Forensic Case Study Enrique Camarena

The abduction of Enrique Camarena

The abduction of Enrique Camarena presents numerous interesting and unusual features regarding the gathering of forensic evidence. Many of obstacles that arose over the course of the investigation can be traced to the fact that the DEA Special Agent was apprehended in Mexico, where U.S. laws about preserving evidence did not apply. The Mexican police force (at least at the time of the abduction in 1984) was much more prone to corruption and bribery by persons engaged in illegal drug trafficking than U.S. law enforcement. Rather than seeing to assist the DEA in bringing the murderers of Camarena to justice, the Mexican police often acted as obstacles, not assistants.

The real perpetrators of the murder of Camarena concocted a scheme with certain select members of the Mexican policy whereby Camarena's body (and the body of Capt. Alfredo Zavala, a Mexican DEA source) would be buried at the ranch of the Bravo drug ring: a false letter was sent to the Mexican police 'tipping them off' on this false lead that would hopefully result in law enforcement scapegoating the Bravo gang. Thus, the perpetrators of the crime would accomplish two objectives in one: they would divert attention away from themselves and they would also successfully eliminate one of their chief rivals.

In the subsequent raid by the DEA and Mexican Federal Judicial Police (MFJP) the Bravo gang was indeed decimated according to plan. However, the persons contracted to bury the bodies did not fulfill their assigned mission and merely sloppily left the corpses by the side of the road. Certain Mexican police were bribed to 'hush up' any questions. Eventually the bodies were found and with U.S. pressure, one of the decomposing bodies was identified by fingerprint records to be Camarena; the other body was identified as Zavala's by dental records. But U.S. DEA personnel were not permitted to take the bodies...

An Armed Forces Institute of Pathology expert examined the body and determined that Camarena had been killed by blunt trauma to the head: there was also a rod-shaped hole in the dead man's skull.
Examination of the supposed burial site lead the U.S. DEA to discover that there were no fluids at the Bravo ranch consistent with burying a body. The soil samples on the bodies were different than the soil at the site, indicating the corpses had been buried elsewhere then exhumed and 'relocated.' Eventually, a Mercury Grand Marquis was discovered which the DEA believed had been used to transport the body. Gradually, the chain of events seemed to become evident. The MFJP notified the DEA that they found the residence where they believed Camarena had been held, but American authorities were not allowed to come to the location until the MFJP removed all of the evidence. Since the abduction, all the walls had been painted, the house had been cleaned and MFJP personnel were living in the structure, thus contaminating much of the remaining evidence.

When the DEA were allowed on-premises, the most likely holding area was determined to be a small guest house and "the entire room and bathroom were processed for hairs, fibers and latent fingerprints" (Malone 1984: 4). The door was covered with steel bars, and eventually it was discovered that Camarena had been held and tortured in these premises, confirming the DEA's reconstruction of the crime. A locked bedroom and bed linens were also assessed for evidence, along with carpet fibers on the floor. The DEA did the best they could to focus upon non-contaminated areas of the house likely to be implicated in the abduction. A beige VW Atlantic "which fit the general description of the smaller vehicle noted by the person who witnessed SA Camarena's abduction" was nearby (Malone…