Prosecution witness against 'El Chapo' Guzmán admits to killings, lies
Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY Published 5:07 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2018 | Updated 12:12 p.m. ET Dec. 5, 2018
NEW YORK – At the start of the federal trial of JoaquÃn "El Chapo" Guzmán, defense lawyers said they would discredit prosecution witnesses as criminal liars who would say anything to convict the accused Mexican drug lord and win leniency for their own crimes.
A defense lawyer hammered Juan Carlos RamÃrez AbadÃa in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, getting the witness who testified he was Guzmán's Colombia cocaine supplier to admit he ordered roughly 150 killings – including the assassination of a man in the Queens borough of New York.
The former head of Colombia's Norte Valle cocaine cartel even kept financial records that listed the costs of some killings to the dollar.
Read more at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/04/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-juan-carlos-ramirez-abadia-sinaloa-cartel/2192878002/
This article is old but it covers a crime in the Chapo trial and indeed, criminal acts even in NY and NJ so this is not just in Mexico or just drug smuggling:
HIT MAN ADMITS SLAYS TO DUCK DEATH PENALTY
BY Mike Claffey
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 22, 2001, 12:00 AM
A contract killer for Colombian drug bosses in Queens admitted yesterday to killing seven people in a plea bargain that will put him behind bars for life but spare him the death penalty. Guillermo (Memo) Benitez-Zapata, 28, an enforcer for Corona drug dealers, confessed to murdering a father, mother and son in New Jersey in 1994 and four other people in Brooklyn and Queens in 1993 before Brooklyn Federal Judge Nina Gershon. Assistant U.
Read more at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/04/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-juan-carlos-ramirez-abadia-sinaloa-cartel/2192878002/
More info:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2018/12/el-chapo-trial-chupeta-admits-to-150.html (Borderland Beat is sometimes graphic but this article is not. It's an assemblage of articles by independents, often translated articles.)
