A Drug Dealer Told How Much He Paid To Murder In El Chapo's Trial

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

With the calm of a banker who reviews a statement, the Colombian drug lord Juan Carlos Chupeta Ramírez Abadía recounted in the trial against Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán how many murders he had ordered committed and how much it had cost him.

Eliminate the brother of a collaborating arrested drug trafficker? As a total of a despicable murderer, the Colombian admitted that he had ordered the death of at least 150 people. In one case in 2004, he even said that he himself had executed a victim of a shot in the head at close range, according to the various media that are covering the trial.

Killing is part of the business

"It is impossible to be the leader of a cartel in Colombia without violence," Chupeta was justified by questions from defense attorney William Purpura, according to BBC Mundo.

A violence that unleashed against the circles of the Colombian drug trafficker Víctor Patiño, who in the middle of the last decade was extradited to the United States and the authorities began to collaborate. In response, according to his testimony, he killed up to 36 collaborators and relatives of the extradited.

Among them, Luis Ocampo, Patiño's brother, whom Chupeta attracted to a cheating meeting in which 40 assassins shot him and his companions, and then they moved to another place to finish off the rest of his entourage. In all, a dozen dead. The price, to punish those who made a bad move, such as stealing. Suspicious of being taken advantage of, he eliminated an entire family in a New Jersey house that his organization used, he admitted.

An entry in his accounting books noted the payment of $ 45,000 for a triple murder, but who was removed was not agreed. He also said that one of his collaborators in the cartel preferred chainsaws to settle accounts.

Chupeta was arrested in Brazil in 2007, where he had fled after being indicted by the US justice. During his escape, he underwent various cosmetic operations that changed his face, but did not prevent his capture and subsequent extradition. Right now he faces a sentence of up to 30 years, which could be reduced by five years for his testimony against El Chapo.

According to one of the defense attorneys, if he received that reduction, each murder would result in only 60 days in prison.