Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jun 2013
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2013 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Les Zaitz
Series: Under the curse of cartels - An Oregonian Special Report

VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHWEST

For more than a day, the plastic orange toolbox sat on the lawn under
a cherry tree, a few paces from the sidewalk.

No one passing the Canby home took notice. Not the runners. Not the
dog walkers. Not the kids riding by on bicycles.

Then curiosity drew a 31-year-old landscaper who had come to the home
just after sunset to help a friend move. Ivan Velasco Rodriguez poked
the toolbox with a wooden rake handle.

The pipe bomb lurking inside exploded. Metal shards flying at bullet
speed fatally injured Velasco Rodriguez and slammed into surrounding
homes. Pieces fell on roofs two blocks away.

Canby police and federal agents swarmed the scene that night in
December 2011. Who planted the booby trap that killed Velasco
Rodriguez, a married father of four? And who was the intended target?

Police made no arrests, and the crime faded from public
view.

But behind the scenes, federal law enforcement sources say,
investigators reached a chilling conclusion: A Mexican drug cartel
most likely commissioned the bomb to kill a witness who once listed
the address as his own. Their suspicions deepened when they discovered
the bombing was eerily similar to twin explosions in central
Washington, where rigged devices killed two men hours apart in 2008.

The findings, never before disclosed to the public, were uncovered by
The Oregonian as part of a nine-month investigation into the
astonishing reach of Mexican drug cartels in the Northwest.

The Oregonian has learned that Mexican cartels, including the powerful
Sinaloa and the brutal Los Zetas, have infiltrated almost every corner
of Oregon. At last count, authorities were aware of no fewer than 69
drug trafficking organizations selling drugs in the state, nearly all
supplied by cartels.

Police have taken down drug operations cloaked as a restaurant in Bend
and a grocery in Hillsboro. They've busted traffickers in Gresham,
Pendleton and, in a takedown last month involving 300 officers, in
Klamath County. They've intercepted shipments from Oregon traffickers
as far away as Texas, Minnesota and Florida.

Cartels and their allies control nearly every ounce of heroin,
methamphetamine and cocaine flowing into the region, investigators
say, smuggling drugs up Interstate 5 by the ton and money back down by
the millions. They dominate the marijuana market, tearing up Oregon
forests for massive plantations. They exact an unfathomable toll in
lives ruined and cut short by drug abuse.

Perhaps most unnerving, cartel-connected traffickers lash out in
violence to control territory, settle debts or warn rivals -- not just
in Mexico, but here in the Northwest. Police suspect a cartel is
behind the roadside execution early last year of a trafficker near
Salem. They think cartel operatives shot two California drug dealers
whose bodies were found buried in the sage northeast of Klamath Falls
last fall. They also believe a cartel ordered a 2007 hit in which a
trafficker and four friends were lined up on the floor of a Vancouver
rental home and shot in the head.

"They will take advantage of any avenue they can to make their
business succeed," said Kelvin Crenshaw, until recently the special
agent in charge of the Seattle regional office of the U.S. Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Make no bones about it.
The control is from the cartels."

Yet even as traffickers live in our towns and menace our residents,
their scourge has remained hidden in plain sight. Police often report
homicides, drug busts and threats as isolated incidents. Until now,
the region's drug enforcement officials have mostly kept a lid on
connections that all point in one direction: to the cartels
responsible for the rivers of bloodshed hundreds of miles away in Mexico.

"They are here," said one former cartel member, a 29-year-old Oregon
man who asked that his name be kept secret to protect his safety.
"They try hard to stay off the radar."

The Oregonian's investigation included the unprecedented cooperation
of law enforcement officials at all levels, including more than 250
interviews with investigators in six states. The newspaper reviewed
50,000 pages of documents, including rarely available wiretap excerpts
and files in open homicide cases. Sources also included former
traffickers, defense attorneys and victims, such as the family of a
Bend 21-year-old who collapsed on his front lawn as a lethal heroin
dose flowed into his veins.

