Chapter 8.
Since we had down time and there was nothing relevant on the Pentagon's `Looking Ahead' newsletter, we decided to meet with the El Paso Police to see if they had more notable bad guys on the back burner who needed to be captured but were too dangerous for them to collar. An officer showed us a list of fugitives (some from Mexico) living in or near El Paso. For the cops their solution for capturing a dangerous criminal was always using more cops and weapons. For us the solution was to use technology, but it was still just the two of us and several tiny spider drones.
Over time, people on the wanted list got used to not being apprehended and quit living in the shadows. Honestly, the El Paso cops were justifiably scared to attempt some apprehensions. As long as those criminals behaved themselves around town the cops showed little or no interest in capturing them. If they just sold small quantities of drugs the cops usually didn't mess with them. And if they killed other dealers the cops often overlooked those, especially if the victim was identified as an illegal border crosser committing a crime. Those bodies ended up back in Mexico in a mass grave for people named Juan Doe.
He gave us files on four dudes, and we advised we'd look into them and notify the police when they were ready to be picked-up. We didn't want the cops to know what we were doing because it was well known they were infiltrated. We also heard that word was out on the streets that there was a new police team in town capturing guys with outstanding warrants that most of them had forgotten about.
The first guy, who we called Wanted-A, was 42 year old Mexican who spent ten years in prison in Mexico City for murder but escaped. He was Chihuahua Cartel and was retired after too many people in Mexico wanted him dead for killing their kids, mostly their teen daughters. He was also accused of killing cops in Tijuana and another in Yuma Arizona. El Paso police believed he was out of the drug trade now and running a food truck with his girl friend around the far east side of El Paso. The report said they were living quietly and always disguised to some extent, plus he had gained about 40 pounds. His reward was $35k.
The newest photograph they had of him was taken 19 months ago when he crossed the border and was ID'd later by facial recognition.
As always his tattoos triggered the computer to identify him long after he had crossed the border. Many inmates got tattoos in prison but all that really did was make them easier to identify and convict. And very few criminals realized their cell phone was also the ultimate surveillance device (slave tracker). It made no sense to be hiding from the law but carrying a cell phone! If you were hiding you should always keep it in airplane mode unless you were using it, and power it off when not in use. Never buy a cell without a removable battery, and never install any apps or take photos of yourself, your home, or vehicle license plates. We told people that nothing you said or did on or near the cell was private. No texts, web page visits, or calls were private either. Everything you did with it was recorded and stored forever. That info was sold to anyone with money, including the cops and us. It might be unconstitutional for governments to track innocent citizens but it's not to let a private company do it then purchase that data.
The NSA/CIA/FBI didn't spy on your cell (unless they obtained a warrant), your cell provider recorded everything and sold it to any agency willing to pay for it.
We also advised people to never save contact information in your cell, use a card in your wallet instead. Stuff written on paper was more private than in your cell.
The same rules applied to computer backups in the cloud, or cloud based applications like word processors. Nothing online was private and none of it ever disappeared. Those drunk dick pics you took on your cell seven years ago were still stored by that cell provider and were for sale to anyone but you.
We spent three full days doing basic research online and narrowed down a list of food trucks (and catering companies) and cell phone accounts to surveil. Keep in mind David and I never went to detective school, we both had graduate degrees in electrical engineering, not police work.
On Thursday we had our lists narrowed down and we started calling each other Bill and Joe like the old Dragnet TV series. On Friday we hit the road to watch two food trucks and maybe even eat some tacos too.
Truck #1 was Monte's Catering, but he definitely was not the guy so we moved on to the next one.
Truck #2 was Olivia's Tacos, and we thought we'd hit the jackpot on that one. We called our boss to verify the reward from the Texas Rangers and the FBI; this guy was on the 100 most wanted nationally but El Paso didn't know that, probably because they were too afraid to get near him.
She worked the window and handled money, he worked the grill and assembled the tacos and burritos. We videoed and photo'd the truck from every side and located their home base and residence. Then we contacted the police to have their gang expert confirm we found the right dude. We confirmed the combined rewards were worth fifty five thousand if he was turned over to the Rangers alive and able to talk.
