CONDEMNED DRUG BOSS'S EXPLOITS STILL VIVID

Reprieve Stirs Emotions, Memories Of Slayings

BROWNSVILLE -- Erasmo De La Fuente called the sheriff's office when he
found Gilberto Matos lying dead in an auto body shop one morning just
outside this bustling border town, with a gunshot wound in the back of his
head.

Months later, he, too, was shot to death at a Brownsville nightclub.
Authorities would later determine that the two slayings 10 years ago were
the work of one man: Juan Raul Garza, a Brownsville drug boss.

The name of Mr. Garza, 43, may not be familiar to many people across the
nation, but he's well remembered -- and still feared in some quarters -- in
his hometown, where authorities said he was the leader of a violent drug
smuggling organization.

He's also scheduled to become the first federal death row inmate to be
executed in more than 35 years. Maybe.

The execution, originally scheduled for Aug. 5, has already been delayed
once. President Clinton granted Mr. Garza a four-month reprieve to give him
an opportunity to plead for his life under new clemency guidelines drafted
by the Justice Department for use in death-penalty cases.

The delay hasn't sat well with U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela of
Brownsville, who set the original execution date. Judge Vela was critical
of the Justice Department for not moving more swiftly to write the capital
clemency procedures.

The judge said the clemency procedures should have been in place years ago.
The federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. Mr. Garza was sentenced
to death in 1993 for the murders of Mr. Matos, Mr. De La Fuente and a third
man, Thomas Albert Rumbo.

"I'm not disappointed that the process that's available by law [the
clemency procedure] is going to take place," said Judge Vela, who says he
is not a proponent of the death penalty. "I'm very frustrated that it had
to take place under the circumstances in which it did. ... I still ask
myself, if I had not set that date, then what? What would have happened?"

Judge Vela, 65, whose family has deep roots in South Texas, was appointed
by former President Jimmy Carter. He took senior status this year instead
of retiring because it gave him more leeway in deciding how many cases to
include in his docket. His wife, Blanca S. Vela, is the mayor of Brownsville.

Mr. Clinton postponed the execution at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre
Haute, Ind., until Dec. 12, which Judge Vela said "interestingly ...
ignores the fact that that's a very special day for Mexicans because that's
the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe."

"As long as he [President Clinton] has all the information," the judge
said. "Whatever decision his conscience governs, I don't have any quarrels
with it whether I agree or disagree."

It was in Judge Vela's court that details of Mr. Garza's marijuana
operation were outlined by authorities and former members of the Garza
organization, some of whom testified against Mr. Garza in exchange for
lighter sentencing recommendations from prosecutors.

In the penalty phase of the trial, Mr. Garza, who denied any involvement in
the slayings, was linked to five other killings, including the death of his
son-in-law. Four of those slayings were committed in Mexico, according to
court documents.

Mr. Garza's lawyer, Gregory Wiercioch, with the Texas Defender Service in
Houston, said the introduction of those slayings was "unfair and
unreliable." He said that never in the "history in the modern era of the
death penalty" has a state or federal prosecutor relied on unadjudicated
offenses from a foreign country to persuade a jury to give a death sentence.

"It's never happened before and so here it is now, [on] the brink of the
first federal execution in 40 years, and that's the evidence that they're
relying on," Mr. Wiercioch said.

Mr. Wiercioch has less than 30 days to file a petition for presidential
clemency. But he said that it might not be enough time.

He said he's working with the Justice Department to gather information for
his clemency petition. Among information he is seeking is a Justice
Department study on whether racial disparities exist in the federal death
penalty process.

"This is all uncharted territory. That's part of the problem and part of
the chaos in this whole process," Mr. Wiercioch said. "It's very difficult
to tell or speculate what's going to happen, but for right now, we know
that we are going to be under an extreme time crunch."

'Really Out Of Control'

Authorities and residents in Brownsville remember the hometown boy who grew
up poor but rose to power in the border drug trade.

"He was actually getting out of control at this point in 1990. He was
really, really out of control ... a lot of money, a lot of power," said
Chief Deputy Abel Perez of the Cameron County constable's office. Chief
Perez was the sheriff's lead investigator in the Matos slaying.

He remembered seeing Mr. Matos' bloody body lying near repair tools at his
auto body shop east of Brownsville. He said two suspects had cut a fence to
make their way into the business and shot Mr. Matos sometime that morning.

