Rafael Munoz Talavera

An alleged godfather of the Mexican drug trade was executed and his body abandoned near the Texas border, prompting fears of a blood bath between rival Mexican drug groups, officials said Friday. U.S. officials called Rafael Munoz Talavera a pioneer of the Mexico-to-U.S. cocaine trade. They had earlier predicted that he would replace the country's No. 1 trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in July 1997 after plastic surgery to hide his identity.

An alleged godfather of the Mexican drug trade was executed and his body abandoned near the Texas border, prompting fears of a blood bath between rival Mexican drug groups, officials said Friday. U.S. officials called Rafael Munoz Talavera a pioneer of the Mexico-to-U.S. cocaine trade. They had earlier predicted that he would replace the country's No. 1 trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in July 1997 after plastic surgery to hide his identity.

Rafael Munoz Talavera was out of town the day U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents trooped into his palatial $3-million estate in suburban El Paso. Only the caretaker was there when DEA staff cars pulled into the Munoz family's circular driveway on the afternoon of Oct. 6. Munoz's wife and three children had left behind spacious closets filled with finely tailored clothes and a few scattered pieces of jewelry.

Members of a Mexican family on trial in connection with the record cocaine seizure last year in a Sylmar warehouse were paid by Colombian drug kingpins more than $81 million in a four-month period to haul cocaine from El Paso to Los Angeles aboard big-rig trucks, a top federal drug investigator testified Wednesday. "This was the transportation segment of a major (narcotics) organization," said Larry Lyons, who coordinates worldwide cocaine investigations for the U.S.

Members of a Mexican family on trial in connection with the record cocaine seizure last year in a Sylmar warehouse were paid by Colombian drug kingpins more than $81 million in a four-month period to haul cocaine from El Paso to Los Angeles aboard big-rig trucks, a top federal drug investigator testified Wednesday. "This was the transportation segment of a major (narcotics) organization," said Larry Lyons, who coordinates worldwide cocaine investigations for the U.S.

Federal authorities, making public a 27-count indictment, Wednesday identified Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes, brother of a Ciudad Juarez-area drug lord who died after plastic surgery in 1997, as the bloodily contested cartel's new leader. Although a federal grand jury had returned the sealed indictment in August 1997 and requested the extradition from Mexico in November, authorities only unsealed the documents this week.

Federal police said today they arrested Rafael Munoz Talavera, a reputed smuggler believed to be the owner of the record 21.4 tons of cocaine seized in September in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles. Officers said Munoz Talavera was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a Juarez motel. Under Mexican law, he must be charged with a crime within 24 hours or be released.

Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, a former federal police officer and one of Mexico's most-wanted drug traffickers, was shot to death while vacationing with his family in the Caribbean resort of Cancun, officials confirmed Wednesday. An American tourist from Colorado also was killed in the attack in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo. She apparently was walking by at the time of the shooting and was caught in the automatic gunfire.

Inga Lourey says she has never met a drug trafficker, but for seven months she and other business owners unwittingly paid rent to one. Now they are paying the federal government, which seized the property. Lourey and her husband, Carl, own a supermarket in the Park II Alto Mesa shopping center on El Paso's upscale West Side. Unbeknown to them, the $4.

In what Mexican and U.S. authorities said Tuesday marks a new era of cooperation, arrest warrants and indictments were issued for 30 suspects in a drug ring that allegedly moved more than 200 tons of cocaine to Los Angeles over a two-year period. The ring was the subject of a sweeping investigation after the seizure in 1989 of 21 tons of cocaine in Sylmar, the largest cocaine bust ever in this country.

Rafael Munoz Talavera was out of town the day U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents trooped into his palatial $3-million estate in suburban El Paso. Only the caretaker was there when DEA staff cars pulled into the Munoz family's circular driveway on the afternoon of Oct. 6. Munoz's wife and three children had left behind spacious closets filled with finely tailored clothes and a few scattered pieces of jewelry.

A federal prosecutor disclosed Wednesday that a Sylmar warehouse which was the site a year ago of the country's biggest drug bust--21.4 tons of cocaine--was a conduit for 77 tons of cocaine in a three-month period before the seizure. Assistant U.S. Atty. James P. Walsh Jr., in opening remarks at the federal court trial of six alleged drug smugglers, called the seizure an "epic case" of law enforcement cracking a drug distribution ring of mammoth proportions. "These six men . . .

Law enforcement authorities said Thursday that Mexican federal police have captured Rafael Munoz Talavera, the alleged leader of the narcotics smuggling operation accused of shipping the unprecedented 21.4-ton haul of Colombian cocaine seized more than a month ago by police at a Sylmar warehouse.