That day we purchased three soft shell tacos and a drink and submitted everything for fingerprint analysis which came back positive. We also learned she had warrants too for stupid shit, petty narcotic selling and fifteen unpaid parking tickets.
On Friday before we left for the east side I took the license plate off our truck, since we'd be dealing with some well connected criminals I didn't want to make us easy to identify. We also put on fake moustaches we got from the Pentagon.
We met Olivia's Tacos again when it stopped outside a group of industrial buildings on the far east side near where 375 met I-10. There was a large unpaved parking lot where they stopped near a horse training academy, a plastics molding factory, and a glass recycling operation all around the same parking area. We approached the van with one spider programmed to hide in their engine compartment. Then we ordered and went back to the truck to eat. Their food was great with authentic lightly pan fried corn tortillas and homemade green salsa.
We watched and listened from inside David 's truck eating our wonderful tacos for a while and agreed it was a shame they had to go out of business after serving so many nice people for so long but this guy was a killer and needed to enjoy his well earned reputation with likeminded people in prison, maybe even in solitary confinement for a couple years during his trial. We did not know for certain if he was actually an escapee or a parolee but if either of these were true there would be no trial. Or we could use the lethal option but that would put his GF in danger.
While watching them for a couple hours we noticed he left the truck to pee every half hour. He carried an empty bottle and stepped out to pee. Afterward, he poured it on the weeds nearby, replaced the cap, wedged it behind the propane tank and went back inside and washed his hands.
At 2:03pm they got another rush of customers around the truck, we had pistols in our pockets covered by our shirts and had steel cuffs in both our back pockets. We both had knives and felt positive about this situation, plus the guy was grossly overweight and out of shape, he'd not be able to do much to resist capture.
We got in line then stood behind the truck to eat our food. Suddenly the back door opened and a Mexican dude with familiar arm tattoos stepped out and smiled at us and turned to face the propane cylinder and started to piss in his empty bottle. He used both hands and we waited until it sounded like he was almost done. David grabbed him in a neck hold and I told him in Spanish to drop the bottle and put his hands on his head, and much to our surprise he complied as the last few drops landed on his shoes.
We all sort of stood there for a few more seconds until he stopped dripping. David quietly mumbled that he was under arrest, soft enough so nobody else heard.
We quietly cuffed him and quickly walked him (with his wiener hanging out) by his arms to our truck (we parked about ten feet behind their truck), stuffed him in the back seat and immediately drove away. As we helped push him into the truck we heard his GF in the food truck scream and a commotion built up around the food truck so we left quickly and called the state police supervisor.
We drove to a busy grocery store parking lot and parked near the entrance, we held him at gun point, he sat quietly in the back seat not talking.
While we waited for the cops we put another pair of cuffs on his very swollen ankles then wiggled him out of the back seat and stood him beside the truck. He peed on the parking lot while we were waiting (14 mins) for the cops to arrive.
First, a plain white police van arrived and everyone pulled pistols. The big problem at the scene was the cops didn't know us, but they recognized our prisoner and everyone was happy after seeing he was double cuffed and could only take baby steps, but he was smiling and it sort of looked like a class reunion. Several cops recognized him from their muy popular taco truck and wanted posters on the walls inside the police stations.
Eventually a Texas Rangers van arrived and took him into custody and returned our cuffs. We got a receipt (and shot video) stating he was alive, smiling, talking, and pleasant when taken into custody by Texas Rangers as witnessed by nine county and city cops. The arrest even made the local TV news that evening.
We deployed a spider on their food truck but never activated it so we followed their route and caught up with her and stopped nearby. I sent the spider the 'return to me' command and after 50 seconds it climbed in the window of our truck. With my fingernail I turned it off and put it back in the box with a slightly used battery.
His GF was arrested that evening. The county health department said they were also believed to be the source for a Hepatitis-A outbreak on the east side of town last year.
In this case the thing they didn't realize was their tattoos served the same function as having a unique serial number tattooed boldly on their arms! Their cell phones provided us with an accurate record of everyone they knew and everywhere they went and when and how they drove on the way there, the routes they took as well as any time they broke the speed limit on the way.