"More than likely they had been hired to kill him. There had been the
order," Chief Perez said. "We started getting information ... he [Mr.
Matos] was connected with, indirectly or directly ... with Juan Raul Garza."

Mr. Garza, who once worked in construction, had started his smuggling
operation -- with 10 to 15 others -- about 10 years earlier. They started
out sneaking marijuana loads across the border in Volkswagens in the
mid-1980s, authorities said, and it wasn't long before the organization got
stronger.

"Details of the smuggling activities started surfacing and also the
quantities were also bigger than what initially the group had started out
with. And then we also started hearing about violence," said Robert Gracia,
resident agent in charge of the U.S. Customs Service's Brownsville office,
who helped in the Garza investigation.

He added: "People were intimidated by this individual and the group. And,
once you joined the organization, you couldn't get out ... people were
scared of him."

Jesus Flores, described as a former "enforcer" for the organization,
testified that Mr. Garza wanted his son-in-law, Bernabe Sosa, killed
because he believed that Mr. Sosa was trying to set him up. Mr. Garza,
according to court documents, also didn't like Mr. Sosa because he had once
brought a gun to his house.

"Jesus Flores testified that he participated in this murder to pay Garza
back $14,000 that he owed him and to keep from being one of Garza's
victims," a court document said.

News accounts of Mr. Garza's trial also said Mr. Flores testified that he
helped kill his own sister-in-law, Diana Flores Villarreal, in July 1991
because Mr. Garza suspected her of being a snitch.

Mr. Garza, according to Mr. Flores, hatched an elaborate and gruesome plot
to kill the woman after Mr. Garza saw her laughing. The drug boss, Mr.
Flores said, told him to buy syringes to inject her body with cocaine to
make her death look like an overdose.

A Different Story

With his name back in the news, some residents in Mr. Garza's old
neighborhood still were fearful of talking about the man who lived south of
Brownsville near the airport on an acre of land.

But tales of his operation are still common among residents, many of whom
didn't want to be quoted by name. They point out the large garage near his
home on Villa Pancho Drive where deals were supposedly made. Lore has it
that Mr. Garza and members of his organization buried packs of money in
plastic bags in the back yard.

But Mr. Garza's sister, Irene Garza, tells a very different story.

Ms. Garza, 45, said "Brother John" was the youngest of eight siblings who
spent much of their childhood as migrant farm workers in the Midwest. She
said she is the closest to her brother.

"What the people don't know is that Juan Raul Garza is a very kind person,
very soft-hearted. And, I don't think he committed none of those crimes he
was indicted for," Ms. Garza said.

Cooking dinner in her modest Brownsville home recently and wearing a
T-shirt that asked, "OH, CRUEL FATE. WHY DO YOU MOCK ME?" Ms. Garza said
she visits her brother in prison twice a year. She said she most recently
saw him last month and he was in good spirits.

She described him as a good father who calls his two younger children
daily. "He's taking it OK," she said of her brother. "He's at peace with
himself."

Ms. Garza, who sells cosmetics and cares for her grandchildren, carries
several photos of Mr. Garza in her wallet. Among the mementos she kept was
her brother's wedding picture.

"I believe Juan is gonna get out of prison one of these days and he ain't
never gonna die, not through the federal government hands. I don't think
so," she said. "I feel very strongly about it."

She said she first read about Judge Vela setting her brother's execution
date in the newspaper. And, she said, she knew it wouldn't happen.

"I've left it all in God's hands and the president's," she said. "There
wasa lot of lies said about him from the people that testified against him
to get lesser time in prison."

Not many people ask her about her brother, Ms. Garza said.

Authorities said it has been only recently, when his death penalty case
gained notoriety, that many people knew of Mr. Garza.

"Unless a person that has the stature of Juan Garcia Abrego, then a lot of
people know about him. But Juan Raul Garza?'' Agent Gracia said. "No. You
go to McAllen and mention the name ... you ask about Garza. Garza, who? But
you go talk about Garcia Abrego from here, everybody knows."

Mr. Garcia Abrego, born in a small town near Brownsville, was one of the
world's most notorious drug barons who eluded the law for nearly a decade
before his arrest in 1996 in Mexico.

"He [Mr. Garza] was one of the most active smugglers in the area," Mr.
Gracia said. "When you're smuggling loads every other week or every week in
significant amounts, to us that's pretty big."

But Ms. Garza maintains that her brother was done an injustice and
shouldn't have his life taken.

"To me, all of this is a joke," she said. "The only bad thing about it is
that the joke is on my Brother John."