Reputed cartel gangster arrested in Falcon Lake death

SAN ANTONIO - Mexican marines have arrested a reputed drug cartel gangster they say is responsible for the death of U.S. tourist David Michael Hartley on Falcon Lake two years ago and who masterminded some of the most horrific recent crimes in northern Mexico, including mass slaughters in a border state.

Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, 31, known as "La Ardilla," Spanish for "The Squirrel," was arrested on Saturday in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico's marines announced on Monday.

Mexican officials said Martinez is a high-ranking Zeta who oversaw the gang's criminal activity in the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, all of which border Texas. Mexico had a 15 million peso (more than $1 million) bounty on his head.

They accused him in the Sept. 30, 2010, shooting death of Hartley, a Colorado native who had been living in the Rio Grande Valley. At the time of the shooting, authorities believed it to be the work of armed pirates who would shake down tourists and fishermen in Mexican waters. At the same time, his wife's version of events drew skepticism, some suggesting a "drug deal gone bad."

In October of that year, a global intelligence company said Hartley's death was a case of mistaken identity. Zeta cartel enforcers shot Hartley, thinking he was a spy of the rival Gulf cartel, according to Stratfor, and Austin-based think tank.

In May 2011, Texas Rep. Ted Poe said the shooting on the binational reservoir was an example of the "arrogance" of drug cartels on U.S. soil.

Hartley's body has not been found.

"In a way, it's a kind of justice," his sister, Nikki Hartley, told the Denver Post. "But what's most important to us is getting him back home. It's a bunch of mixed emotions right now."

The Hartleys had taken personal watercrafts into an area on Falcon Lake, a dammed portion of the Rio Grande, regularly used by smugglers, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said. When armed cartel members confronted the couple, they tried to flee, he said, and the gunmen opened fire. David Hartley was killed and his wife escaped.

Gonzalez said his office has identified five suspects in Hartley's killing, none of them Martinez.

Mexican officials also accuse Martinez in the summer 2010 execution of 72 Central and South American migrants near the northern Mexico town of San Fernando; another 200 slayings nearby; and the killing of a police commander who was investigating Hartley's death.

"In addition, (Martinez) is the presumed perpetrator of the narco graves found in the state of Tamaulipas with more than 200 bodies, and the execution of more than 50 people by his own hand in different parts of the country," Mexican navy spokesman José Luis Vergara Ibarra said in a statement posted Monday on a government website.

Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, called Martinez the Zetas' "high executioner."

"He's been involved in so many massacres that he has literally created rivers of blood in northern Mexico," Vigil said.

Staff writer Lynn Brezosky contributed to this report.

jbuch@express-news.net