House of Death is starting to rot

In April of this year, Narco New brought you a gruesome story about corruption and murder along the Texas border. The story began as follows:

Between August 2003 and mid-January of 2004, a dozen people were murdered and buried in the yard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border city of 1.2 million people.

Santillan (an alleged leader in the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’ Juarez drug organization) and his cronies controlled the house. This group included the informant, known only as "Lalo," who was on the payroll of the U.S. Immigration and Customs (Enforcement) agency....

... The informant, “Lalo,” say the law enforcement whistleblowers, even brought the tape and the lime used to help dispose of the bodies. The law enforcement sources believe that he was at the death house during up to nine of the 12 murders known to have taken place there. Most of those killed were allegedly Mexican drug dealers, except for one individual, who was a U.S. citizen – "some kid from Socorro, Texas, just south of El Paso," says one law enforcement source.

What the Narco News story didn’t mention in its April story was the name of the murdered “kid” from Socorro. He was Luis Padilla. He left behind a wife and three small kids. Padilla, who was 29 at the time of his death, is now silent, but his family is making a plea for justice. They recently filed a lawsuit in federal court in El Paso alleging that five ICE officials along with an Assistant U.S. Attorney in El Paso are complicit in the death of Padilla.

"Apathy, marred by incompetence characterized the operations run by ICE and the United States Attorney’s office in El Paso. Yet the facts would reveal that both agencies were consciously aware of the ongoing killings,” the lawsuit contends.

Plea for justice

The litigation seeks unspecified damages against the following defendants: ICE officials Giovanni Gaudioso, Patricia Kramer, Curtis Compton and Raul Bencomo -- who all worked in El Paso at the time of the House of Death murders. The other defendants are Assistant U.S. Attorney Juanita Fielden, and Michael Garcia, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary who oversees ICE.

From the lawsuit:

Beginning on or about January 2003, Defendants working for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hired and paid a confidential informant who took part in the killing of several people in the border city of El Paso, Texas. Between August 2003 and January 2004, nearly twenty people, including Luis Padilla, were tortured, killed and then buried in the back yard of a house in Juarez, Mexico.

… The informant operated under the supervision and under the authority of the (ICE) officers, Defendants Garcia, Kramer, Compton, and his handler Bencomo. The informant also operated under the authority and supervision of the Assistant United States Attorney, Defendant Fielden. Contrary to protocol Fielden made tactical decisions regarding the handling and operations of the informant.

As early as August 2003, ICE officials including Defendants Garcia, Kramer, Compton, and Bencomo and assistant U.S. attorney Fielden were aware that the informant was participating in kidnappings and killings.

The informant was later identified as Jesus Contreras a/ka “Lalo,” “SA-913-EP” in a debriefing before the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Mexican Consulate, the Legal Attaché for the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic of Mexico (PGR), and the Mexican Office of Public Depositions. The informant admitted to the kidnapping and killings of several individuals including Luis Padilla. Testifying under the condition of immunity, Contreras detailed the numerous killings he committed while under the protection of the United States government. Contreras bragged in grisly detail how the murders were carefully planned and carried out.

… In the course of six months, Contreras participated in the killings of over twelve (12) people, possibly more. In each incident, the informant was instrumental in luring the victims to the house on Parsioneros Street in Juarez, Mexico where the killings occurred. He used duct tape, rope, and a plastic bag for extensive torture of the cartel victims. After each horrible ordeal, Contreras would purchase sacks of lime for burial and decomposition of the bodies. Contreras stacked and buried the bodies on top of each other in the back yard of the house.

The lawsuit lays out the details of Padilla’s murder as follows:

On or about January 8th, 2004 … Contreras and his cohorts targeted a courier for the “carne asada” or barbeque. The reference is meant to signify the usual abduction, torture , and killing. Santillan ordered Contreras to prepare a carne asada for the targeted courier or “mule.”

But as usual, others were abducted along with the target. Making a day trip to Juarez, Luis Padilla, an El Paso resident, was also taken. A victim of the Contreras hit squad, Padilla was never again seen by his family. In an attempt to leave no trace, Padilla and the target were killed by Contreras and the cartel. His mutilated body was eventually identified at the Parsioneros house in Juarez

The lawsuit mirrors in almost every way the story published by Narco News back in April. However, in the details of how two DEA agents got wrapped up in Contreras’ murderous activities there is a difference between what sources told Narco News and what the litigation spells out.

