Rafael Caro Quintero

Who is Rafael Caro Quintero?

Rafael Caro Quintero is a Mexican drug trafficker who founded the now-disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and other drug traffickers in the 1970s. He is the brother of fellow drug trafficker Miguel Caro Quintero, the founder and former leader of the extinct Sonora Cartel who remains incarcerated.

Having formed the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s, Caro Quintero worked with Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and Pedro Avilés Pérez by shipping large sums of marijuana to the United States from Mexico. He was allegedly responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar, his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, American writer John Clay Walker and dentistry student Alberto Radelat in 1985. After the alleged murders, he fled to Costa Rica but was later arrested and extradited back to Mexico, where he was sentenced to 40-years in prison for murder. Following his arrest, the Guadalajara Cartel disintegrated, and its leaders were incorporated into the Tijuana Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel and Juárez Cartels.

Caro Quintero was freed from jail on August 9, 2013 after a state court concluded that he had been tried improperly. However, amid pressure from the U.S. government to re-arrest him, a Mexican federal court issued an arrest warrant against Quintero on August 14. He is a wanted fugitive in Mexico, the U.S., and in several other countries.