Caro Quintero came from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the same township as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, which came later. Caro Quintero was one of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel and according to the DEA was one of the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States in the late 1970s. He blamed Camarena for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation in 1984 and allegedly ordered his kidnap in Guadalajara the following year. Camarena was tortured for 30 hours at a house owned by Caro Quintero, and his mutilated body was found a month later, in March 1985. The story was retold in the popular Netflix series ‘Narcos: Mexico.’ Caro Quintero was convicted in 1985 and was serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his verdict in 2013 on a technicality that he had been tried in the wrong court. The Supreme Court later upheld the sentence, but it was too late – Caro Quintero had been spirited off in a waiting vehicle, sparking a furious reaction inside the DEA and FBI. Last year, he lost a final appeal against extradition to the United States, with a New York indictment pending for several counts of drug trafficking.
