JAVIER CRUZ SERVED AS A SPY FOR THE DEA, THEN JUMPED BAIL

Reports Say Cruz Is Dead

Federal officials said they have not confirmed the report that Javier Cruz
was killed and would continue their search for him until they do.

Federal authorities are investigating reports that Javier Cruz -- a
Roanoke-based cocaine kingpin turned government informant -- has been killed
in his native Colombia.

U.S. Attorney Bob Crouch offered no details about the reports, only that he
first heard of the rumored slaying Monday morning from sources in the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency for which Cruz worked undercover
from 1992 to 1996.

"We have received a report to that effect," Crouch said, "but at this point
it is not confirmed, and we will have nothing further to say until such time
as it is confirmed or confirmed that it's not true."

The report could not be substantiated by an independent inquiry.

Cruz's Roanoke attorney, Bill Cleaveland, said he hadn't heard the report.
DEA officials in Virginia and Washington, D.C., declined to comment,
referring questions to Colombian authorities and the U.S. embassy in Bogota.
Embassy spokesman Bob Schmidt said Monday he knew nothing of the report, nor
did his local DEA office. The spokesman for Colombia's national police could
not be reached.

A Cruz relative in the United States, who asked not to be identified for
fear of retaliation, said an anonymous caller had related that Cruz was
killed Thursday and buried Saturday in his childhood home of Buga Valle. The
relative said the caller did not share how Cruz died.

If true, Cruz's death brings to a close one of the biggest and most
notorious federal investigations ever conducted in Roanoke.

Cruz's official criminal tale began in 1987, when he fled North Carolina
after shooting to death a 25-year-old man during an argument. He spent a
year in New York, then moved to Virginia under an assumed name to work first
as a dairy farmer in Floyd County before setting up a used-car lot in 1990
in Salem. The lot was actually a front for cocaine smuggling, and in a
six-month period, his organization transported more than two tons of the
drug through Roanoke.

Arrested in 1991, Cruz agreed to become a DEA informant. He and his cocaine
boss, Leonardo Rivera, both worked undercover while serving time in the
Roanoke County-Salem Jail in an investigation dubbed Operation El Cid.

With his murder charge reduced to involuntary manslaughter, Cruz pleaded
guilty in 1992 and was soon released. He spent much of the next four years
in Colombia posing as a money launderer to gather information on the Cali
cartel, for which the DEA paid him $347,000. El Cid eventually resulted in
50 people indicted. However, most of them lived in Colombia and were never
arrested.

In January 1998, Cruz, then 40, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in
Roanoke to money laundering, drug conspiracy, possessing 10 firearms as a
fugitive and being a drug kingpin -- a charge which mandated a life sentence
if he hadn't become a DEA spy. He went to Miami to await his sentencing.
Worried he'd still get substantial prison time, he allegedly fled to
Colombia in May 1998.

Monday's report was the first news to surface about Cruz since his
disappearance. Among the last to speak with him in this country was Jose
Blanco, Cruz's probation officer in Miami. Monday, Blanco said he hadn't
heard the report of Cruz's death, but wouldn't be surprised if it were true
considering the dangerous people he snitched on in Colombia.

Tom Morefield, with the U.S. Marshals Service, the agency charged with
finding fugitives, said he couldn't confirm the report and that their
investigation will continue "until we have something that will definitely
close it."