name is supposedly Jesus Contreras, according to U.S. law enforcement
sources and media reports. He also is also known by the nickname “Lalo.”
A recent report in the leading Mexican newsmagazine Proceso (reprinted in the
daily Por Esto! and available here) claims that Lalo is a former officer with the
now-defunct Mexican Federal Highway Police. A Narco News source confirmed
the accuracy of that information.
However, the Proceso report also indicates that Lalo’s name is likely Eduardo
Martinez Peyro.
So who is this guy really?
Clearly, the identity of an informant is shrouded in layers of deception for his own
protection, so his true name – beneath the mask of his aliases – admittedly
remains a mystery at this point. He is essentially a man with many names.
Between August 2003 and mid-January 2004, a dozen people were tortured,
murdered and then buried in the yard of a house in Juárez – the “House of
Death.” The informant Lalo, according to law enforcement sources, participated
in many of those murders. Most of the victims were allegedly Mexican drug
dealers who had in someway run afoul of the narco-trafficker Santillan.
However, one of those tortured and killed at the House of Death, 29-year-old Luis
Padilla, was a U.S. resident who appears to have been picked up by mistake.
Padilla left behind a wife and three small children. Padilla’s family has a pending
lawsuit against the ICE officials who allegedly were complicit in his murder.
The informant’s handlers – agents and supervisors with the El Paso office of ICE
and a U.S. prosecutor – were allegedly fully aware of the Lalo’s participation in
the murders. However, they did nothing to stop the killing for fear of jeopardizing
the Santillan case and a separate cigarette-smuggling case that they were trying
to make with the informant’s help.
The informant’s alleged accomplice in Juarez, Mexican state judicial police
comandante Miguel Loya Gallegos, along with Santillan, had been facing murder
and drug-trafficking charges in relation to the torture and slayings in the Mexican
border town, which is just across the river from El Paso, Texas.
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