DARK SIDE SURFACES FOR MEXICO'S SLAIN TV COMEDIAN

Crime: He Was Also A Customer And Business Partner Of One Of That Nation'S
Most Notorious Drug Traffickers.

Mexico City - His fans thought of him as the Sunday afternoon television
comic whose vulgar but ruthlessly funny jokes about their lives helped them
while away tedium and laugh away woes.

But according to murder indictments handed down in Mexico City late Friday,
the much-watched comedian, Francisco Stanley Albaitero, was also a customer
and business partner of one of Mexico's most notorious drug traffickers. And
his satire was so demeaning to those close to him, the police said, that his
sidekick conspired in his murder.

Stanley, who was known as Paco, borrowed heavily from the vast cash reserves
of the druglord, Luis Ignacio Amerzcua Contreras. And when the star fell
behind on his payments, the police said, Amezcua hired someone to kill him.

Mexicans have heard so many stories of corruption in high places that they
shrug off most of them. But they were shaken to learn that the country's
most powerful drug barons had extended their grip to the world of television
entertainment, and that the man they switched on for lighthearted relief was
apparently another narcocriminal.

Amezcua, along with his brothers Adan and Jesus, is accused in Mexico and
the United States of running an international network that moved some
cocaine but specialized in methamphetamines, an illegal stimulant. The
U.S.Drug Enforcement Administration calls the Amezcuas "top echelon"
traffickers.

U.S. authorities eager to extinguish the relatively new methamphetamines
trade have pressed Mexico to extradite them. Luis Amezcua has been in jail
fighting separate narcotics charges.

The hidden history of Paco Stanley began to emerge June 7 when the gunman,
accompanied by an accomplice, blasted four lethal rounds into the comedian's
face as he waited in his car under a midday sun outside a popular taco joint
in Mexico City. A bystander who had just finished eating in the restaurant
was also killed, and four people were injured.

The police said that on April 22, Luis Amezcua had summoned a group of
conspirators to his jail cell, where he grumbled, "He owes me too much
money," according to confidential witnesses cited in the indictments.

Justice officials said Stanley got to know Amezcua first as he searched for
supplies to maintain his own cocaine addiction, and then when he became a
retail dealer of drugs to friends in television.

In 1996, the officials said, Amezcua loaned Stanley about $65,000 to build a
television and music production studio called "ST Productions." The deal
gave Stanley investment capital he lacked while Amezcua laundered some of
his huge trove of dirty cash.

Investigators did not explain why Stanley did not pay back his dangerous
investor.

The indictments charge that Amezcua secured the help of Stanley's longtime
television straight man, Mario Rodrigues Bezares, called Mayito. The
trademark style of the comic pair was for Stanley to heap abuse on his
cowed, long-suffering sidekick, who always called him "sir." But the police
said that not all of Stanley's derision was a joke to Bezares (the public
knows him by his second last name(.

"It would be hard for him to have more motives to murder Stanley," said
Samuel del Villar, the Mexico City attorney general. "I can't imagine public
treatment more offensive to human dignity than that which he received from
Paco Stanley."

In sworn testimony, two bodyguards who protected the comic team recalled
Bezares' dark rage after a TV program Feb. 11 that was supposed to celebrate
his birthday. Stanley opened the show with Bezares' toddler son, Alan, in
his arms, comparing the boy's blue eyes to his own.

"Honestly, who does this kid look like, you or me?" Stanley needled. The
unhappy child began to call out "Papa!" and Stanley quickly answered, "Here
I am!"

"You remember that time you went away on a trip?" Stanley asked as the boy
wailed. Then he whirled Bezares' wife, Brenda, around the studio floor in a
tight embrace and refused to allow his straight man to dance with her.

Stanley's death left Bezares positioned to take full control of the
production company that both men owned. The indictments said Amezcua agreed
to forgive all of the debts the production company owed his syndicate if the
comedian was murdered.

Bezares is accused of setting Stanley up by faking a limp and using other
tactics to stall his comic partner outside the restaurant.

Amezcua and Bezares were charged with first-degree murder. Erasmo Perez
Garnica, alias El Cholo, a man with a clean-shaven head and a long criminal
record in the United States who is said to have pulled the trigger, was also
arrested. Others charged and jailed are Paola Durante Ochoa, an actress who
played minor roles on Stanley's show, the comedian's chauffeur, and one
bodyguard. All five have denied the charges.