The Patrick Braxton-Andrews Story:  The Cloud of Mystery Lifts

Patrick Braxton-Andrew Overlooking Copper Canyon Three Days Before his Death Below

From Diario de Juárez.  See also report in Borderland Beat:  Townspeople in Urique, perhaps not surprisingly, are more forthcoming than state police authorities about the fate of Patrick Braxton-Andrew.  Details are still sketchy, with some contradictions, but the story appears to be coming into focus.  According to townfolk Patrick wandered into a hotel in Urique, possibly on Saturday night, October 27, where Noriel Portillo Gil and members of his organization were having a party.  He hung out with them for a while.  His Spanish was fluent, unlike most tourists, and he was taking pictures on his phone.  He was asking a lot of questions. The gang began to suspect he might be a DEA agent.  It is also possible he entered the hotel on Sunday morning, instead of Saturday night, but this doesn't seem to track with reports Portillo was having a party.  In any event he spent Saturday night at his own hotel, just a short walk away and left his hotel on Sunday morning, leaving his personal belongings behind, apparently heading to Guapalayna, about six km downriver.  He never returned.

According to state police his body was buried by his killers in a shallow grave, but given the exceptional attention authorities were giving to the search--at one point there were about 100 persons reportedly looking for any sign of him for days after his disappearance--they decided to remove the body to a more remote site.  They carried his body to the edge of a ravine next to a dirt road that connects Guapalayna with La Laja, 3 km from the highway.  They threw his body into the ravine.  Somehow police appear to have learned where they would find the body--possibly from some of the local police detained by prosecutors in Chihuahua.  The Chihuahua state prosecutor indicated last week some local police have been compromised by Chueco's gang.  It took rescuers several hours to remove the body from the bottom of the ravine.  The body was not seriously decomposed, according to reports, due to the relatively cold weather.

If the killers thought he was a DEA agent, it would have been wiser to leave him alone. The last DEA agent killed in Mexico was Kiki Camarena, in 1985, who was tortured and killed by leaders of the Guadalajara cartel.  After a massive manhunt one of them, Rafael Caro Quintero was caught in hiding in Costa Rica, and served 28 years in prison for his role in Camarena's murder.  He was released from jail in 2013, after claiming a technical flaw in the original trial, but after pressure from the US government an arrest warrant was issued that same year.  The US has a $20 million bounty on his head and he is still in hiding.  Already Mr. Noriel Portillo is learning what it is like to live in constant fear of apprehension, not for killing a DEA agent, but for killing an innocent tourist who should have been left alone.  He will be found, and if he is captured alive, he will see a lot of jail time.

Noriel is said to be assigned to operate with his accomplices in the Urique area for the Los Salazares gang.  The Salazares in turn, oversee cartel operations in Urique, Uruachi, Bocoyna, and Chinipas.  The control of these and other areas is logistically important for the Sinaloa cartel.

Noriel, aka El Chueco, first arrived in the vicinity of Urique in 2015, where he forcibly recruited young men from the Raramuri tribe in El Manzano, near Uruachi. In 2016 Noriel's gang began breaking into houses and stealing money, automobiles, cattle, tools, and clothing.  At one point townspeople fled from their homes for two days in fear of their lives.  When he is caught villagers will not feel sorry for him.  Cartel leaders in Sinaloa cannot be happy either  about the trouble he has stirred up in Copper Canyon.