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Grisly slayings brings Mexican drug war to US
 COLUMBIANA, Ala. -- Five men dead in an apartment. In a county that might see five homicides in an entire year, the call over the sheriff's radio revealed little about what awaited law enforcement at a sprawling apartment complex.A type of crime, and criminal, once foreign to this landscape of blooming dogwoods had arrived in Shelby County. Sheriff Chris Curry felt it even before he laid eyes on the grisly scene. He called the state. The FBI. The DEA. Anyone he could think of. "I don't know what I've got," he warned them. "But I'm gonna need help." The five dead men lay scattered about the living room of one apartment in a complex of hundreds. Some of the men showed signs of torture: Burns seared into their earlobes revealed where modified jumper cables had been clamped as an improvised electrocution device. Adhesive from duct tape used to bind the victims still clung to wrists and faces, from mouths to noses. As a final touch, throats were slashed open, post-mortem. It didn't take long for Curry and federal agents to piece together clues: A murder scene, clean save for the crimson-turned-brown stains now spotting the carpet. Just a couple of mattresses tossed on the floor. It was a typical stash house. But the cut throats? Some sort of ghastly warning. Curry would soon find this was a retaliation hit over drug money with ties to Mexico's notorious Gulf Cartel. Curry also found out firsthand what federal drug enforcement agents have long understood. The drug war, with the savagery it brings, knows no bounds. It had landed in his back yard, in the foothills of the Appalachians, in Alabama's wealthiest county, around the corner from The Home Depot. One thousand, twenty-four miles from the Mexico border. Rest at the link. Posted by: tu3031 2009-04-19 |
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