The former chief enforcer and executioner for Mexico's Juárez Cartel, who has admitted to ordering at least 1,500 murders during his brief criminal career, was sentenced to 10 life sentences in an El Paso federal court on Thursday (April 5).
Before being sentenced José Antonio Acosta Hernández, 34, pleaded guilty to a total of 11 felony offenses, including the murder of U.S. nationals. His victims included a 25 year old employee of the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, who was four months pregnant at the time, and her husband, a deputy sheriff in El Paso. Acosta Hernández, who is known as "El Diego," was sentenced by judge Kathleen Cardone in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Under federal guidelines he will never be eligible for parole.
Mexican police arrested Acosta Hernández on July 26, 2011, but he was not extradited to the U.S. until March 16. Mexico had offered a reward of $15 million pesos ($1.2 million US) for his capture, and the United States $5 million. The F.B.I. and the D.E.A. participated in the investigation. In addition to ordering the murders of 1,500 people in areas controlled by the Juárez Cartel since becoming its chief enforcer, El Diego also admitted to a July 2010 car bombing in the city - a first in Mexico's drug war - as well as a notorious attack in January 2010 which killed 15 young people at a birthday party.
Calling his crimes some of the "most heinous and violent and callous" she had ever seen, Cardone told Acosta Hernández, "in many ways life imprisonment is not enough for all the lives you have taken." El Diego also pleaded guilty to racketeering, drug conspiracy, money laundering, firearms violations, murder in aid of racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder. Despite his admissions Hernández denied having ordered the murders of the two Americans. He laid full responsibility for the brutal attack on another gang (the facts of the case are just below).
El Diego is a former police officer in the state of Chihuahua who quit his law enforcement post and began working with organized crime several years ago. He is married and has four children, the youngest just three years old. Authorities say he built a name for himself as a contract killer for the Juárez Cartel, and created an organization, known as La Linea, which also carried out extortion and kidnappings for ransom.
Saturday, March 10, 2010 was a bright, clear, sunny day along the south Texas border. Lesley Ann Enriquez Catton, 25, and her husband Arthur H. Redelfs, 30, both residents of El Paso, Texas, planned to attend a birthday party just across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juárez, often called the most dangerous city in the world. Lesley was an employee of the American consulate in Juárez, and Arthur was a 10 year veteran of the El Paso County Sheriff's Dept. Each weekday morning Lesley made the trip across the international bridge to her job at the consulate. Lesley and Arthur had a nine month old daughter, and she was four months pregnant with their second child.
Shortly after they drove away from the afternoon birthday party, hosted by a consulate co-worker, the young couple noticed they were being followed. They sped up, but the pursuing vehicle kept pace. They made a dash for the bridge, just a few short blocks away, but they couldn't quite reach it. Armed assailants pulled up along side them and let loose with bursts of machine gun fire - no doubt AK-47s or AR-15s, the weapons of choice for cartel hit men. Lesley and Arthur died at the scene after their car crashed into a curb. Their daughter, safely secured in the backseat, survived unscathed.
About the same time a Mexican police officer named Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros drove away from the same birthday party with his own children. Jorge was married to another U.S. consulate employee, a Mexican national, who was following him in her car. Blocks away he too was pursued and executed by a hit team. The children were uninjured.
March 29 - U.S. drug czar tells House that Juárez is still world's most deadly city
Dec. 8, 2011 - Another day of madness in Juárez
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