ALERT PARK INTERN, CUSTOMS PILOTS BRING DOWN DRUG SMUGGLER

EL PASO - Veteran pilot Douglas C. Dufresne lay dead at a high school
athletic field in Detroit, his single-engine plane in pieces. Witnesses
picked through debris to grab scattered bales of marijuana that the plane
had smuggled from Mexico.

It was a sordid ending for a 66-year-old who once flew combat missions for
the Air Force and later was entrusted with the lives of passengers as an
airline pilot for Pan Am.

Mr. Dufresne died in April after an air chase that involved three U.S.
customs aircraft and covered more than 1,500 miles over six states. Four
months later, authorities say the investigation illustrates the flourishing
drug trade over the U.S. border and the risks drug runners routinely take.

Mr. Dufresne had already served prison terms for drug smuggling. Authorities
say he had the skills pertinent to his chosen trade: years of flying,
knowledge of the terrain, tenacity under pressure.

"This is as close to combat flying as you're going to get in the civilian
world, " said Cpl. Bernie Campbell of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in
Windsor, Ontario. Mr. Dufresne crashed just two miles short of Windsor, his
presumed destination.

By all accounts, he would have gotten away had it not been for an intern at
a desolate lookout in Big Bend National Park.

The Park Service intern was raising the U.S. flag outside an adobe ranger
station one Sunday morning when the small plane practically scraped the tops
of cliffs while crossing from Mexico into West Texas, said Mark Flippo, a
Park Service spokesman.

The intern reported the suspicious craft, triggering a pursuit of the plane
across Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, and to its fatal end
in Michigan.

The last flight of Mr. Dufresne, a divorced father of two girls, is a far
cry from the flying he did while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Air Force
as a captain.

After serving in the Vietnam War, he joined Pan Am and went on to fly 747s
for the now-defunct airline, said Jim Glotfelty, lead investigator for U.S.
customs in Detroit.

Authorities who investigated Mr. Dufresne respected his skills as a pilot.

"He could fly them, and he could fix them," said a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agent familiar with the case. "He had experience as a pilot.
He had experience as a crook pilot."

Attempts to reach Mr. Dufresne's relatives were unsuccessful.

According to court and police records, Mr. Dufresne was a drug smuggler for
20 years. Authorities said he flew for members of Colombia's cartels in the
1970s and '80s.

"People like Doug were the ambassadors for the Colombians," said one DEA
official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He saw himself as a
professional providing a service."

"He's been in and out of jail for the same thing - drug smuggling," said
Barbara Janssen, office manager at an investing and accounting firm in
Satellite Beach, Fla., where Mr. Dufresne set up an office after his last
prison term.

That sentence stemmed from a 1992 conviction in Miami for conspiracy and
attempting to import cocaine by air. It took him out of the smuggling trade
until at least his release from federal prison in Jesup, Ga., on April 30,
1997.

At his Florida office, Mr. Dufresne would show up about once a week to pick
up mail, meet with men in suits or take calls from potential "investors,"
Ms. Janssen said. Federal investigators said his purported business venture,
Blueberry Patch Farms, was just a corporation on paper.

About three months before the crash, Mr. Dufresne quit coming to the office,
Ms. Janssen said. "He must have been out of the country by then," she
speculated.

A receipt recovered from the crash site shows that Mr. Dufresne entered
Mexico through Laredo at 6:45 p.m. April 7. He was piloting a four-seater
1992 Velocity RG, a mostly Fiberglas craft that can reach 156 mph and carry
1,000 pounds.

He bought the plane from Velocity Aircraft, a Sebastian, Fla.,
do-it-yourself kit manufacturer. He paid $62,000 in cash as down payment,
owing another $23,000 when he crashed.

"He wasn't supposed to fly the airplane until I got the rest of the money,"
said Duane Swing, who handled the sale. "One day the plane was missing, and
then it was used to smuggle drugs."

Aeronautical maps indicate the pilot headed for Jimenez, a Mexican town of
70,000, where authorities believe he loaded his cargo of marijuana.

About 450 miles south of El Paso, Jimenez is surrounded by fields of
jalapenos and pecan groves. The area also is long known for marijuana
cultivation. It is where U.S. DEA Agent Enrique Camarena was kidnapped and
murdered in 1985.

Compared with other farming towns, this one is notably affluent: Newly
built, two-story brick homes with wide wooden front doors, iron gates - and
as many as three satellite dishes - rise above crumbling concrete homes.

The downtown is vibrant, lined with stores filled with Western wear and
leather boots. There are snack bars, craft stores, pharmacies, clinics, a
Chevrolet dealership and at least two large banks.

Many local men in cowboy hats, fitted Wrangler jeans, boots and dark
sunglasses carry two-way radios that hang off big-buckle belts. Women in
dresses wear high-heeled sandals and makeup. Babies ride in expensive
strollers.

