Florentino Ventura

He was mean and vain, with more enemies than friends. His first wife hanged herself, and this month he fatally shot his second, along with her childhood friend. Then he put a bullet through his own head. Florentino Ventura, 62, was Mexico's most powerful and feared police officer, director of the Federal Judicial Police and head of Interpol in Mexico. Nicknamed "The Tiger," he was the man whom Mexican officials called to get a job done. And he did. He put drug kings in jail.

He was mean and vain, with more enemies than friends. His first wife hanged herself, and this month he fatally shot his second, along with her childhood friend. Then he put a bullet through his own head. Florentino Ventura, 62, was Mexico's most powerful and feared police officer, director of the Federal Judicial Police and head of Interpol in Mexico. Nicknamed "The Tiger," he was the man whom Mexican officials called to get a job done. And he did. He put drug kings in jail.

Rafael Caro Quintero, a prime suspect in the kidnap-murder of American narcotics agent Enrique Camarena Salazar, was detained in Costa Rica and efforts are proceeding for his extradition, the Mexican attorney general's office announced today. Office spokesman Francisco Fonseca said Florentino Ventura, chief of the Interpol group in Mexico, left today for Costa Rica to head the investigation. Camarena, 37, a special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was kidnaped Feb.

Other members of the cult called her their witch, a high priestess in a world of evil. Her name is Sara Aldrete Villareal, and she, like the others still alive, is accused of murder. She is a tall, athletic woman who, in one half of her life, was an honors student at a Texas college. But in the other, the one few people saw, she was a lover and follower of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, whose legacy is a trail of grotesque violence almost beyond imagination. She said this man, through the sheer force of his personality, held her in his grip, just as he did the others who killed for him. Force of Personality "If he tells you to do something right now, if he orders you, you will do it," she said last week.