Free Republic

A former associate of Edgar Valdez-Villarreal, "La Barbie," is killed in a Nuevo Laredo prison. An inmate in a Nuevo Laredo prison stabbed Jose Luis Carrizales-Coronado to death. Authorities say a federal judge released Coronado from a prison in Monterrey on Monday claiming a lack of evidence in a case. He came back to Nuevo Laredo and was arrested for previous murder charges. Officials say he started a fight with other inmates in the bathroom, where they beat and stabbed him. According to Mexican authorities, Coronado was an associate of Edgar Valdez-Villarreal back in 2003.

Earlier this week Mexican federal police arrested Edgar Valdez Villarreal a/k/a La Barbie who went from high school football star in Laredo, TX to becoming a top leader in the Beltran Leyva Mexican drug cartel, and authorities have released excerpts from his interrogation in which the blue-eyed drug trafficker discusses details of the trade including the transportation of bulk cash from the United States into Mexico by the use of semi-tractor trucks. It's that easy, folks.

MEXICO CITY – Federal police on Monday captured a Texas-born alleged drug kingpin who faces trafficking charges in the U.S. and has been blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico. The arrest of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "the Barbie," was the culmination of a yearlong intelligence operation, the Public Safety Department said in a statement. The department said Valdez was captured Monday in the state of Mexico, which borders the capital of Mexico City, but did not offer any other details. Valdez — the third major drug lord brought...

CUERNAVACA, Mexico -- The bodies of three escaped prisoners who escaped from a Mexican prison were found hanging from a bridge in the city of Cuernavaca, local officials said. The bodies of the men, who escaped from the Atlacholoaya prison in Xochitepec Tuesday, were found in an area that has become a combat zone between members of the splintered Beltran Leyva drug cartel, which divided into warring factions since the death of co-founder Arturo Leyva in December, CNN reported. Mexican-American Edgar Valdez, also known as "La Barbie," has claimed leadership of the cartel, but people loyal to the crime family's...