Three slain doctors had been charged in death of Carrillo

Surgeons indicted on Oct. 30, found dead Sunday

By Dudley Althaus
Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY Plastic surgeons found brutally slain this week had been
charged recently by federal officials with killing Mexican cocaine smuggler
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Mexico's top drug enforcement official said Thursday.

The official, Mariano Herran Salvatti, said three doctors were charged Oct.
30 with murder in the July 4 death of Carrillo in Mexico City following
plastic surgery to dramatically alter his appearance.

The bodies of three men, two positively identified as attending physicians
at Carrillo's surgery and the other presumed to be one of them, were found
stuffed into oil drums on the side of a southern Mexico highway on Sunday.
Coroners estimated they had been dead for three to five days.

Carrillo survived the July surgery, witnesses say, but succumbed the
following morning to a fatal mix of sedatives and anesthetics. Herran said
the three doctors administered the drug cocktail "with the intention of
taking the life" of Carrillo.

One of the men found dead Sunday has been identified as Jaime Godoy, 37, a
Guadalajara physician who, his family says, disappeared Oct. 17 after being
detained by men identifying themselves as federal police agents. Godoy's
brother and father identified his body Wednesday.

Herran identified the second body as that of Ricardo Reyes, a Colombian
plastic surgeon who reportedly coordinated Carrillo's surgery.

Godoy's lawyer, Ruben Tamayo, told a news conference Thursday that the
third body is that of Carlos Avila Melgem, a physician who also attended
Carrillo's surgery. Both Reyes and Avila were medicalschool friends of
Godoy's, Tamayo said.

All three had been tortured, their fingernails yanked out and their torsos
showing burn marks. Two were strangled, and the third was shot through the
head.

Herran "emphatically" denied that any of the men had been in federal police
custody prior to their deaths.

The nature of the physicians' killings and the fact they were tortured to
death almost on the same day they were charged with Carrillo's murder will
likely add fuel to the stubborn popular belief that the billionaire
trafficker remains among the living.

Many Mexicans believe Carrillo faked his own death. Persistent news reports
and street rumors hold that Carrillo, 42, either entered the U.S. witness
protection program or in some other way was taken under the wing of Mexican
or U.S. law enforcement in exchange for information.

Herran insisted again Thursday that Carrillo whose body was subjected to
DNA tests, fingerprint examinations and three autopsies died in the
Mexico City clinic July 4. He produced a brief letter at the news
conference from Thomas Constantine, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, supporting those claims.

"There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that Mr. Carillo Fuentes is
alive and in DEA custody," the letter states. "The rumor has as much
credibility as the millions of sightings of the late Elvis Presley."

At the time he underwent plastic surgery, Carrillo was widely considered
the most powerful trafficker in the multibilliondollar cocaine industry,
responsible for moving tons of narcotics across the U.S.Mexico border.

Recognized as a visionary in the world of drug trafficking, Carrillo was
considered less violent than many other Mexican gangsters even though he
became known for his sometimes distinctive style of eliminating opponents.

Traffickers with less flair might simply have their enemies shot and left
in the street. But Carrillo, law officials say, sometimes tied yellow
ribbons on his victims, pinned warnings to their corpses or forced them to
dig their own graves.

The belief that the drug boss simply slipped away has been reinforced by
evidence that Carrillo visited Chile, Cuba, Europe and Russia, apparently
looking for a new home far from Mexico, in the months before he died.

According to some Mexican press reports, he had offered to get out of the
cocainesmuggling business and relinquish much of his wealth, if Mexican
authorities would let him retire peacefully. The government reportedly
rejected that offer.

A Chilean press report last week alleged that Carrillo was living in
Central America.

But a U.S. law enforcement official who identified the body in July said he
"bet my badge" that the body belonged to Carrillo.

"In our opinion the Mexican authorities were rigorous and comprehensive in
their identification process," Constantine's statement said. "We agree
completely with the confirmation of the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes."

Whatever its circumstances, Carrillo's demise has been hard on the medical
profession.

Four physicians were strangled in late August in Ciudad Juarez, the city
across the Rio Grande from El Paso that served as Carrillo's base,
reportedly after treating a gangster wounded in the bloody conflicts to
succeed him.

Press reports later linked the hospitals in which the doctors worked to
money laundering and other narcotics related crimes. The killings caused
outrage in a city grown numb by drug violence, sparking street protests and
marches.

The brutality of the killings of the doctors found Sunday raised eyebrows
even in Guerrero, a poor and raucous state known for its beach resorts,
police massacres and armed uprisings.

"This is not a style of killing we have ever seen before in Guerrero," said
Gustavo Menije of the Guerrero state attorney general's office. "The
technique used is different."

Guerrero officials said they believed the men were killed outside the state
and brought to Guerrero to be dumped.