If one time they accidentally drove into a school zone at 39mph instead of 20 the cell recorded it and transmitted that to the cell provider.
Back at ELP we recorded our report and looked through the list of wanted local fugitives and picked another one, this guy was also another former prison inmate, 47 years old, covered with tattoos. He was wanted on drug charges, border violations, parole violations, outstanding warrants for: drug possession, drug manufacturing (meth), theft, domestic violence, and neglect of a dependent. His reward was $45k, and marked as armed and extremely dangerous, which was why the cops pretended he was invisible.
This dude we called Suspect-B we even went into work on Saturday, our day off. We did research using very restricted databases to locate people and within one hour we both thought we found the guy living in a rented mobile home in an MHP on the far northeast side of El Paso, oddly enough only two miles from the Otero County Jail on US-54 near McGregor Range Road. Supposedly, this guy was working part-time as a tow truck driver, using a fake ID and relying on the fact that all the police photos were ten years and 65 pounds ago. We tracked his cell phone for four days and built up a record of his routines, all from our dining table on a laptop computer.
Everyone was so afraid of him he could have run for elected office and nobody would have mentioned his lengthy criminal record.
What we learned was all of the buy-here pay-here car lots north of Hondo Pass on the northeast side were owned by two guys, even though they pretended to compete with each other, it was all one sleazy company. They even owned the tow truck he drove. They got fat off the poorest folks on the northeast side.
On Tuesday of the following week we ordered a special use spider from Nevada, it was designed to disable a vehicle and had an extra long life battery and had a cellular tracking beacon built-in. We opened and activated the spider, inserted a sleep gas pellet and an incendiary pellet and after following the truck for thirty minutes we managed to stop beside him at a traffic light on Dyer Street near Diana Drive; we were both northbound. We already had the spider switched on and ready to go. At the light David rolled down the window and gently tossed it on the back of the tow truck. The light turned green and we proceeded north but we turned off at the next side street and parked.
According to tracking the spider immediately moved under the truck and found the vehicle's ignition coil and waited for our next command. We had to assume the guy was armed, and since he was a repo driver we assumed he was ready to go to war at any moment, it kind of went with that job.
The route he was driving looked like he was searching for a vehicle he was ordered to repo and deliver to the car lot at one of their used car lots on Dyer Street.
We contacted the Texas Rangers and talked to the sergeant and explained who we were and what we were doing and verified the reward. He said they had no available units but we could hand him over to any El Paso County Sheriff deputy and connected us with their office. After repeating the same story we agreed on a time and place; one hour from now in the Walmart parking lot near Transmountain Road and Dyer Street. He should be double cuffed and we agreed and said we'd need a receipt and someone to shoot video, we didn't want to miss out on the reward bonus.
It appeared the tow truck was driving in that general direction on a different street heading north near Transmountain Road so we drove as fast as we could to try to be within a few blocks when the spider shut off the engine. We ran the red light at Dyer and Transmountain Road.
Ten minutes and three miles later it all worked out. We told the spider to kill his ignition circuit, then when he opened the hood the spider released the gas. We rushed into the parking lot and we actually saw him fall to the ground by the truck with the hood already propped open and a little smoke visible even from a distance!
We raced up and pretended to do CPR on him, when in reality we were cuffing his ankles and hands, but his hands were on his stomach instead of behind him. The deputy arrived and had his pistol drawn (which always scared me). He replaced our plastic cuffs with his pretty chrome plated manly cuffs and put the groggy and stinky old guy into the tiny back seat of his squad car.
He parked his car so the entire scene was on his car cam too. We got our receipt and another deputy arrived and transferred him to his car and drove him to the Otero County lock-up not too far from where he lived! Easy Breezy! His actual felony warrant was out of New Mexico.
That weekend more of our outstanding reward checks arrived. We cashed them and put it in a box on the shelf in the closet in our tactical equipment room (AKA: Tac-room).
We finally heard back from the guy (Mike Bonham) at WSMR about camping and set a date for next weekend, Friday night to Sunday morning. Four of us at one campsite along the river, if it had any water depended a lot on the weather.
He said he was bringing a smoker along for pork ribs and we said we were bringing locally made brats and buns with almost every possible condiment.