RUMORS OF DRUG CONNECTION CIRCULATE OVER COMIC'S SLAYING

Cocaine Detected In Stanley's Blood

MEXICO CITY -- Police fanned out across Mexico City on Tuesday looking
for clues to the slaying Monday of popular comedian Francisco "Paco"
Stanley.

The streets and the media were abuzz with speculation about motives
for the brazen shooting that shocked the country.

"Stanley Killed Narco Style!" screamed Mexico City's influential daily
newspaper Reforma. The newspaper cited U.S. "DEA and Mexican police"
sources as saying the execution-style shooting -- which occurred in
broad daylight as Stanley left an upscale restaurant -- was "typical
of a narco revenge killing."

City Attorney General Samuel del Villar said Tuesday that tests showed
traces of cocaine in Stanley's bloodstream. Investigators also found a
packet containing half a gram of the drug in his shirt pocket and
cocaine traces on a piece of foil paper in the car, the Associated
Press reported.

Police have ruled out robbery and kidnapping as possible motives. And
while the media speculated that drugs might have been involved,
authorities denied such reports. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
sources said Stanley's name is not on the list of high-profile
Mexicans suspected of ties to narco-traffickers.

Other reports said the 56-year-old Stanley's name appears in old
Mexican military intelligence reports as linked to the Juarez drug
cartel once led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

The reports also linked Stanley to imprisoned former Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, arrested two years ago on charges of aiding the
Juarez cartel.

Stanley was gunned down in a hail of bullets that also killed a
bystander and wounded six people. Eyewitnesses said the shooting
lasted several minutes.

Reports of bald suspect

Police said 13 eyewitnesses have provided information about the
shooting and authorities are investigating reports that a bald,
well-dressed man was seen wielding a gun and leaving the scene.
Authorities brought in two men for questioning, but then released them.

The presumed getaway car -- a late-model silver VW Jetta -- was found
three blocks away, bloodstained. Some police sources speculated that
one of the four suspected shooters was either wounded by one of
Stanley's bodyguards, or was hit by cross fire.

Within hours of the slaying, radio and television news anchors were
openly demanding the resignation of city and federal law enforcement
officials. Television and music stars joined in the chorus, filling
the airwaves with emotional complaints about crime directed at Mexico
City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de
Leon.

Rumors also circulated Tuesday that Stanley's killing was connected to
his having left the powerful Televisa network three years ago to join
the maverick TV Azteca, but there is no evidence to support that
assertion. And police said there was nothing to link the slaying to
politics, despite Stanley's increasingly hard-edged jokes about
ruling-party leaders and the Mexican government in his variety-show
monologues.

Although Mexican officials deny all these reports, the manner in which
the four gunmen calmly singled out Stanley is too much like an
organized-crime hit for analysts to dismiss.

"It is obvious that this execution was planned by professionals, such
as those working for drug dealers," said Guillermo Velasco, president
of Mexicans Against Organized Crime, a think tank funded by Mexican
business leaders.

`Citizens are afraid'

"In most cities in the world, people have the confidence to go outside
and criminals are afraid of being caught," said Carlos Castillo
Peraza, a Mexican journalist and former conservative-party mayoral
candidate.

"In Mexico City, criminals have no fear of arrest, and citizens are
afraid to venture beyond their gates."

Awareness of crime since Stanley's death has reached even the young.
In a plaza in southern Mexico City, 3-year-old Alonso Moreno asked his
parents when the family would "pack our things and leave this city and
go to another country."

"Today it was Paco. Who will it be tomorrow?" a visibly shaken Ricardo
Salinas Pliego, owner of TV Azteca, asked in a message to viewers Tuesday.

Salinas was Stanley's employer, and is said to be influential in the
conservative wing of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

"Criminal impunity is squashing us. . . . And where is the law?"
Salinas asked. "Where are the authorities? What do we pay taxes for?"