El Chapo 2018 Escape
Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been recaptured seven months after he escaped from prison, Mexican authorities announced Friday.
But this isn’t the first time El Chapo, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been on the lam. The drug kingpin has a long history of capture, escape and recapture.
El Chapo escaped from a Jalisco prison in 2001 by hiding inside a laundry cart and fled the Altiplano prison in 2015 via a 1.5-kilometer-long tunnel that led into the shower area of his cell. A timeline of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman from arrest, escape, capture, to trial. The billionaire druglord headed the notorious Sinaloa cartel. June 1993 - Captured in Guatemala and sent to a maximum. El Chapo escaped from the jail in July 2015 via a tunnel with an entry beneath the shower in his cell. He remained at large until his capture in Los Mochis six months later.
Here are some major dates in Guzman’s timeline (with some information from the Associated Press):
- June 10, 1993: Mexico announces Guzman’s first capture in Guatemala. But even after Guzman was imprisoned, “He continued to manage his affairs from prison with scarcely a hitch,” writes Robert Saviano in his book ZeroZeroZero. “The maximum security prison Puente Grande, where he was transferred in 1995, became his new base of operations,”
- Jan. 19, 2001: With the help of bribed guards, Guzman escapes from his top-security prison. Saviano describes the escape: “One of them—Francisco Camberos Rivera, known as El Chito, or the Silent One—opened the door to El Chapo’s cell and helped him climb into a cart of dirty laundry. They headed down unguarded hallways and through wide-open electronic doors to the inner parking lot, where only one guard was on duty. El Chapo jumped out of the cart and leaped into the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.”
- Feb. 22, 2014: El Chapo is captured in Mazatlan after hiding in tunnels for days. The success was touted as a huge win for authorities, who by then had deemed Guzman the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world.”
- July 11, 2015: Guzman escapes through a tunnel from Mexico’s top-security prison. You can see the path he took to escape here.
- Jan. 8, 2016: He is once again re-captured in Los Mochis, Sinaloa after a shootout with Mexican marines. Five people were killed and one marine was wounded in the fight.
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For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.The story of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán has it all: dozens of murders; billions of dollars of drugs smuggled around the world; two prison escapes that made Guzmán into something of a folklore hero.
His nickname may mean 'Shorty' in Spanish, but his reach was long. On Tuesday, jurors found Guzmán guilty on all 10 counts in his drug trafficking and murder trial at a federal court in New York City.
60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker has been covering the almost-mythical criminal pedigree of the Mexican drug lord since he was captured in Mexico in 2014. Here are some of those reports.
2014: Public Enemy Number 1 is caught
El Chapo Escape 2018
When Mexican marines captured Guzmán in 2014, he had been on 13-year run from the law after escaping from a Mexican prison in 2001. He was the most wanted man in the world; his international drug cartel put him at the top of the list.
'Making billions of dollars, having a reach around the world in Asia, Australia, in Africa, in Europe; putting poison on the streets, not just in the United States, but all over the world,' Derek Maltz told Whitaker in the video above. Maltz was in charge of the DEA's Special Operations Division tasked with finding Guzmán.
After years of independent searching, Mexican law enforcement had teamed up with several U.S. law enforcement agencies to track the drug lord. After streamlining their efforts, the group tracked Guzmán to a non-descript house in the midst of a middle-class Mexican neighborhood. But as soon as the Mexican marines arrived, Guzmán escaped down a tunnel underneath his bathtub.
Maltz feared the drug lord would continue evading arrest. 'I never believed that he would ever be captured,' he said.
But the Mexican marines were relentless. With the help of American law enforcement, they tracked Guzmán to a beachfront building in Mazatlán, where they finally captured him and arrested him.
'We did not ever anticipate that he'd be captured alive,' said Jim Dinkins, who was head of Homeland Security Investigations and had pursued Guzmán for more than a decade. 'We thought he'd fight to the death.'
2015: 'El Chapo' escapes from prison
Guzmán had already escaped from prison once. In 2015, he did it again.
Almost from the moment he was delivered to Altiplano Prison, a maximum security facility in Mexico, a construction crew from his Sinaloa cartel began digging a tunnel to free him. From almost a mile away, Guzmán's men dug down about three stories and then burrowed 4,921 feet straight toward Altiplano. The tunnel went under the prison wall and beneath the plumbing — and with remarkable accuracy, emerged straight into Guzmán's shower stall.
'It's very difficult to navigate underground,' Dinkins said. 'This tunnel, I believe, went from point A to point B with only minor deviations, if any. And that is an engineering marvel in and of itself.'
El Chapo Timeline
DEA Chief Chuck Rosenberg told Whitaker how he thought it might be possible: corruption and bribes within Mexican law enforcement.
'I don't know specifically how high up they reach,' Rosenberg said. 'My sense is that they're both broad and deep, that they go throughout the Mexican government.'
Joe DiMeglio, the chief of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, told Whitaker that he wasn't sure Guzmán would ever be caught again.
2016: Recapturing 'El Chapo'
But unlike the first time Guzmán escaped from prison, he became sloppy the second time around. After his daring breakout in 2015, the drug lord seemed to become almost delusional.
'He became drunk on his own wine,' said Peter Vincent, a senior official and legal adviser of both the Justice Department and Homeland Security during the international manhunt for Guzmán. 'He started to believe the hype that he was special, that he was almost a demigod, that he was something truly magical. And he became so incredibly arrogant that he thought he was untouchable.'
El Chapo Escaped 2018
He wasn't. Only 20 days after his escape, the Mexican marines had picked up on Guzmán's trail.
Did El Chapo Escape Again
Intelligence tracked him to a house in the coastal town of Los Mochis in northern Sinaloa. Wiretap intercepts picked up on a visit planned by 'grandma and aunt'—code names for Guzmán and his lieutenant. Then, 'grandma' finally showed up. As an assault force moved into position, an armored truck left to go pick up food for a party.
'For an incredibly savvy, clever, almost a criminal genius that El Chapo Guzmán was, he ultimately was done in by very simple tastes: tacos, tequila, and chicas,' Vincent said.
Guzmán was arrested again. Mexican federal police took him to a motel instead of jail — a move Vincent said indicates that Guzmán had likely threatened his captors. But the Mexican marines appeared and apprehended Guzmán for a last time, flying him to Mexico City for booking.
The trial began in November, and jurors deliberated for more than 30 hours over six days before reaching their verdict. Guzmán now faces life in a U.S. prison.