Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, convicted of Kiki Camarena's murder, dies at 80

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the "boss of bosses" who co-founded the Guadalajara cartel and was convicted of a U.S. drug agent’s 1985 murder, died in custody Sunday at 80.

Jalisco state’s Security Ministry said multiple organ failure caused his death at around 2 p.m. at a hospital in Guadalajara, where he had been taken in an emergency transfer from Puente Grande prison two days earlier.

"After remaining under observation with a guarded prognosis, he died on November 15 at the medical facility," the ministry said.

What prompted Friday’s transfer was not immediately known.

France 24 credited Félix Gallardo with reshaping the global cocaine trade and building the foundations of modern Mexican drug trafficking. El País portrayed him as Mexican drug trafficking’s first major capo.

Félix Gallardo offered a different account in one of his few interviews, denying involvement in drug trafficking or the agent’s killing. He said Guadalajara had never had cartels, and described a life spent farming and raising cattle from childhood, along with ownership of pharmacies and two old hotels.

Cartel roots and a killing

Félix Gallardo established the Guadalajara cartel alongside Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and played a key role in building connections with Colombian drug traffickers. The Guadalajara cartel is now defunct, but the Sinaloa cartel later emerged from it.

The three founders were convicted in the killing of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent. Camarena’s murder outraged the United States after he was kidnapped and tortured and his body was found.

Authorities detained Fonseca, known as Don Neto, and Caro Quintero before Félix Gallardo in connection with the abduction and killing of Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala in 1985. El País described Félix Gallardo as the world’s most wanted drug trafficker at that point.

A seafood order and an arrest

Javier Coello Trejo became Mexico’s deputy attorney general in charge of combating drugs in 1989. In his memoirs, he wrote that he assigned just three people exclusively to the search for Félix Gallardo.

Coello Trejo wrote that he kept the operation from then-Attorney General Enrique Álvarez del Castillo and reported directly to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Investigators tapped phones at every prison and spent weeks listening, he wrote.

The search led them to Félix Gallardo, according to Coello Trejo, when he asked his secretary to arrange a seafood delivery following a night out partying. At 6:45 on April 8, 1989, agents moved on a house on Cosmos street in a wealthy Guadalajara neighborhood.

The arrest lasted five minutes, with no shot fired. Coello Trejo wrote that agents placed a rag in Félix Gallardo’s mouth: he had said capture would not happen while he was alive, and they worried he might ingest something to kill himself.

After the arrest, Félix Gallardo was flown by helicopter to Mexico City. Coello Trejo said Félix Gallardo offered him up to $20 million to secure his release during questioning at the Attorney General’s Office.

Coello Trejo wrote that Félix Gallardo paid officials in Jalisco and Sinaloa, including judges, prosecutors and judicial police. He also wrote that federal Attorney General’s Office delegates in Guadalajara and Culiacán received money from Félix Gallardo.

Prison and house-arrest requests

Félix Gallardo remained imprisoned from the day of his arrest. At Puente Grande, he served two sentences, one for drug trafficking and organized crime and another for Camarena’s murder.

The Associated Press put his sentence at 77 years, while El País said his two sentences totaled 76 years.

Four years ago, Félix Gallardo sought a shorter sentence on health grounds, but courts rejected his appeal. At the time, he used a wheelchair, was blind in one eye and was deaf.

He had sought house arrest since 2019 because of his advanced age and declining health, but courts rejected the request, AP reported. A judge granted house arrest in September 2022, but it never took effect because Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office challenged the ruling, AP reported.

Caro Quintero was recaptured in July 2022, and in February last year he was extradited to the United States with 28 other inmates sought by U.S. justice on drug trafficking charges.