In the 1980s, Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was a loyal servant of El Diablo himself. He and his soulless gang of hombres’ left trails of blood everywhere they went and they didn’t care whose it was. Some of that blood belonged to Americans. After all of these long since passed decades, Quintero’s day of reckoning has at long last arrived.
American writer John Clay Walker was but one of the drug lord’s long string of innocent victims. Upon hearing of Quintero’s recent arrest, Walker’s daughter, Lannie Walker, was flooded with horrid memories of her dad’s brutal murder.
Her father, 36 at the time, was doing research for a book he was finishing up and as such was temporarily living in Guadalajara. “We were both very glad to hear that (Caro Quintero) had been captured, and it also brought back a lot of trauma for us,” she said. “My sister and I have lost almost 40 years with our father, there is nothing that can make up for that.
John Clay Walker had not been hunted down by Quintero and his gang, and he hadn’t been involved in any nefarious activity. He and his friend Alberto Radelet, who was visiting from Ft. Worth, were having dinner at a high-end seafood restaurant called “The Lobster.”
Ironically, the two had been celebrating the completion of Walker’s book, and his finally being able to return home. They had no way of knowing that Quintero and his pals were throwing a little shindig in the restaurant’s back room.
Lannie Walker made it clear that “Our father was an American citizen with no involvement in the Mexico-United States drug war, he was an innocent bystander that unwittingly became caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous drug cartel.”
Only because her father and his friend were Americans, she said “They began questioning my father and Al, asking them what they knew about the drug enforcement agents in Mexico, what they knew about the investigation. My father knew nothing, he was an innocent writer. They tortured him with an icepick for hours.”
Former DEA chief of international relations, Mike Vigil, said that Quintero thought he was untouchable because of his wealth and power and had many times crossed the line with careless abandon, killing anyone who got in his way.
Describing Walker and Radelet’s fatal day, Vigil said “they looked out and they saw two Americans and [sic] they immediately through their paranoia as well thought they were DEA agents. They took them into the back and stabbed {sic] to death.”
After a five-month search, both of the deteriorated bodies were found wrapped inside a carpet on the outskirts of town behind an abandoned building.
In 1984, two American couples were knocking on doors in Guadalajara, handing out Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets and spreading their faith. They mysteriously vanished, and to this day have yet to be found.
Their crime? They knocked on the door of Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, one of Quinteros closest advisors. Because the two trusted no one, they bribed two state police officers into helping them kidnap and exterminate the two bible-thumping couples.
“If Caro Quintero is extradited to the U.S. and is convicted and punished here, that would be a small amount of justice,” said Lannie Walker.
Her wishes may be slow in coming now that Quintero’s team of well-paid crooked lawyers have filed injunctions to not let that happen. And the Mexican judge in the case has not surprisingly agreed to go through each and every one of them with a fine-toothed comb. Hmmm…
It took over a year to get Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman extradited to the U.S., and his crimes were much more current which made it easier to gather hardcore can’t squeeze out of evidence.
It’s been a while since the big-haired 80s. The blood stains have worn off the wood chippers and the ashes emptied from the incinerators, and anyone who might have ever had even the slightest chance of squealing on Quintero no longer has the ability. But it’ll happen
We just hope for her sake that Lannie Walker is at least offered the first chance of pulling the switch.
