MEXICAN HELD IN '94 KILLING OF DEA AGENT

WASHINGTON -- For nearly six years, Agustin Vasquez Mendoza was the perfect
fugitive.

Sought by federal authorities in the United States and Mexico in one of
their biggest joint manhunts ever, the man suspected of ordering the 1994
killing of an American narcotics agent vanished into the 19th century.

He shunned cell phones and other modern communications, said U.S.
law-enforcement officials. He severed ties to relatives and began a new
family under a stolen name. He lived simply in some of Mexico's most remote
corners, shielded from the police by ruthless neighbors, dense vegetation
and terrain best managed on burro or horse.

"He was living the life of a Mexican bandit from the last century," said
Michael G. Garland, the Drug Enforcement Administration official who led
U.S. efforts in Mexico to find the killer of a Phoenix undercover agent,
Richard Fass.

The longer Vasquez eluded authorities, the more his legend grew. He made
the FBI's 10-most-wanted list. When a $250,000 reward offered by the FBI
and the drug agency failed to get results, the State Department sweetened
the pot, for a total of $2.2 million.

On July 9, the Mexican police finally seized Vasquez and flew him to Mexico
City under the control of two generals and machine-gun-toting guards.

Vasquez, 30, is being held on charges of ordering the June 30, 1994,
killing of Fass, who tried to buy 22 pounds of methamphetamine from three
associates of Vasquez in Glendale, Ariz. The associates, all of whom have
been sentenced to prison, shot Fass seven times, including twice in the face.

Fass, 37, was killed on what was to have been his last undercover mission
before a transfer to a desk job.

For his colleagues, avenging that killing was personal, said Tom
Raffanello, the Phoenix special agent in charge. His agents asked to be
rotated into Mexico City -- two or three at a time -- to join a team of 45
narcotics agents whose top priority was to help the Mexican police find
Vasquez, officials said.

For several years Vasquez was believed to be continually on the run, moving
among rural hideouts -- inaccessible by car -- in mountainous Michoacan,
his home state; the steamy Campeche region; and Puebla, southeast of the
capital.

In such areas the Mexican police were often thwarted by the locals' deep
distrust of federal authorities. Vasquez encouraged the complicity of his
neighbors by taking on the last name of Cornejo, a feared drug-trafficking
family, Raffanello said.

An important break came when Vasquez married in Campeche. The thumbprint on
his marriage certificate matched a print held by the U.S. immigration
service, which had previously arrested him.

Through telephone intercepts, authorities discovered that his electronic
silence had slipped. On Sundays he was placing regular phone calls to his
wife's relatives. Vasquez was arrested while talking on the phone in
Tehuacan, Puebla.