Pubdate: Thu, 08 Mar 2007
Source: Dallas Observer (TX)
Copyright: 2007 New Times, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.dallasobserver.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/884
Author: Jesse Hyde
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

HOUSE OF DEATH

A Dozen Men Were Tortured, Killed And Buried In A Small House In 
Juarez. Three Years Later, The U.S. Government Is Still Trying To 
Cover Up What Happened.

There is one chair in the room, and they sit him in it. He pulls out 
his wallet. He's looking for a number. A phone number, an address. 
That is why he is here. Fernando the lawyer. Fernando the drug 
trafficker. He's got a load of marijuana, and they want it.

Fernando thinks he's in the company of friends. He thinks this man 
standing in front of him, this Lalo, is going to deliver the 
marijuana for him to New York. That's what the numbers are for. They 
are contacts. They are the people Lalo will call, the people who are 
waiting for the load. But this little room with the blinds drawn and 
the light streaming in from the kitchen window, this is a trap.

Fernando doesn't know that two members of the Chihuahua State Police 
are here in this house, hiding. He doesn't know that they are here to kill him.

It is August and these white walls are baking. Outside, a thick layer 
of dust and smoke hangs over Juarez. It is from the burning garbage 
in the slums and the steaming factories down here in the valley and 
the smelters belching their chemicals down along the highway.

Someone asks Fernando for some candy, which is narco slang for 
personal-use cocaine, and he says, "Of course." And then suddenly, 
while Fernando's got his head down, one of the cops emerges from the 
back. Fernando doesn't see him coming, doesn't notice the gun until 
it is pressed hard up against his face. "No!" he screams. "Why? 
Please don't kill me."

There had been some talk of using a gun, but they decided it would be 
too loud. They are in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, not far from 
a Radisson hotel, and someone would hear the pop of the gun. But he's 
screaming now, and they've got to shut him up. The other cop comes 
across the room in a flash and begins frantically wrapping the tape 
around Fernando's mouth, trying to stifle the screams. Around and 
around the tape goes. Now Fernando is fighting with all he's got. 
He's kicking and his arms are flailing wildly. So they bring him hard 
to the floor and he's thrashing about and they are having a hard time 
holding him down, and Lalo, with his little mustache and his double 
chin, he's just standing there, leaning against the television stand. 
One of them looks up at Lalo with a glare that suggests he better get 
down there and help. So Lalo does what he can to keep Fernando's legs 
still while one of the cops wraps an extension cord around Fernando's 
neck. He's pulling it tight, and the veins in Fernando's neck are 
bulging and Fernando's kicking for his life and the cord snaps.

"What now?" the cop asks. Lalo looks around the room and notices a 
plastic bag. The cop grabs it and pulls it over Fernando's head. And 
then they stand and they watch Fernando kick and twitch and gasp, 
until finally, he's lying there motionless and someone says, "Are you 
sure he's dead?"

So one of the cops takes a shovel and whacks Fernando in the back of 
the neck, and Lalo hears something snap. Maybe they broke his neck. 
It doesn't matter; he is dead.

They pick him up and hide him under a staircase. They will bury him 
in the backyard later that night.

Lalo crosses the street and finds Santillan at the little convenience 
store on the corner. Santillan, known to U.S. intelligence as El 
Ingeniero, is one of the top bosses in the Juarez cartel. He has 
thinning dark hair and a mustache. When Lalo first met him down in 
Guadalajara, he dressed like a cowboy, but now he is a big shot, and 
he wears a Rolex with diamonds.

Lalo tells him it is done. Fernando, Santillan's childhood friend, is 
dead. They've got his load of marijuana.

Santillan is pleased. He tells Lalo he is now No. 4 in the Juarez 
cartel. He takes him to the Big Brother House, which is only for 
high-ranking members of the cartel. Here, you can have anything you 
want, Lalo is told. Groceries, beer, women, whatever. Soon, you will 
meet Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the boss of the cartel.

That evening, Lalo crosses the border into El Paso and tells his 
handlers at Immigration and Customs Enforcement what he has seen. 
They listen to a recording he made of the murder, and they transcribe 
it. They write memos detailing everything Lalo saw, and eventually, 
these memos will find their way to Washington.

But they do not arrest him for his part in the murder, or deactivate 
him as an informant, or prepare to arrest Santillan, their target. 
Instead, they continue with their investigation, and when all is said 
and done, there will be 11 more bodies buried in the backyard.

The story of what happened at the House of Death, dubbed as such by 
the online publication Narco News, has been told in bits and pieces 
since The Dallas Morning News first broke it three years ago, but the 
complete story has never been told, at least not by the mainstream press.

In fact, major American media have mostly ignored the story, perhaps 
because it happened on the other side of the border. But this is more 
than a border story. This is a story that goes all the way to Washington.

"This is a big deal, a very big deal because of the scope and 
duration of the activity. For six months, you had members of the U.S. 
government who knew that a person on their payroll was engaging in 
murder, and they did nothing to stop it," says Bill Weaver, a 
University of Texas at El Paso law professor who has closely followed 
the case. "As much as they deny it, they had prior knowledge."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman