Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was found dead on March 5, 1985, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, after being kidnapped for nearly a month.
Camarena was originally from Mexicali, Baja California, but settled in California, obtaining U.S. citizenship.
In 1968 he joined the U.S. armed forces and later the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which transferred him to a mission in Mexico in 1981, specifically to infiltrate the Guadalajara Cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, alias "El Jefe de Jefes" (The Boss of Bosses), where he managed to report the movements of other famous members of the criminal group such as Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, alias "Don Neto."
During his years of work, he managed to document drug trafficking operations of that cartel, which led to law enforcement strikes against the cartels, although it generated suspicion toward him from the criminal leaders.
On February 7, 1985, a commando kidnapped Camarena in the heart of downtown Guadalajara. According to the DEA, the agent was brutally tortured and murdered two days after being abducted; however, his body was not located until nearly a month later.
According to the official account, the three kingpins acted in revenge because Camarena provided information that led, in 1984, to the seizure and dismantling of the ranch known as "El Búfalo," in Chihuahua, which was owned by Caro Quin…
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Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was found dead on March 5, 1985, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, after being kidnapped for nearly a month. Camarena was originally from Mexicali, Baja California, but settled in California, obtaining U.S. citizenship. In 1968 he joined the U.S. armed forces and later the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which transferred him to a mission in Mexico in 1981, specifically to infiltrate the Guadalajara Cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, alias "El Jefe de Jefes" (The Boss of Bosses), where he managed to report the movements of other famous members of the criminal group such as Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, alias "Don Neto." During his years of work, he managed to document drug trafficking operations of that cartel, which led to authorities' strikes against the cartels, although it generated suspicion toward him from the criminal leaders. On February 7, 1985, a commando kidnapped Camarena in downtown Guadalajara. According to the DEA, the agent was brutally tortured and murdered two days after being abducted; however, his body was not located until nearly a month later. According to the official version, the three kingpins acted in revenge because Camarena provided information that allowed, in 1984, the seizure and dismantling of the ranch known as "El Búfalo," in Chihuahua, which was owned by Caro Quintero and had the capacity to produce hundreds of tons of marijuana. For these events, Félix Gallardo, Caro Quintero, and Fonseca Carrillo were sentenced for the murder of the DEA agent. On August 23, 2017, while "El Jefe de Jefes" was serving his sentence for drug trafficking, a federal judge handed him a 37-year prison sentence for the Camarena case.
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