Torture a hallmark of Phoenix's kidnappings
Don Gabacho
By Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN
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PHOENIX, Arizona (CNN) -- Jaime Andrade had just gotten out of the shower
when the men came to snatch him.
Jaime Andrade was kept in this closet for three days without food or water,
police say.
Jaime Andrade was kept in this closet for three days without food or water,
police say.
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[Image depicts blood-soaked closet]
His wife, Araceli Valencia, was mopping the kitchen in their family home on
a typical warm spring morning in Phoenix, Arizona, "when she suddenly felt
a hard object pointed to the back of her head and a voice in Spanish tell
her not to move," according to a Phoenix, Arizona, police investigative
report.
"I told you not to look at me!" Valencia heard one of the kidnappers bark
as he struck Andrade across the head.
Her four children bawling, Valencia was hustled into a bedroom where an
armed man fondled her and threatened to rape her if she didn't tell him
where Andrade hid his money, according to the report.
After beating and binding Andrade, one of the kidnappers put a gun to
Valencia's head. His message: We're taking your husband and SUV. We'll be
watching your house. If you call the cops, he's a dead man.
Andrade, his wife would later tell police, was a mechanic and freelance
human smuggler, or coyote. Police say his 2006 kidnapping was evidence of a
growing trend in Phoenix: drug and human traffickers abducting each other
for ransoms or retribution. Hear Andrade's wife plead with the kidnappers �
The trend continues, as police investigated roughly a kidnapping a day in
2007 and 2008 and are on track to shatter those numbers this year. Police
are stingy with details of fresh cases navigating the court system, but
recently allowed CNN to review the files from Andrade's kidnapping.
For two and a half days after Andrade's abduction, the kidnappers --
including a man whom Andrade later said had been a friend -- deprived their
victim of food and water. Through the door of the closet where he was held,
Andrade could hear the cries of other victims being tortured in the house,
the report said.
Series: Drug Cartels
This is the second in CNN.com's four-part series on drug cartels.
Monday: Authorities are taking on Mexico's drug cartels as the groups'
tentacles extend into the U.S.
Wednesday: Almost 70 percent of students at an El Paso, Texas, school live
in Mexico
Thursday: From moonshine to marijuana, a look at the evolving drug problem
in rural America
Meanwhile, Valencia had defied the kidnappers and called police, who
listened to Andrade "scream and howl in pain" over the phone as the
kidnappers tried to cut off his ear and a finger. The torture would
continue until Valencia came up with the ransom, the kidnappers told her.
They were true to their word.
Andrade was pistol-whipped and beaten with a baseball bat and the butt of a
rifle. The kidnappers tried to gouge out his eye and slashed open his left
eyebrow. They burned his back as well -- presumably, police said, with a
blowtorch found at the scene. Read how the next door neighbors knew nothing
of this
The blindfolded Andrade "could feel his pants and underwear being cut open
by an unknown person," he told police. He was told to bend over and was
beaten when he refused.
"Jaime felt his legs being forced apart and heard Aldo say he was going to
get his money," the report said. The kidnappers then sodomized him with a
broomstick, a pair of scissors and a wooden dowel used to hang clothes in a
closet.
Kidnappers creative with coercion
Ferocity is often a hallmark of the abductions taking place in this south
Arizona city of 1.5 million that serves as a prime transshipment point for
drugs and human cargo. Video Watch how the kidnappers choose their targets
�
Phoenix police say they have yet to witness the level of violence -- the
beheadings, the bodies shoved in drums -- that their counterparts are
seeing in Mexico City or the border town of Juarez.
"It gets close sometimes," said Lt. Lauri Burgett, who heads the Home
Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad.
Kidnappers will smash their victims' fingers with bricks, snip their backs
open with wire cutters, carve them up with knives or simply shoot them.
"We've had them electrocuted. They set them in a tub with water and use
kind of barbaric means and zap the tub. I think it was a battery hooked
up," Burgett said.
Two kidnappings last year resulted in murders, she added, but it's not the
norm.
Phoenix police formed the HIKE squad in October after two years of
unprecedented kidnapping numbers -- 357 in 2007 and 368 in 2008 -- gave the
city the dubious distinction of being the nation's kidnapping capital. Home
invasions were not far behind: 317 in 2007 and 337 in 2008. See kidnapping
numbers since 1999 �
"It's all about the money. And there's so much money to be made in this
that you can't stop it, but you can try to reveal it, and then you can try
to do something about it," Burgett said.
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The task force has made dozens of arrests, but as of March 31, the city had
101 reported kidnappings. If the trend continues, Phoenix will record an
increase in kidnapping for a fourth straight year.