There is no begging.

"There are a lot of people with money here, but they don't like to invest in
the community," said a waiter at a motel off the main road, Highway 45.
"They prefer to spend their money on themselves."

Authorities said they suspect Mr. Dufresne's last flight began at a remote
dirt landing strip in Bufalo, about seven miles from Jimenez. Alongside a
pecan grove, it has one hangar and a fuel-storage tank, all surrounded by
high chain-link fence.

The pilot's marijuana, officials believe, was supplied by the Mexican cartel
once run by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died last year, purportedly during
plastic surgery. He went by the nickname "Lord of the Skies" because of his
use of aircraft for smuggling.

"It's the best way, the quickest way to handle it, with less people
involved," said Joe Maxwell, who runs customs' Domestic Air Interdiction
Coordination Center, based in Riverside, Calif.

About 60 percent of the drug flights into the U.S. originate in Mexico,
according to customs estimates. Slipping into the country at the Big Bend is
more prevalent than investigators may like to admit.

"They use it because of the mountain terrain," said Pedro Gonzalez, Customs
Service assistant attache in Mexico City. "You have to be at the right place
at the right time to detect this kind of activity. If the intern wasn't
there, I think Mr. Dufresne would have been successful at reaching his
goal."

The Big Bend's towering cliffs serve as a backdrop to the Mexican town of
Santa Elena, the same place where drug baron Pablo Acosta died at his ranch
in April 1995, after a 90-minute shootout with Mexican lawmen.

Park visitors to the Castolon area, on the U.S. side, can take a rowboat
across the Rio Grande to Santa Elena. Gregorio Alonso, a 63-year resident of
Santa Elena who helps ferry visitors, recalled seeing the low-flying plane.

"I heard the noise and I thought, 'How strange,' " Mr. Alonso said.

At the grocery store in Castolon, the cashier also took note.

"I heard the plane fly over, mentioned it to a ranger, then that evening I
heard about the plane crash in Detroit," said the clerk, who declined to
give his name. "I said, 'Doggone, I seen it.' "

It was the intern's call, though, that thwarted the smuggler's last mission.

After Mr. Dufresne was spotted entering the United States shortly after 8
a.m. April 19, customs' air interdiction center was alerted.

Aircraft scrambled from San Angelo to catch up with Mr. Dufresne near
Lubbock, 350 miles north of Big Bend. A third customs aircraft, from El
Paso, joined the chase.

When first detected on radar, Mr. Dufresne was flying at about 1,000 feet,
lower than most mountains in the region.

"We've had guys cross at 50 feet," said Mr. Maxwell of customs.

Mr. Dufresne eventually reached a normal altitude, going as high as 6,000
feet. Each customs plane had to land to refuel once during the eight-hour
pursuit. To the surprise of customs, Mr. Dufresne didn't refuel. Later, they
discovered that his aircraft had been modified to carry extra fuel.

As the plane entered Illinois, Mr. Dufresne maneuvered in a way common among
drug smugglers - a 180-degree loop to determine if he was being followed.

Customs pilots, flying about two miles behind, couldn't tell if they were
spotted as Mr. Dufresne turned and continued north.

Usually, authorities chase smugglers back to Mexico in air pursuits, which
typically last less than five hours. "We don't force people down. We merely
follow them until they do land," Mr. Maxwell said.

The only time Mr. Dufresne started flying erratically was in Detroit, when
he began losing altitude, said Mr. Maxwell.

Investigators suspect he was running low on fuel and was attempting to land
on the field. But one of the wings clipped a tree branch, and the plane
flipped.

It broke apart upon impact, the cargo spilling out. There was no fire,
suggesting the plane was out of fuel. Witnesses told investigators that men
from the neighborhood looted drugs from the wreckage.

"Apparently, when they saw the condition of the man and they saw the
marijuana, they helped themselves to two bales," said John Holmes, Customs
supervisory special agent-in-charge for investigations in Detroit.

Investigators recovered 408 pounds of marijuana worth about $500,000. Mr.
Dufresne stood to make nearly half that in profits, authorities said.

The marijuana was tightly packed into the plane, crammed in duffel bags and
in plastic bags. There was little room for the pilot to move around.

"We don't know how the pilot could stand it," Mr. Holmes said. "The smell
was so strong, and there was poor circulation inside the plane."

The attempt to fly past the United States and deliver the load in Canada
follows an increasingly common pattern, said Cpl. Campbell of the Canadian
police.

"Going from Mexico through the U.S. and landing in Ontario, once you do
that, the price shoots up," he said.

Whatever the route or the method for transporting drugs, investigators said,
the net result is always the same when a smuggler leaves the game.

"They've probably replaced him [Mr. Dufresne] with another pilot and another
plane, and it's business as usual," said a DEA agent. "God rest his soul,
but there are a lot of Douglas Dufresnes out there."

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst