prison illustration (unsplash photo)
A cartel assassin who liked to film videos of himself torturing and beheading dozens of his enemies has disappeared from a federal prison where he is serving a 49-year sentence.
As of last November, the name of Edgar Valdez-Villarreal, a Mexican American cartel leader, has been mysteriously removed from the Bureau’s website. He is now listed as “not in custody at the Federal Penitentiary Authority” even though his release date is only July 27, 2056.
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Valdez-Villarreal, 49, is known by the underworld nickname “La Barbie”, and was the head of Los Negros, a group of assassins of the Beltran Leyva cartel – one of the most brutal cartels in Mexico. At one point, he was a senior member of the Sinaloa Cartel, run by convicted drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán-Loara.
“We called him a Ken doll, mostly because his hair was blonde and curly like the doll’s,” a high school friend of Valdez-Villarreal’s in Laredo, Texas, told Rolling Stone in 2011.
Valdez-Villarreal eluded authorities for years and after the death of cartel leader Arturo Beltran-Leiva in December 2009, he launched a brutal battle for control. As the leader of Los Negros, he participated in the tortures he filmed and even recruited police officers and members of rival cartels as informants.
He was finally captured during a firefight with Mexican authorities in a country house northwest of Mexico City in 2010. At the time of his capture, he was the only American citizen ever to rise so high in the ranks of Mexico’s cartels.
“It is very strange what is happening in the United States that Valdez-Villarreal is not listed among the detainees and we want to know where he is,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a press conference. “There is no reason for him to leave prison because he was sentenced to many years, unless there was some kind of agreement.”
Experts say Valdez-Villarreal says he may have made a deal with federal authorities. “He may be providing information on high-ranking cartel members, but even if that’s the case, I can’t see him being released from custody,” said Robert Almonte, a security consultant and former Texas deputy sheriff.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman declined to say why Valdez-Villarreal is no longer in federal custody, but said there could be many reasons. Inmates can be temporarily removed from the site if they are undergoing court hearings, medical treatment or “other reasons” that were not specified.
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