From the litigation:

… On January 13, 2004, the torture and killings would have continued had not two U.S. DEA agents been targeted for assassination. One victim of Contreras’ brutal torture revealed the address of the house in a gated community occupied by a businessman living in Juarez, Mexico. The group suspected that the house contained a large cache of illegal drugs. Contreras and the cartel planned a siege on the house and a “barbeque” of the occupants.

On January 14, 2004, Contreras discovered, through his ICE contacts, that the businessman was actually a DEA agent living in Mexico with his family. Contreras immediately reported to the drug cartel the identity and location of the DEA agent and his family. The stage was set for the kidnapping, torture, and killing.

Devil in the details

The litigation, though, does not mention another key player in the House of Death horror, Mexican state police Commander Miguel Loya Gallegos, who disappeared in January of this year. Loya’s vanishing act is a critical detail.

Narco News reported in April:

The informant, say the law enforcement sources, participated in many of the murders.... But they believe that the key player overseeing the House of Death was 35-year-old Miguel Loya-Gallegos, a night-shift comandante with the state police of Chihuahua, Mexico; the indicted, but disappeared, co-defendant in the Santillan case. Several of his associates disappeared, too, vexing law enforcement agents who say their mysterious disappearance -- and consequent unavailability as potential witnesses to multiple murders -- could prove very convenient to U.S. prosecutors and a confidential informant under their protection.

U.S. law enforcement agents, coming forward on the condition of anonymity, believe that the comandante -- the U.S. Attorney indicted him in Texas as part of an alleged drug-smuggling organization -- was witness to up to nine murders committed by a confidential informant (Contreras) while that informant was on the payroll of the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

To date, Loya remains the missing link in the House of Death case.

Narco News reported the following in April with respect to the DEA agents and the Mexican state police commander, Loya:

On Jan. 14 of this year, the door was blown wide open on the death-house operation in Juarez. That day, three people were tortured and murdered, but not before one of them gave up an address to a stash house in Juarez. Santillan’s operatives went to the house and banged on the door. No one answered.

In fact, the occupants, a mother and her children, were inside, in fear of the strangers at the door. The mother managed to contact her husband, who returned to the house. The entire family then got in the car and left the house.

The bad guys were watching, though. The car was pulled over a short time later by a marked municipal police car. Some of Loya’s state police goons were also present at the traffic stop. The occupants of the car were likely in store for a trip to the death house.

However, Loya’s underlings were not sure who the driver was, so they contacted their boss. Santillan in turn contacted the informant, who allegedly had bragged in the past that he was well connected on the other side of the border.

Santillan wanted the informant to check out the driver, to see who he was.

In the meantime, the driver stayed in his car and put out a call from his cell phone. Soon, another car arrived. Around the same time, the informant’s ICE handlers ran their check and figured out the identity of the driver.

The driver pulled out a consular ID, as did the individual who had come to his assistance.

They were both DEA agents

The lid was blown off of Santillan’s death house operation, as was the fact that some officials with ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in their zeal to make a case, had allowed up to 12 murders to occur under their watch and now had nearly cost the lives of two DEA agents.

The irony of the situation is how easily things could have played out differently that day, and the murder spree would have continued unabated. The address that the torture victim gave up to Santillan’s men was almost correct: two tons of grass were later found in the house next door to the DEA agent’s home in Juarez.

But the damage was done. As a result of the traffic stop, DEA evacuated all of its agents and their families from Juarez as a safety precaution. The Mexican government also dispatched some 80 federal agents to Juarez to investigate the situation. More than a dozen of Loya’s state police gang and some low-level thugs, gravediggers, were taken into custody.

Loya, though, slipped through everyone’s fingers. The reason, according to Narco News sources, is that Fielden and ICE officials undermined the effort to snare Loya.

As reported by Narco News in April:

How many murders allegedly occurred under the reign of terror by Loya and his henchman is not known. One law enforcement source contends that the comandante’s brush with the DEA didn’t seem to deter him one bit. He says that the day after the DEA agents were stopped in Juarez, Loya was responsible for "whacking another person and leaving another one near death."

"God knows how many more murders he and his men committed that we do not know about," the law enforcement source adds.

Unfortunately, we may never know. Within days of the traffic stop involving the federal agents, DEA officials tried to arrange a meeting between the informant and Loya, to create an opportunity for Mexican federal agents to swoop in and arrest Loya. According to law enforcement sources, someone at ICE or the U.S. Attorney’s office in El Paso jammed them up and wouldn’t let the informant arrange the meeting.

As a consequence, Loya and three of his associates, "vanished into thin air," one law enforcement source says.

The Padilla lawsuit was filed in late October. To date, the defendants have not filed a response.

You can check out the pleadings at this link.

Stay tuned....