JUDGE ACQUITS 6 IN KILLING OF MEXICAN TV STAR

MEXICO CITY -- A judge Thursday declared six people not guilty in the 1999
killing of Mexican television celebrity Francisco "Paco" Stanley, a case
that riveted Mexicans with a real-life soap opera featuring drugs, politics
and the country's fragile judicial system.

Judge Rafael Santa Ana declared there was insufficient evidence to convict
the six -- including Stanley's friend and television foil, Mario Bezares,
alleged drug kingpin Luis Amezcua and aspiring actress Paola Durante.

Also acquitted was the alleged hitman Erasmo Perez, Stanley's driver, Jorge
Garcia, and Bezares' administrative assistant, Jose Luis Rosendo.

"This should not remain in impunity," Bezares said in the jammed courtroom
in Mexico City's Eastern Penitentiary. "Those truly responsible for this
crime against my friend should be caught."

All the defendants except Amezcua, in jail for unrelated money-laundering
charges, were to be freed after more than 1 1/2 years awaiting the verdict.
The Mexico City attorney general's office said it would review the ruling
and possibly appeal.

Stanley, who hosted a popular morning variety show, was shot four times in
the face in June 1999 as he sat in his sport utility vehicle outside a
Mexico City restaurant.

A bystander also died in the gunfire, and three people were injured.

The mob-style hit on the wise-cracking TV star sparked outrage from
Stanley's employer, No. 2 Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca, against the
lawlessness in Mexico City under the then-Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

At the time of the killings, Cardenas, of the leftist Opposition Party of
the Democratic Revolution, was about to launch a bid for president in the
July 2000 elections, a race in which he eventually placed a distant third
to President Vicente Fox.

Samuel Del Villar, then Mexico City's attorney general, shocked the nation
by announcing that Stanley was shot because he owed money to Amezcua, known
along with his brother as the "Kings of Methamphetamine," who was wanted by
U.S. authorities for allegedly running a speed smuggling ring.

Bezares, who was in the restaurant bathroom when the murder took place, set
Stanley up in exchange for the cancellation of a debt he had with the drug
barons, according to the attorney general.

Del Villar also suggested Bezares acted out of revenge for on-screen
suggestions by Stanley that one of Bezares' sons was illegitimate.

But the case began to unravel after the key prosecution witness, a man who
said he was Amezcua's jailhouse cook and overheard the plot to kill Stanley
being discussed, retracted his testimony in April.

"This is a triumph of justice," Bezares attorney Mario Castillejos told
reporters.