Since November, everyone has been wondering where convicted hitman Edgar Valdez-Villareal disappeared to. He’s supposed to be in a Florida prison for a long, long time but isn’t. Nobody can say where he is. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been nervously demanding to know where he went. Looks like we all just found out. Mexico’s former top cop, Genaro García Luna, is about to go on trial in Brooklyn, New York. We’ll probably see “La Barbie” on the witness stand.
Hitman expected to testify
Apparently, the hitman known affectionately as “La Barbie,” for his blonde hair and looks, Edgar Valdez-Villareal, has been quietly hiding in witness protection. Prosecutors want him alive to testify against Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s version of Christopher Wray.
The only real difference is that Luna’s corruption is actually going to trial. According to the New York Post on January 19, when Luna’s trial starts Monday, “one of the main witnesses may be a convicted drug trafficker who mysteriously disappeared from federal custody last year.”
The hitman “vanished from the Bureau of Prisons database in November amid rumors that he was cutting a deal with federal prosecutors.” Everyone was afraid they turned him loose. At least this update gives the public some reassurance he isn’t wandering around loose and practicing his trade.
Cartel hitman Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez-Villareal that’s fond of videotaping his t*rture sessions has gone missing from a federal prison in Florida, where he was serving a 49-year sentence. pic.twitter.com/BSmf6f0KQV
— DomIsLive NEWS (@domislivenews) December 7, 2022
He had been stashed at “the maximum-security federal prison USP Coleman II, near Orlando, Florida, for drug trafficking and money laundering, and sentenced to serve until 2056.” Suddenly, he’s “a ‘key witness‘ in Garcia Luna’s trial.”
According to the U.S. Attorney for New York’s Eastern District, Luna “once led his country’s fight against drug trafficking as Secretary of Public Security.” That was only for show. He’s accused of “taking millions of dollars in bribes via briefcases stuffed with cash.”
Both Luna and the hitman had the same boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel. It was Luna’s job to “ensure protection of trafficking routes and allow safe passage of drugs out of Mexico.”
La Barbie to testify
It makes sense that the hitman would be moved from public view ahead of this trial. The Sinaloa Cartel is powerful enough to have him easily whacked in any prison, anywhere. They would go to great lengths to prevent Valdez-Villareal from telling what he knows about Luna to a jury.
From 2006 to 2012 he was running interference for the cartel under the nose of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.
Luna “headed the Mexican equivalent of the FBI.” That positioned him perfectly to manage “the importation and the distribution of massive quantities of dangerous drugs” into the US.
Edgar Valdez-Villareal, a Mexican American cartel leader, had been mysteriously removed from the federal Bureau of Prisons website. He is now listed as “not in BOP custody” even though his release date is not until July 27, 2056. https://t.co/cjCnkgbDwh
— atasteofcreole (@atasteofcreole) December 8, 2022
He also kept El Chapo informed “regarding its rivals and warning them about law enforcement operations in Mexico.” The hitman knew him well. La Barbie “was a top lieutenant for the Sinaloa Cartel,” running “Los Negros, an enforcement group of the Beltran Leyva cartel — one of Mexico’s most ruthless underworld groups.”
Back in 2012, the hitman told a reporter all about Luna, including that “I know for a fact that he has received money from me, from drug trafficking and organized crime.”
He put it in writing too, with a letter from his prison cell. That means a lot coming from a guy who “participated in torture, which he often videotaped, and recruited police officers and rival cartel members as informants.“
