Jose Antonio Acosta-Hernandez, known as "El Diego," led the enforcement wing of La Linea, the group that served as the enforcement arm of the Juarez Cartel in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. On April 5, 2012, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso, he pleaded guilty to four counts of racketeering, narcotics trafficking and money laundering and to seven counts of murder and related offenses. The murder counts concerned three people killed in Ciudad Juarez on March 13, 2010: Leslie Ann Enriquez Catton, her husband Arthur Redelfs, and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros. Judge Kathleen Cardone sentenced him at the same hearing to seven concurrent life terms, three further consecutive life terms and 20 years in federal prison.
He was 34 years old and had been in United States hands for three weeks. Mexican authorities had detained him in July 2011, and he was extradited on March 16, 2012. The speed of the case, a plea and a sentence in one sitting, followed from a prosecution that had been built over two years against the gang whose members carried out the killings and a cartel whose leaders were not before any court.
Acosta-Hernandez was a former Mexican police officer. In 2008, as he later admitted, he became leader of the enforcement wing of La Linea and acted as the "plaza boss" for the Juarez Cartel in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. La Linea was a group of traffickers and corrupt police officers working for the cartel.
The United States case tied La Linea to Barrio Azteca, a gang that began in the late 1980s as a prison gang and grew into what the indictment called a transnational criminal organization, based mainly in West Texas, Ciudad Juarez and prisons on both sides of the border. Barrio Azteca allied itself with the Juarez Cartel in its contest with the Sinaloa Cartel for the drug route through Ciudad Juarez into the United States. That alliance is the setting for the 2010 consulate case.
On March 13, 2010, in Ciudad Juarez, three people linked to the United States Consulate there were killed. Leslie Ann Enriquez Catton was 25 and Arthur Redelfs was 30; both were United States citizens. Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, was a Mexican national. The killings drew an immediate response from the United States and Mexican governments.
The motive has never been settled in a court. A former Barrio Azteca member testified at a later trial that the gang had suspected someone at the consulate of providing visas to smugglers tied to the Sinaloa Cartel. Prosecutors also suggested that the victims' vehicle had been mistaken for another. Neither account was tested against Acosta-Hernandez, who was not tried.
On March 9, 2011, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging 35 members and associates of Barrio Azteca with racketeering, murder, drug offenses, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Ten Mexican nationals were named in the consulate killings, charged with conspiracy to kill persons in a foreign country, murder and murder in aid of racketeering. Authorities had arrested 12 defendants in Texas and New Mexico, and others were in Mexican custody or at large.
Acosta-Hernandez appears in the third superseding indictment, under the name Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez with the aliases "Diego," "Dienton," "Diez" and "Bablazo." It named him in Count One, conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, and in Count Five, conspiracy to kill persons in a foreign country, covering March 1 through March 13, 2010 and naming the three victims. Counts Six, Seven and Eight, one for each victim, charged murder in relation to crimes of violence and drug trafficking. Counts Nine, Ten and Eleven, again one for each victim, charged murder in aid of racketeering activity.
Mexican Federal Police announced on July 31, 2011 that they had detained a man they identified as La Linea's leader, in the city of Chihuahua, a few days earlier. Officials credited an exchange of information with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, and Mexico had offered a reward of up to 15 million pesos for his capture. Federal Police said he had confessed to ordering about 1,500 killings, and in the interrogation he also acknowledged being a drug trafficker and leading about 45 young men. He was held in Mexico while U.S. prosecutors sought to try him in the consulate case.
Acosta-Hernandez was extradited to the United States on March 16, 2012. On Thursday, April 5, 2012, he appeared before Judge Cardone in El Paso, pleaded guilty to eleven counts, and was sentenced immediately. The counts were four counts of racketeering, narcotics trafficking and money laundering and seven counts of murder and related offenses, the latter tied to the March 13, 2010 killings. The sentence was seven concurrent life terms, three additional consecutive life terms and 20 years.
Under the plea he admitted that he had directed or taken part in more than 1,500 murders in Mexico since 2008, in furtherance of the alliance between La Linea and Barrio Azteca. This was an admission made as part of the plea, not a set of charges tried or sentenced one by one. The investigators were the FBI's El Paso and Albuquerque field offices and the DEA's Juarez and El Paso offices, with Mexican law enforcement credited for essential cooperation.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer said that Acosta-Hernandez had "directed a reign of terror" as leader of La Linea's enforcement wing. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart called him a "cold-blooded murderer with no respect for human life or the rule of law."
The consulate prosecution continued without him. Other defendants who pleaded guilty were sentenced in El Paso through 2012, and Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, a Barrio Azteca lieutenant extradited from Mexico on June 28, 2012, was tried in El Paso in early 2014. A federal jury found him guilty on all counts on February 19, 2014, and on April 24, 2014 Judge Cardone sentenced him to life in prison. The Justice Department stated that the evidence showed he ordered the three killings of March 13, 2010.
The figure of 1,500 killings is his own admission. It is not a count of proven deaths and is not tied to named victims. Mexican police gave the same number in July 2011 and attributed several further mass killings to him; none of those was the subject of a conviction in the El Paso case.
The reason the three victims were chosen was not established at his hearing.
2008: becomes leader of La Linea's enforcement wing and plaza boss in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, as he later admitted.
March 13, 2010: the three consulate-linked victims are killed in Ciudad Juarez.
March 9, 2011: indictment against 35 Barrio Azteca members and associates unsealed.
Late July 2011: Mexican Federal Police detain him in Chihuahua; announced July 31.
March 16, 2012: extradited to the United States.
April 5, 2012: pleads guilty in El Paso and receives seven concurrent life terms, three consecutive life terms and 20 years.
June 28, 2012: Gallegos Castrellon extradited from Mexico.
February 19, 2014: Gallegos Castrellon found guilty on all counts.
April 24, 2014: Gallegos Castrellon sentenced to life.