Law enforcement officials helped with The Oregonian's investigation
because they're convinced the public needs to better understand the
growing threat the region faces. Though many cartel homicides are
never solved -- witnesses are threatened into silence, and killers
leave few clues before sliding back across the border -- authorities
say cartels' involvement in deaths and other crimes here is
unmistakable.

"Oregonians," said John Deits, the assistant U.S. attorney who
oversees federal drug prosecutions in Oregon, "are totally naive,
totally out of touch with what is happening."

Disturbing leads

The neighborhood of the Canby bombing seems an unlikely place for a
cartel hit.

Ranch houses and newer Northwest-style homes line Northeast 22nd
Street, which runs east-west along the north edge of town. The scent
of freshly mowed lawns hangs in the air.

The one-story white house where the bombing occurred sits on an
extra-wide lot. A gravel driveway sweeps along one side, past the
cherry tree, to a carport and shop in back.

At the time of the crime, a man rented the house with his wife and
their 19-year-old son. Their names are being withheld to protect their
safety. The renter declined to be interviewed, but lead investigator
Chris Mead of the Canby Police Department gave an account. Ben
Hartwig, who was visiting the neighborhood at the time of the bombing,
filled in details.

The renter worked two jobs, saving enough to buy a home in Salem. The
family was in the middle of moving on the evening of Dec. 10, 2011,
when the renter spotted the toolbox as he pulled his pickup to the
house for another load. Believing that another man's property should
be left alone, he told his wife and son about the toolbox but did not
call police.

The son, disobeying orders to stay away, tried to open the latch after
his parents left for Salem. A string held it fast, but the box opened
just enough to reveal something odd inside. The son called his
parents' cellphone only to be told again to leave the box alone.

The renter worked the next day, a Sunday. As he headed home, he called
Velasco Rodriguez, a friend, for help gathering scrap metal at the
Canby home. Velasco Rodriguez arrived with another helper, parking
near the cherry tree. He asked the renter about the toolbox and was
told to let it be.

The renter was in the carport loading plants into his pickup when he
was rocked by a blast. He ran to the front yard. Two doors down,
Hartwig was attending the annual gingerbread-house contest of his
fiancee and her family when the home shook and the windows rattled.
Hartwig, an Iraq War veteran and former explosives expert in the U.S.
Marine Corps, froze for a second.

"It didn't really make sense -- a bomb going off in Canby," he
said.

He rushed down the block to find the renter and the other helper
standing over Velasco Rodriguez in stunned silence. Velasco Rodriguez
lay on his back in the driveway, shrapnel wounds in his head and
stomach. Hartwig, who'd received his EMT certification five months
earlier, knew the wounds were probably fatal. But he, neighbors and
then medics tried to save Velasco Rodriguez.

In the days that followed, local investigators and agents from the FBI
and ATF combed for clues. The explosion so shredded the toolbox that
plastic bits remain at the scene even now. Investigators recovered
enough of the pipe bomb to reconstruct it but learned little about its
origin. They dug into Velasco Rodriguez's background but quickly
concluded he wasn't the target. They also found no disputes or drug
activity involving the renter and his family.

Then an ATF investigator discovered that the address had been listed
by a man connected to a major drug case in another state. That led
federal law enforcement officials to suspect the work of a Mexican
drug cartel.

A month after the Canby bombing, the ATF agent traveled to Moses Lake,
Wash., to learn about the 2008 bombings. There he found startling
parallels to the Canby killing.

Workshop blast

The morning of Aug. 2, 2008, William A. Walker opted to stay home to
tinker in his backyard workshop while his wife joined visiting
relatives to hunt for antiques, according to an account from family
members.

The 69-year-old retired electrician had returned to the area in the
mid-1990s after an industrial accident in Ohio left him unable to work
regular hours. He and his third wife, Dorothy, settled in Wheeler,
five miles east of Moses Lake, to look after the widow of a fishing
buddy. Walker spent time repairing cars and small power tools.