More frustrating is that the numbers represent only a third, maybe less, of
the city's kidnappings, said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman with
16 years of drug enforcement experience. Most kidnappings aren't reported,
he said, because the victims are generally smugglers, drug dealers or
illegal immigrants -- or some combination of the three.
Other criminals targeted
The most common cases are criminal-on-criminal -- drug smugglers or coyotes
snatching rivals or their loved ones. In some cases, a drug dealer may have
lost a load or failed to make a payment, but there are also cases when
kidnappers do it solely for the ransom, which can be between $30,000 and
$250,000, Thompson said.
"[The victims are] wearing the doper bling-bling, and they target them," he
said. "We've had several cases where the ransom amount has been $1 million
that the person has asked for. In addition to that, they often ask for
drugs -- 100 pounds of marijuana, perhaps a pound or two of speed, a pound
or two of cocaine or several ounces of heroin."
Phoenix police have even arrested victims after rescuing them, Burgett
said.
Less frequent but still accounting for 78 kidnappings last year are cases
in which coyotes hold their human cargo captive or steal another coyote's
patrons, known as pollos (Spanish for chickens), Burgett said.
Burgett said human trafficking is often linked to the drug trade because
both industries require the same routes and subterfuge to ferry their wares
into the country. See what other cities have a cartel presence
There are rarely "true victims" in Phoenix's kidnappings, the lieutenant
said.
However, one criminal attorney who has represented at least 10 kidnappers
in the last decade insists that the coyote business is "uglier than the
drug trade" and that pollos are often killed or forced to do coyotes'
bidding when they can't come up with the ransoms.
"In the drug business, the people getting killed are in the business. They
are not end users, not consumers," said Antonio Bustamente. "In the coyote
business, the people killed are really innocent. [First-time] illegal entry
is a petty offense."
Though many might debate the innocence of victims entangled in Phoenix's
border-related violence, police say there have been instances when the
kidnappers snatched the wrong mark.
Girl mistakenly snatched
On the evening of March 17, 2008, a 13-year-old girl and her friend were
walking out of a home in the suburb of Avondale. They were planning to play
basketball. The friend, according to a police investigative report, was the
niece of a man named "Chucky."
Chucky and his cohorts, witnesses told police, had earlier stolen 55 pounds
of marijuana and left several men tied up in a vacant house.
Hours later, the investigative report said, armed men arrived at Chucky's
sister's house in three vehicles, one a white Chevrolet Tahoe with
blue-and-red strobes like the police use.
The men wanted Chucky, their drugs or $24,000. The 13-year-old said she
didn't know Chucky. When she tried to walk away, "one of them grabbed her
by the neck, pointed a gun at her and forced her in the vehicle," the
report said.
Eventually, the men called the girl's mother to demand ransom. A police
officer took the phone and informed the men they had the wrong girl. She
was released relatively unharmed in the suburb of Surprise.
The case serves as a reminder that as police scramble to tamp the bloodshed
before it reaches the levels proliferating south of the border, collateral
damage is a reality. Video Watch how the kidnapping often occur in quiet
neighborhoods �
The origins of the kidnappers -- 90 percent of whom hail from the Mexican
state from which the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel takes its name -- also
remind law enforcement that 150 miles south lies a country racked with a
more extreme brand of violence.
The tortured Andrade was fortunate that police were able to find him. On
Andrade's third day in captivity, an undercover officer posing as a loan
shark convinced the kidnappers to lower their ransom from $50,000 to
$10,000 and the title to the Ford Expedition they had stolen.
When the kidnappers arrived at the drop point, a Safeway supermarket
parking lot, police swarmed on their green Chevrolet Tahoe, the report
said. One of the men, Luis Alberto Castro-Vega, then 23, disclosed
Andrade's whereabouts after police promised not to charge him with
kidnapping.
Only Castro-Vega has been convicted of crimes associated with Andrade's
kidnapping: first-degree burglary, theft by extortion, armed robbery and
three counts of aggravated assault. In September 2006, a judge sentenced
Castro-Vega to 54 years in prison.
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Thompson said he hopes the stiff sentence sends a message that Phoenix
police expect the kidnappings and violence to end, regardless of the
targets and the perpetrators.
"The problems that occur when it's criminal versus criminal, that's still
violence on the streets of America," he said. "If those people get in a
gunbattle, those bullets have to go somewhere, and that could be a
playground where kids are playing. That could be a neighbor's house where a
neighbor is inside sleeping that has nothing to do whatsoever with the
illegal activity, but yet they become senseless victims of the violence."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/19/phoenix.drug.kidnappings/