for that. Mike Vigil, the DEA's former chief of international operations, said Rafa was one of those individuals that because he now had power, he had wealth, he crossed the line many times in terms of the people that he killed. And there's no doubt, there is a list as long as my arm for people that have been killed by Rafa or his orders. This is not a good guy, right? Again, I know that shows like Narcos, they kind of, you know, pump these guys up, but these are brutal murderers who have no problem murdering anyone who they feel has crossed them. Describing what occurred at the restaurant, Vigil said they looked out and they saw two Americans, and they immediately threw their paranoia, as well thought that they were DEA agents. They took them into the back and stabbed them to death. Yeah, that's the, uh, the watered down version. The way that they tortured them was just absolutely brutal. I'm not going to go into it here on the podcast because I don't think it's necessary, but if you're interested in more of the story, it's out there. The, the full on, you know, what they did, and it's just a very, very, very brutal way to go. The bodies of Radolot and Walker were found wrapped in carpet in June 1985, nearly five months after they disappeared. In December, 1984, two young American couples were walking door to door in Guadalajara, trying to spread their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses. The four were abducted and never seen again. Yeah, unfortunately, you're playing with fire down in Mexico if you're going to be going door to door and trying to, uh, convert people to Jehovah's Witness and run into the cartel and you're going to end up becoming kidnapped. Two state police officials later said that they helped kidnap and kill the couples on the order of Rafa and fellow copo Ernesto Fonseco Carrillo. They apparently inadvertently knocked on Fonseca Carrillo's door as they proselyzed. I mean, wow, imagine just making the mistake of knocking on one of these guys doors and their paranoia is so deep over the DEA and what the Mexican authorities are up to that they snatch you and murder you? Vigil, who was in Mexico and worked on the Camarena case at the time, explained why the investigation focused on the killing of the DEA agent. I think that the DEA concentrated on the Kiki Camarena case and then the drug trafficking charges. I don't think that the DEA, it was not that they weren't interested in the other murders, but you know that they probably had fallen into the jurisdiction of maybe another agency vigil said. I could see that the DEA isn't a agency that really pursues, you know, murder charges for the most part. They're there for drugs if murder is part of it. Sure, but they're not going to go down in Mexico and look for murderers of tourists. That would be a job for the FBI, right? One of the things that we were really focused on was bringing these individuals to justice simply because the DEA is committed that if one of the agents is murdered, we will hunt these peoples down to the end of the earth and not spare any expenditure, any resource or any activity that we have to get the job done, he said, and they surely did that. After Kiki was killed by Kato, it was game on down in Mexico, and that was the beginning of the end for the Guadalajara cartel. There's no doubt. This was a very, very bad decision. They brought the whole entire, basically, federal government of the United States down on their head, and I don't care who you are, what cartel you're running with, or what terrorist organization you're part of when the United States really wants to get you, they're going to get you. Are you ready? Lanny Walker says that if Rafa is extradited to the U.S. and is convicted and punished here, that would be a small amount of justice. I could see that, right? I could see that. Your dad gets murdered by this guy, you want him to come to America to serve his sentence, not be stuck in some, you know, posh-ass prison down in Mexico, where his money is going to see him live in all kinds of comfort, he should be put in a cell next to his boy El Chapo over at Flowmax. Extra item, convict him, throw him in prison forever. They likely will not come quickly. Rafa's lawyers filed measures with the court, and the judge agreed, that would ensure he goes through the full extradition process and will have the possibility of all the corresponding appeals if necessary. Extra edition for a former Sinaloa cartel leader, Joaquin El Chapo-Kusman took a year, and it'll probably be the same thing, right? There's all that yellow tape you have to work through, and Mexico has to make sure they're doing things on their end that is on the up and up. They have to answer their people, right? So they have to make sure that things are correct, and the extradition process is usually something that takes some time. But my guess is, Mexico might be talking about, oh, we're going to go, but it's going to be a little bit quicker than usual, because A, Mexico doesn't want to deal with having Rafa in their custody anymore, and B, America really wants to get their hands on this guy. We do have hope, she said, but we are very aware of how the Mexican government and the Mexican judicial system has worked, you know, as far as our father's case is concerned, up until now. So we do have hope, but we are nervous that what happens in 2013 could happen again, and with so many missing people in Mexico, unfortunately, foreigners who go missing there are usually not a priority for the government to find, right? I mean, it's just the unfortunate truth. What is there, over like 300,000 missing people in Mexico or something like that? Some crazy number like that? And nobody's the wiser on where they're at, but when you're dealing with people like Rafa and El Chapo and El Mayo and the rest of these guys, look, you're dealing with some paranoid people, especially when you're talking about the timeframe when this all went down. The DEA was very active in Mexico. They were going after the Sinaloa cartel big time. They weren't the Sinaloa cartel then, but they were going after the guys from Sinaloa, the weed farms, poppy farms, and, you know, they were burning down crops and all of it. But in the end, it didn't really do too much, did it? These guys were able to weather the storm, and not only were they able to weather the storm, the thing that they seeded, right, this group that they started to grow, well, if you look now, it has grown many different branches, and we see that with all of these different cartels. But before those cartels were ever in effect, it was Rafa and Don Felix, who were, you know, building all of this. And these guys were very violent, very paranoid, because the DEA was very active in Mexico at the time and going after them. So it all played a part in how this unfolded, and when you want to talk about a case of wrong place, wrong time, this most certainly is it. And hopefully the extradition process moves along smoothly, and Rafa is sharing a jail cell, well, a jail cell wing anyway, with his boy El Chapo very soon. Alright folks, that's going to do it for this episode. If you'd like to contact me, you can do that at bobbykapucci@protonmail.com. That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at B-O-B-B-Y_C-A-P-U-C-C-I. The link that I discussed can be found in the description box. box.