"He was a fix-it guy," said Valerie Johnson, a stepdaughter. "He's
just the good guy next door."

About 8:30 or 9, Walker carried a battery charger to the back of his
shop and plugged it in.

A couple of hours later, Dorothy Walker, 82 miles away in Cashmere,
was growing anxious. She had tried over and over to reach her husband,
first at the house, then on his cellphone.

"He's one of those answering people," she said. "I just got a terrible
feeling." She called a grandson in a panic, asking him to go check.

Andy Otto, 33, lived about six miles away and often spent Saturdays
helping his grandfather in the shop. He arrived about 1:30 p.m. to a
terrible scene. A pipe bomb inside the charger had exploded, blowing a
hole in the shop wall and dropping Walker to the concrete floor. He
had died of severe head and chest wounds.

A couple walking their dog had heard a muffled blast and saw a puff of
smoke drift from the shop. A couple sleeping in an RV in the Walkers'
driveway also heard the explosion. Neither went to investigate, but
they helped police piece together the sequence of events, said Ryan
Rectenwald, lead investigator at the time and now chief deputy at the
Grant County (Wash.) Sheriff's Office.

At first, medics and police thought a shop chemical or battery had
blown up accidentally. Another blast hours later and only five miles
away suggested otherwise.

Death by scanner

Javier Martinez Adame, 53, was unemployed and living with his
girlfriend, Heather Smith, in a small house on a dead-end lane just
north of Moses Lake city limits.

Adame, the fourth of nine children, held odd jobs most of his life
after a car accident left him unable to work long shifts, said a
sister, Sandra Valdez. A father and grandfather, he kept a tidy home
and worked on wood projects.

"He was a really good mechanic," Valdez said. "He was just helping
people all the time."

Police suspected he was also dealing drugs. Grant County court records
show he was convicted of cocaine possession in 1998 and cited for
possessing drug paraphernalia in 1999.

That weekend in 2008, Smith found a police scanner in a paper grocery
bag in the driveway and moved it to the porch, Rectenwald said. Just
after midnight on Aug. 3, Adame carried the scanner into the kitchen
and plugged it in.

Adame muttered an expletive just before a pipe bomb hidden inside
exploded, killing him instantly. Rectenwald said Adame had experience
with explosives and may have heard the detonator.

Valdez, notified in a phone call, arrived later that
morning.

"When we drove up the gravel road, there were cops, tape. I was
screaming," Valdez said. "I was begging them to let me see him. They
said I wouldn't want to see something like that."

ATF technicians soon established that the bombs that killed Walker and
Adame were nearly identical. Given Adame's history, investigators
concluded he was the intended target of the scanner. But what about
Walker? Grant County sheriff's detectives, with help from ATF and FBI
agents, hunted for a link between him and Adame.

For a time, Otto said, police thought he might have been the target of
the battery charger. He and relatives said investigators asked him
whether he owed someone in the drug world money.

"They said it was meant for me," Otto said. "They stayed on that trail
for a while."

Otto was arrested in 2004 after police found 186 marijuana plants in a
travel trailer he was using, but he said he had since put his
"troubled" years behind him.

Investigators also focused attention on a neighbor whose home had been
raided by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents five months
before as part of a cocaine investigation. Law enforcement sources
said a cartel could have meant the charger for him.

In any case, investigators concluded Walker was the victim of mistaken
identity. Walker's family dedicated a Facebook page to the case and
still holds occasional events to seek help solving it. Both cases have
gone cold, Rectenwald said.

Investigators are also looking for new leads in the Canby case. Police
acknowledged that the common circumstances -- pipe bombs hidden in
everyday items that were left unattended -- interest them.

Days after the bombing, Canby police set up a tip line and offered a
$5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Investigators
found it odd, Police Chief Bret Smith said, when few clues rolled in.

The silence, Smith said, indicates that the killer came to Canby, set
the bomb and slipped away without a trace.
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