DRUG KINPIN FREED AFTER SERVING 12 YEARS

MIAMI - A notorious drug trafficker who once hacked a federal informant's
body to pieces has been released after serving 12 years of a 100-year
sentence after helping convict other narcotics traders.

Federal agents and the informant's widow are angry about Mario Tabraue's
release, saying 100 years was an appropriate sentence for a drug kingpin
whose organization imported $75 million worth of cocaine and marijuana and
killed to protect the enterprise.

``My balance sheet says he got 100 years, and that's exactly what he ought
to do,'' said Dan McBride, a retired agent with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco & Firearms who began the four-year effort in the 1980s to destroy
Tabraue's gang. ``I don't care who he's helped convict.''

But Assistant U.S. Attorney M. Patrick Sullivan said Tabraue deserved a
reduced sentence because his testimony helped build cases against
murderers, high-level drug traffickers and money launderers. His help was
apparently so valuable prosecutors ignored their own rules that informants'
sentences should not be reduced by more than half.

Tabraue was notorious in the 1980s, operating a drug-smuggling ring from a
$1 million Coconut Grove mansion teeming with exotic animals, including
cheetahs, toucans and even a two-headed snake.

Authorities called the case ``Operation Cobra'' because of the exotic pet
store and ranch Tabraue ran.

Arrested in 1987, Tabraue went to trial two years later on a sweeping
federal racketeering indictment that included murder, drug trafficking,
corruption and obstruction of justice charges. He was convicted of
racketeering and 13 narcotics counts.

Under his original sentence, Tabraue was not eligible for parole until
2047, when he would be 93. But with Sullivan's blessing, Tabraue's lawyer,
John Maddes, asked Judge James W. Kehoe in 1997 to reduce the sentence to
15 years.

Kehoe denied the request, but he died in 1998 and last year Sullivan
persuaded another judge, Shelby Highsmith, to reduce the sentence.

Since his release in November, Tabraue has lived a quiet life and has tried
to reestablish the exotic- animal business that authorities say was a cover
for a drug-smuggling ring, according to The Miami Herald.

But the widow of Larry Vance Nash is outraged that Tabraue is free. A
Tabraue associate murdered Nash, but he helped dismember the body with a
machete and circular saw. They then burned it.

The woman is particularly angry that they didn't tell her Tabraue was to be
released.

``They had no trouble talking to my husband,'' she told The Herald, which
did not reveal her name. ``They had no trouble persuading him to do the
surveillance. They used him, and all I got back was `we lost him,' a
thousand dollars for my trouble and that was it.

``I haven't heard from them since.''